GRID Legends Photo Mode Deep Dive
Learn more about GRID Legends’ new Photo Mode feature from our special guest and established Motorsport photographer, Dan Bathie
Hi I’m Dan Bathie, motorsport photographer for over 10 years now. I’ve worked in many different series over the years, including Formula 1, WRC, IndyCar, Formula E, WEC and BTCC.
In 2016 I won MSA Young Motorsport photographer of the year and Guild of Motoring Writers, Motorsport photographer of the year and again in 2021.
I also have a love for gaming, my first game being Colin McRae Rally and then TOCA Touring Cars, so to play GRID Legends and how having a photo mode really combines my two passions!
Let me walk you through a few of the settings, to help you get the most out of Photo Mode.
Exposure: In this case, it controls the lightness or the darkness of the image, which you can use to create such effects as silhouettes.
Low Exposure
High Exposure
Low Shutter Speed
Depth of Field Mode: With this enabled it allows you to create the blurred/dreamy background, and draw your eye to the intended subject.The amount of blur is controlled by the F stop. The lower the number of the F-stop the smaller area is in focus, resulting in a more blurred background.
No Depth of Field
Depth of Field
Zoom: The zoom goes from a wide angle lens (smaller number) to a telephoto zoom (largest number) . The zoom can effect the way your image looks by either being wide and showing a lot of context but the car can look distorted. The more zoomed in the image is, the more you’ll get compression on the background, this will make the car the main focus in the image.
Wide lense
Little zoomed out to capture the cars behind
Zoomed in on car as the focus
Shutter speed: The slower the shutter speed, the more motion and speed of the car you’ll capture, but you lose some background context. A shutter speed of 250 or lower, tends to be a good way of showing wheels in motion and the cars don’t look parked, at 1/30th you get a lot motion. For head on car shots, the shutter speed can be higher because you don’t see the wheels. In GRID Legends, the photo mode allows you to do ‘tracking’ style photos, which really give a great sense of speed.
High shutter speed
Low shutter speed
High shutter speed
Low shutter speed
High shutter speed
Low shutter speed
Sun Position: This feature in GRID Legends is amazing and something I wish I could do in real life! When I’m trackside I’ll always check to see where the sun is in relation to a corner or section to get the best results, it changes the look of an image a huge amount and really is the most important thing in photography.
At Sunrise/sunset you can get beautiful images when you shoot towards the sun (adjusting the exposure here can really create some different images here)
Sun facing the camera
Sun off screen reducing glare
Now you understand the technical aspects of photography. The final step, purely optional, is to personalize your picture with a variety of filters, vignettes, adjusting the saturation and contrast, and adding lens effects.
Why not jump into GRID Legends now and snap your best picture?
GRID Legends is available on Xbox, PlayStation, Steam, & EA Play and the Photo Mode Feature is free to everyone that plays GRID Legends.