Shooting the Las Vegas Grand Prix at night on a bridge camera
A grandstand seat, 600 mm of reach, and a street circuit lit in patches. What worked with the Sony RX10 IV at the 2024 Las Vegas Grand Prix, and what I'd change next time.
The short answer
- Shutter
- 1/800 s freezes an F1 car at night
- Aperture
- f/4, wide open at the long end
- ISO
- 3200, up to 5000 in the darkest sections
- Focal length
- 485–600 mm equivalent from the grandstand
- Drive
- Continuous burst at 24 frames per second
Where I shot from
Everything here was shot from the grandstands. From a seat, you can't chase angles, so the 600 mm equivalent reach did the work: it pulls the cars in close enough to fill the frame, even across the width of the track.
What camera settings work for Formula 1 at night?
1/800 s was my shutter speed. The cars are extremely fast in person, and anything slower risked motion blur on a car moving straight at me.
ISO 3200 was the trade-off. Even with the track lighting, the circuit is dark in places, and the cars move in and out of the light as they come through a corner. I exposed for the darker patches so a car wasn't lost in shadow the moment it left a lit section. For the head-on Mercedes shot at the top, I went to ISO 5000.
f/4 is as wide as the RX10 IV's lens opens at 600 mm, so there was no choice there.
| Shot | Focal length | Aperture | Shutter | ISO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mercedes, head-on | 600 mm eq | f/4 | 1/800 s | 5000 |
| Mercedes, turn-in | 600 mm eq | f/4 | 1/800 s | 3200 |
| Kick Sauber | 600 mm eq | f/4 | 1/800 s | 3200 |
| Safety car | 600 mm eq | f/4 | 1/800 s | 3200 |
| Drivers' parade | 485 mm eq | f/4 | 1/800 s | 3200 |
Can a bridge camera shoot Formula 1?
Yes, and the RX10 IV surprised me. The 24 fps burst was fantastic: at these speeds, one frame is the difference between a car filling the frame and half a car. Autofocus was fast and sharp, locking on and tracking cars coming out of the dark. And the 600 mm equivalent zoom meant I didn't need to be trackside.
The one weakness is low light. The 1-inch sensor is small, so at ISO 3200 and above there's noise to deal with. I ran these frames through Lightroom's Denoise, which cleaned them up well. For a camera with this much reach in one body, it's a trade-off I'd take again.
What I'd do differently
Next time I'd use a night filter. Artificial track lighting throws a colour cast, and a filter designed for night scenes would give better, cleaner tones in camera, with less correction afterwards. I used one for Vivid Sydney from the Harbour Bridge pylon.
The moment that stood out
How fast the cars were, even from the grandstand.
Watching the same corner lap after lap, I noticed every driver took a slightly different line through the corner in front of me. Lewis Hamilton was the only one taking the inside, while everyone else swung extremely wide. He started 10th and finished 2nd, behind his Mercedes teammate George Russell.
See the full Speed gallery