SBD British Sprint Championship

[Simon Harrison]

Spent what turned out to be a very long and somewhat boring day at Croft for the annual Easter Sprint Meeting. What made it long and boring were the number of delays and hold ups, all of which seemed to be centred around the timing equipment. If it wasn't the wind moving the finish line sensors enough to break the timing beam, it was competitors trying too hard around the final corner and wiping out the timing gear with their resulting spin. All of this made it hard to get into any sort of rythmn, and with the cars only getting 4 runs each.....well need I say more.

Anyway, on to some pictures....

#1 After 3 days of glorious sunshine and zero wind and me being stuck indoors decorating, Monday dawned dull, cloudy and quite breezy.....typical!
http://www.srh-motorsport-photography.com/Galleries/forum/Sprint/09-04-07---116.jpg

#2 The sun did get out for a little while, and I have the sunburnt head to prove it!
http://www.srh-motorsport-photography.com/Galleries/forum/Sprint/09-04-07---055.jpg

#3 This Escort resembled a Pikes Peak special with its enormous rear wing.
http://www.srh-motorsport-photography.com/Galleries/forum/Sprint/09-04-07---003.jpg

#4 Plenty of Westfields and Caterham's out playing.
http://www.srh-motorsport-photography.com/Galleries/forum/Sprint/09-04-07---425.jpg

#5 As well as some seriously nice older metal
http://www.srh-motorsport-photography.com/Galleries/forum/Sprint/09-04-07---500.jpg

Some of the single seaters were putting out in excess of 600 bhp. The winner of the event actually broke the sprint lap record, getting around 9/10 of the circuit from a standing start in around 55 seconds. That's quite an impressive piece of driving.

#6 Not the fastest on the day, but definately one of the prettier cars.
http://www.srh-motorsport-photography.com/Galleries/forum/Sprint/09-04-07---236.jpg

#7 Another Caterfield derivative - must be difficult driving with the top of the windscreen right in your line of sight
http://www.srh-motorsport-photography.com/Galleries/forum/Sprint/09-04-07---628.jpg

#8 and if they'd had a 'best presented car of the day' award. this would have got my vote. By no means the quickest, but very well driven on each run that he completed.
http://www.srh-motorsport-photography.com/Galleries/forum/Sprint/09-04-07---647.jpg

All of the pictures were taken with a 1D mk I, Sigma 120-300 f2.8 and 2XTC apart from #3 which used a 1.4XTC.

As usual, any comments or feedback are most welcome.

Cheers,

Simon.

[gkwood]

Lovley set of photos love the Triumth its a great lump of metal

[petrolhead]

The second from last is a Dax and I am supprised they let him compete with his head taller than the roll bar.

Simon, I feel sick, your pictures are just sooooooooo good. Think I will take up knitting :(

What setting were you using

[despot]

Good work Simon. Nice and sharp (considering the 2x TC) and great colours.
I'm liking the Westfield in #4.
Andy

[Simon Harrison]

Lovley set of photos love the Triumth its a great lump of metal

Thanks Gary. It was nice to see such a fantastically presented car like the Triumph out on the circuit.

Cheers,

Simon.

[rich_cooper]

Great set of images Simon

[Simon Harrison]

Great set of images Simon

Thanks Rich :D !

Simon.

[darren h]

Cracking shots Simon. Nice selection of vehicles but love the Triumph. Like the drivers eyes giving you the stare in the Westfield

[GSH]

Amazing shots Simon, even more so given the use of the 2x TC ;)

What's your success rate like with it fitted ?

[Simon Harrison]

Amazing shots Simon, even more so given the use of the 2x TC ;)

What's your success rate like with it fitted ?

Not as good on Monday Geoff as it was with the bikes the other week, although I suspect that there were other factors in play on Monday as well. I haven't worked out a %age number of keepers and don't really have any intention of doing so.

I was also trying a lot of things on Monday with the 2XTC to better learn where its limitations etc were, and any particular camera settings required to get the best from it. A couple of interesting things to note were: -


It doesn't perform quite as well if you over expose the image. This is important for me, as I tend to push the histogram as far to the right as I can to minimise shadow noise on the 1D.
It struggled to track the faster (600 bhp) single seaters close in when they were coming more or less straight at me. This wasn't so much of a surprise.I now have a much better idea of its limitations etc. Strangely enough, I bought the 2XTC not to give me super tightly cropped shots, but to open up a couple of new angles at Croft and to prevent me from having to do any cropping on a couple of other angles, all of which will be used to capture 'looser' group shots of cars. I think it will work well for this, but less well for tightly framed shots of faster moving stuff.

Cheers,

Simon.

[Simon Harrison]

Cracking shots Simon. Nice selection of vehicles but love the Triumph. Like the drivers eyes giving you the stare in the Westfield

Thanks Darren - I appreciate your comments.

Cheers,

Simon.

[Simon Harrison]

Good work Simon. Nice and sharp (considering the 2x TC) and great colours.
I'm liking the Westfield in #4.
Andy

Thanks Andy. The 2XTC is great if used in the right way (see my reply to GSH above) and produces some very nice results.

Cheers,

Simon.

[Simon Harrison]

The second from last is a Dax and I am supprised they let him compete with his head taller than the roll bar.

Simon, I feel sick, your pictures are just sooooooooo good. Think I will take up knitting :(

What setting were you using

See, I could never do knitting, as I'm not allowed to handle sharp objects :p ;) .

Thanks for the kind words Peter.

As for settings, I was in Tv mode, as the sun was in and out from behind the clouds and using a shutter speed between 1/200s and 1/320s. As usual, I adjusted ISO to give an aperture somewhere around f8 for DoF, while pushing the histogram as far to the right as I could without blowing the highlights (typically +1/3 to +2/3 of a stop). They were all shot in raw and converted using Phase One.

Cheers,

Simon.

[Allen Mead]

A great set there Simon as always, i like the escort for me as it's soooo unusual waarrp!