motorbikes

British Superbikes, Oulton Park - May 2008

Daniel Pendery — Thu, 08 May 2008 12:27:33 -0600

Race Day

This was our first BSB Race and the first time at Outlon Park so we didn't really know what to expect. Having spent some time walking around on the first day of the meeting we had decided to stand near Knickerbrook where you could see a reasonable amount of the race and were close enough to the circuit to get some good photos without fences obscuring the view. As expected, this was a popular place so we were glad we'd arrived early, this also meant we avoided the traffic and got to see plenty of action in the warm-ups etc. The weather was overcast and threatening rain, we just hoped it would hold off during the racing.

Race One

The rain began to fall just as the race started, several riders came off almost immediately and the Red Flags came out. At the restart Sykes took the lead with Crutchlow not far behind but before long the Honda passed the Suzuki and began to break away. Over the next few laps both of the Airwaves Ducati riders also passed Sykes, pushing him down to fourth. Crutchlow crashed on lap ten and although he was able to rejoin he dropped down to fifth place behind the Ducatis, Sykes and Haslam. Haslam then managed to work up to second place and put Byrne under some pressure, although he tried to pass he wasn't able to make it stick and Byrne took his second win from three races.

Race Two

The weather improved for Race Two and Sykes again took the early lead followed by Crutchlow, Haslam, Rutter and Byrne. On lap two Byrne managed to pass Rutter but a mistake then dropped him down to thirteenth place, he was obviously not keen to stay there and set about re-catching the leaders before the field got too spread out. Haslam passed Crutchlow to take second place and the top three stayed close with Ellison not far behind. By lap eight Byrne had passed Camier and caught the front four, before long he was in fourth and that became second as Haslam tried a rather optimistic move on Sykes at Hizzies. Sykes was out and Haslam rejoined in fifth position. Byrne took the lead from Crutchlow on the following lap but soon after, the race came to an abrupt end when Crutchlow crashed heavily at Druids and the Red Flags came out again.

The Photography

I had a lot of shots of individual bikes from the qualifying and practice sessions that I was pretty pleased with, certainly the best bike photography I've done to date. Rather than come back with dozens of similar images of single bikes that could be anywhere I wanted to see if I could add some context to the images and try to illustrate that this was actually a race, I hope I've managed to do that.

As we were not planning on moving about too much over the course of the day I took both the EOS 20D and the EOS5D with the Canon 100-400mm and the Sigma 120-300mm. I find the 20D offers two key advantages over the 5D for motorsport, the extra magnification provided by the 1.6x crop factor of the 20D provides better results than adding a teleconverter to the 5D and it has a faster framerate. The 5D has better low light performance which makes it useful for overcast days and the image quality is better, particularly for large prints.

Comparing them both side by side the Sigma definitely has a harder job keeping autofocus when tracking the bikes, it's no slouch but the Canon was incredibly fast. Image quality seems about on a par between the two and the larger zoom range of the 100-400mm is useful. However, the ability to drop to f/2.8 and control DOF is a definite plus for the 120-300mm.

Motorbikes, Oulton Park - May 2008

Daniel Pendery — Tue, 06 May 2008 01:07:48 -0600

Oulton Park

We spent the weekend at Oulton Park for the British Superbikes and various other bike racing, the BSB Races are covered elsewhere and here are some of my favourite shots from the BSB Qualifying and other sessions from the weekend

BSB Qualifying

After some early rain the track started damp but dried through the session ensuring that the times got progressively quicker and making for a great spectacle. All the teams came out straight away and stayed out for most of the session as there was a constant fear of losing your time as the track dried and potentially failling to get back to the top if the rain started again.

The Photography

I used the 20D and the Canon 100-400 Lens throught qualifying day, althought there was a lot of cloud the general light levels were good and I decided that the extra reach given over the EOS5D or the Sigma 120-300mm was a good tradeoff for the better low light performance of that combination. After investigating the circuit fairly thoroughly on Saturday we spent most of Sunday and Monday on the hill along the edge of Knickerbrook and the approach to Clay Hill, this seemed to offer a variety of shots and gave us a good view of the action

Supermoto at Cadwell Park - November 2007

Daniel Pendery — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 23:00:00 -0700

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.

MotoGP at Donington Park - June 2007

Daniel Pendery — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 00:00:00 -0600

The weather's been fairly awful this summer so we weren't hopeful that it'd stay dry and it even seemed possible that it might need to be cancelled. I was keen to see if I could get some reasonable photos but having never been there before wasn't sure if that would be possible. I took my 5D and Canon 100-400mm IS lens I also had a Canon 1.4x Teleconverter and a Kenko Pro 300 2x with me. I didn't really use the teleconverters though as the light was rarely good enough. On the Saturday the weather stayed reasonable in fact at times it was very pleasant.

We wandered about a few locations but the best place I found for photography was just after the Foggy Esses this very twisty part of the circuit just before the grandstand ensures that the bikes have slowed down a bit and gives you some good opportunities to get them cornering. The main problem is a chainlink fence between you and the circuit so you need to get as close to it as possible and use a wide aperture. Most of the images here were taken from there during the qualifying sessions. I didn't find anywhere that you could get close enough to the circuit with obstructions such as fences so these shots have all been severely cropped from the originals.

On Sunday morning it poured throughout the practice sessions I tried to get some shots near the VIP building at the end of the main straight and had some success. I also got soaked luckily I'd taken a rain cover for the camera but my own waterproof didn't cover my legs. It was still wet at the start of the 250 race but they put on an excellent show. We went to our grandstand seats then and there was very little opportunity for photography so I put the camera away and enjoyed the races. When the MotoGP class race started the noise was unbelievable it started wet but dried through the race as no more rain fell. Casey Stoner beat the form book by coming in well ahead of the Valentino Rossi and Colin Edwards on the Yamahas and extended his Championship Lead. The 125cc race completed our day then just the drive home. It took about 2hrs to get from the circuit car park to the motorway I think if we went again we'd stay to watch the other support races before leaving.