Rick Graves can stop time. OK, not really, but he can freeze 43 NASCAR racers clocking almost 200 mph. How? The pro shooter modified his Hasselblad into what he calls a DistaCam — adding a high-velocity motor, locking the shutter open, and inserting a metal plate with a laser-cut slit. Whenever Graves triggers the motor, film zips past the slit at up to 1,400 rpm, capturing stills of the speeding cars. "Failure is a necessity," he says, "and a lot of times, success is luck."
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4 Steps to Shooting Stills at 200 mph
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1 Measure Graves determines focus distance with a laser rangefinder. He then uses real-time stats from the Web to match the camera motor's speed with that of the racers — too slow and the cars appear stretched, too fast and they compress (like numbers 2 and 38, above).
| 2 Do Some Quick Math Using a dozen formulas he has stored on his Treo, Graves figures the aperture of his telescopic lens, frame width, and motor speed. Then he aims his camera at the 4- to 6-inch slice of pavement that the cars will pass over.
| 3 Load the Film and Cross Your Fingers Graves waits until the cars are tightly bunched before attempting a shot. He triggers the motor just before the first car enters the frame (adding a fraction of a second to let the film motor hit top speed).
| 4 Scan Onto PC After developing the 66-inch roll, Graves scans 10 inches at a time. He stitches these sections together in Photoshop and spends several hours removing hairlines and spots. The photo file, up to 3 GB, has been printed as large as 280 feet by 7 feet.
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