James Hopkinson - D Group Race 1

A Cheap Day Out

There aren't many places where you can get a full day's entertainment for £10.00 but that's certainly what I got when I went to Cadwell Park to see the last day of the Norasport Supermoto Racing 2007 National Championships.  Once it got underway the racing was fast and furious, many races in quick succession each lasting only around 10 minutes.  The short laps meant there was never long to wait until the bikes would come roaring round again.

The Photography

The racing was restricted to the short Woodland Circuit which limited the opportunities for finding different and interesting locations for photography, the area between The Mountain and The Hairpin being the most accessible.  I took the Sigma 120-300mm f/2.8, as it's still quite new and I thought this would be a good opportunity to put it through its paces.  The lens didn't disappoint, we were able to get pretty close to the action and in many cases 300mm was too long so being able to zoom back to 200mm was really useful, trying to move back to frame the shot with a 300mm prime would have required me to stand in the trees.  The larger apertures available in comparison to the 100-400mm enabled me to reduce the ISO and therefore minimise the noise which had been an issue for me at a rainy Donington for the MotoGP. 

I took around 500 shots and came away with a good 250 keepers which I think is a reasonable hit rate (a lot better than I got at Donington anyway).  The autofocus held up well on the Canon 5D, fast and accurate and that's one of the things I'd been worried about after reading a number of mixed reviews of the lens on the internet.   I did take my monopod but rarely used it, most of the shots are hand held and I used the monopod mainly to support the lens in between races.

As I said before I had a large number of keepers but due the limited locations for photography, they're rather samey, I've posted a good few of my favourites here.