Rally of New Zealand report

[MarkH]

So today I drive to the road used for practice day to snap some pics of Marcus Gronholm, Petter Solberg, Markko Martin, Carlos Sainz, Sebastian Loeb and heaps of other people that you guys would have heard of.

Also there were lots of other people taking photos, including local and overseas professionalsl

Saw two pros using Nikon D1X D-SLRs and over a dozen using the Canon 1D with big white lens (usually 70-200 f2.8 L).

I was talking to a pro from Belgium, I asked him if he had a MkII on order, he said yes, due next week. He also mentioned that this was the 5th rally he was covering within 5 weeks, obviously he is a hard working professional!

Any professional motor racing photographers out there that don't have a 1D MkII on order?


I felt a little inadequate with my 10D and 28-135IS. Although I still got some good pics and the 28-135 is a very good range on my 10D for rally pics. It was a gray overcast day though, so I shot at ISO 400. If I had a lens with f2.8 then I could have got the same shutter speed with ISO 100.

I did take some pics of the photographers with the white lenses, just to be a gadget geek! Hmmm, 1D + L lens, very nice.

[ldivinag]

dang...

i wish i could be there... WRC made the only visit to north america last month to mexico and lack of $$$ ... well... i just watched it on tv... :(

[MarkH]

dang...

i wish i could be there... WRC made the only visit to north america last month to mexico and lack of $$$ ... well... i just watched it on tv... :(

The Rally of New Zealand is centred in Auckland with 3 hours drive up north for Friday/Saturday and 2 hours drive south for Sunday. Luckily for me, I live in Auckland so no big expense involved.

[BobbyC]

Any professional motor racing photographers out there that don't have a 1D MkII on order?


I haven't ordered one yet, I shoot drag racing and don't have the need for the rapid fire, I probably will eventually order one though.


I felt a little inadequate with my 10D and 28-135IS.

Inadequacy has nothing to do with your equipment and don't let anyone tell you different. You can get good shots with a point and shoot and the right technique. You may not be able to fire a rapid sequence of 40 shots in a few seconds but that still doesn't mean you can't take great pictures. Any of the true pros there would tell you the same thing. Learn to work with what you have and take great pictures.

Cheers,
Bobby

[MarkH]

I felt a little inadequate with my 10D and 28-135IS.

Inadequacy has nothing to do with your equipment and don't let anyone tell you different. You can get good shots with a point and shoot and the right technique. You may not be able to fire a rapid sequence of 40 shots in a few seconds but that still doesn't mean you can't take great pictures. Any of the true pros there would tell you the same thing. Learn to work with what you have and take great pictures.


I intend to get some fantastic pictures over the next 3 days, this will be my 6th Rally of NZ, but the first with my 10D. The previous 5 were shot with my old Nikon Coolpix 950. I DID get many good shots with my point and shoot . . .

However: The CP950 was inadequate and limited my photography quite a lot. After a shot it took over 5 seconds before I could take another shot, the shot-to-shot lag was totally inadequate. I HAD to preset the focus, autofocus was not possible on fast moving subjects (not too much of a problem to set the focus on 10M or infinity). The CP950 had almost no manual controls, no Tv or Av or M at all!

The 10D is quite good, if I added a BG-ED3 and a 70-200 f2.8L IS then I would be well set for all but a fast frame rate. This is my intention for next year, this year I want to clear my credit card debt completely.

Regardless of how well I can do with my 10D I could do better if I could afford the 1D MkII. Apart from the 8.5 fps there is also the faster and more accurate AF, that couldn't hurt! Obviously I will attempt to make the most of what I have, until I can win the lottery or something. :? In the meantime I can enjoy jealously eying up the nice gear the pros get to use.

[KiwiRob]

I've got VIP passes for the super special stage at Manukau tonight, and them am off to Raglan on Sunday where I have service park access and a free lunch. I've been following this rally since I was a kid. It's great I love it.

I would like to go watch the start of Possum and whangau coast but have to go to my Grandmothers 87 birthday instead.

[TomVeil]

I've got VIP passes for the super special stage at Manukau tonight, and them am off to Raglan on Sunday where I have service park access and a free lunch. I've been following this rally since I was a kid. It's great I love it.

I would like to go watch the start of Possum and whangau coast but have to go to my Grandmothers 87 birthday instead.

Your grandmother is also your mother from what I understand how things in New Zealand work.

[theflyingkiwi]

are you saying that we are all inbreads :evil:

you will be happy to know that, this is not the case. Only people that live in the remote parts of the country, eg the south island.

Last sunday I went to the http://www.racetothesky.com/ Nobuhiro Tajima won for the 2nd time running. I also managed to get a picture of the Possum Bourne statue.

[KiwiRob]

That Vitara of Monsters is pretty awesome. I hoped Millen would have built something a bit better than the Tundra it's totally outclassed.

[theflyingkiwi]

That Vitara of Monsters is pretty awesome. I hoped Millen would have built something a bit better than the Tundra it's totally outclassed.

that may be ture, but I can tell you one thing, the crowd loves to watch him. when they had to go around the base the mountain, for the postions, he decied to go around again. much to the delight of the crowd.

But I think it was a case of putting more rocks on the track for Nobuhiro Tajima:D

but in saying that, there was a chap there who had a 1d, with a 100-400 on it. and yes I had to do the geek think and take 2 photos of it :)

[ron chappel]

Nice to hear abit of this stuff occ.
I've been into various motorsports over the years and still feel a little twinge of surprise and recognition that others are into it too :)

[BobbyC]

However: The CP950 was inadequate and limited my photography quite a lot. After a shot it took over 5 seconds before I could take another shot, the shot-to-shot lag was totally inadequate. I HAD to preset the focus, autofocus was not possible on fast moving subjects (not too much of a problem to set the focus on 10M or infinity). The CP950 had almost no manual controls, no Tv or Av or M at all!

My point was for YOU not to feel inadequate because of equipment that other people have and you don't. The equipment can certainly be inadequate for a certain type of capture but it doesn't make you that way.

8.5 fps is nice, if you have enough light for a fast enough shutter speed to get that rate, about the only time you want it is during a crash or something like that, then you have to be lucky enough for it to happen in front of you. I do agree about the AF speed though, but as you said, prefocusing can eliminate that problem even with the slowest of cameras.

Cheers!

[MarkH]

After the Thursday night special stage in Manukau Petter Solberg has the early lead.

The special stage is run at night and my new 550EX performed well. I was close enough to the cars to use my 28-135 IS at the wider end of the range, most shots were at 28mm and I used the flash at full power with the camera on 1/200 sec and f4 or f4.5. I got some good shots, but I'm looking forward to tomorrow for the easier daytime shots.

I tried 1/160 sec on the practise day yesterday, I got some good shots with pleasing background blur, but many shots had some blur on the car. I might go with 1/320 sec tomorrow and try to get a higher percentage of keepers.

If there is good light then the f5.6 on my lens wont be a problem and the photos should come out well.

I probably won't have a chance to post here till Sunday night, by then I should have taken several hundred pics. I am sure that by the end of this rally my pic count on the 10D will be past 9000.

[MarkH]

All going well, 1 day more tomorrow.

10D + 28-135 IS are working well, lens hood managed to deflect a stone today, the lens hood is a must have!

Light has been good and I have taken all shots today (Saturday) at ISO 100.

Petter Sohlberg is currently leading from Marcus Gronholm with Markko Martin in 3rd.

693 pictures so far.

[Motorsports Photo]

Any professional motor racing photographers out there that don't have a 1D MkII on order?


Not me. I'm following the same line of thought earlier in this thread about "reducing credit card debt." :D

Just because its new exciting and has more features, doesn't mean I have to have it, or it would make my pictures better.

If you are writing about the races any please cc me in your send list. Its always cool to get another perspective about whats going on besides whats on speed tv. email: photos@raex.com

Get some good pics and enjoy the races!

-Pete

[iwatkins]

Mark,

Hope you are enjoying yourself over there. Don't forget, watch some stages without the camera (if you dare) because rallying is great to watch without the camera as well.

Good save on the hood. I took a rock in the side of the head many years ago. I wasn't very well afterwards, but at least my camera (Canon T90) was safe :)

Cheers

Ian

[MarkH]

Phew, Rally is over and I've woken from a reasonable nights sleep.

Now I have about 950 photos and unlike my old P&S there are a large number of keepers. I have looked through and selected the good ones, with more emphasis on the better known drivers but not disregarding the really good shots of the others. I have a collection of over 150 good photos to work through now, with my old P&S I was happy to get 30 to 40 good shots.

Obviously I will need to cut the list down to a more reasonable number to resize for my website. But I could burn the pics to CD (or a downsized version of them) and pass them to a magazine to see if there is any interest in publishing some of them.

Does anyone have any suggestions of which magazines might be most interested in publishing these pics? I don't really take a lot of interest in magazines and don't even know what motorsport magazines New Zealand has.

[Mthorpe_Davies]

Hi Mark are you shooting in RAW or JPEG?

[MarkH]

Hi Mark are you shooting in RAW or JPEG?

I'm shooting JPG.

Maybe RAW would help at times, but JPG is quicker for clearing the buffer to the CF card. I can also shoot heaps before having to swap CF cards.

For Rally the cars start at 1 or 2 minute intervals, there is plenty of time to check the histogram between cars to ensure the highlights are not being blown.

I suppose I should post a pic or two.

[MarkH]

Pictures:

True OFF-ROAD:
http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~markh/IMG_9144a.JPG


How's this:
http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~markh/IMG_9259a.JPG
People ask me "would it hurt if those stones were to hit you in the face", the answer is yes, yes it does hurt a bit. No visible bruises though and the camera didn't get hit - that's the main thing!

BTW
The images were resized to make them easier to post, no unsharp or autolevels or anything else.

[Motorsports Photo]

SO did you get to adjust Marcus Grondholms horizon??

He rolled his car and the photographers pushed it back on its wheels (after a few pics of course) when it stopped on its side.

The race itself was VERY close and could have gone to any of the top 3 runners even on the last leg.

My race season starts next weekend.

-Pete

[MarkH]

SO did you get to adjust Marcus Grondholms horizon??

He rolled his car and the photographers pushed it back on its wheels (after a few pics of course) when it stopped on its side.

The race itself was VERY close and could have gone to any of the top 3 runners even on the last leg.

My race season starts next weekend.

-Pete

I was in the wrong place when Gronholm rolled, I would have loved to get some pics of that!

Halfway through the last leg Gronholm was 1 second ahead of Solberg, hard to get much closer than that!