As I have ranted elsewhere on this web site, there is no camera equipment allowed at the Phoenix race site where I normally drive. That's a real bummer since it's only about a 35 minute drive to north Phoenix from my house, and the Tucson races are about 2.5 hours away. With my new decals and an idea for a new video camera setup though, I decided it was time to make the 120 mile drive on down to Tucson for some racing.

To make things even better, there was actually a practice day on the 27th before the actual event on the 28th. I got lots of video at the practice and about 45 still photos on the event day. Since I can't take pictures of my car while driving, a friend of mine in Tucson, Julie Lazarr, was kind enough to go to the race with me to take pictures. She'd never been to an autocross before, so it was all pretty new to her and she seemed to like it.

The main camera lens I used for the event is an 80-210mm Tamron zoom lens. This is a very good lens for most photography, but for trying to really get frame-filling photographs of cars that are 250 feet away, it's just not quite enough. I'll be looking in to getting a 1.4 or 2.0x teleconverter to get the effective zoom range up to 310 or 420mm. That should be plenty to get pictures from as far away as I want.

The majority of the pictures were taken with a shutter speed of 1/60th second so that I could get some motion blur without much risk of ruining the photos from jitter. For the most part, this turned out pretty well but I forgot to bring my monopod to the event which would have helped things out. The photos with an asterisk (*) in front of the description were taken by Julie. Many thanks to her, as she gave up studying for two exams to watch the race and take pictures for me. As always, if you'd like to reprint any of these photographs or would like a higher-resolution copy sent to you, please send me an email. My address is at the bottom of the page.

My Civic HX with it's new magnetic decals. (Nikon N90 with 28-80mm Tamron lens)	Honda Prelude. (Nikon N90 with Tamron 80-210mm lens for remaining pictures)	Mark Huffman's yellow Lotus Elan
The Meyers' Nissan 240SX	One of the many white Neons which attended this event	A very fast Pontiac Firebird
A very nice BMW 328	*Hey! It's my Civic.	*My Civic, with bumper-mounted video camera
*Another shot of my Civic	*Another Neon, but at least this one isn't white	1999 Mazda Miata
A very nice shot of that Miata	Tony Washington's BMW M3 taking off from the starting line	That speedy M3 again
Did I mention I have a poster of a BMW M3 at home?	Let's just say I like BMW's	A very yellow Porsche Boxter
One of Germany's Finest	A classic Porsche 911	*Me and my Civic after I took all the magnetic decals off so they wouldn't melt in the sun

Page Created: 4-2-99
All pictures and text Copyright 1999 Brandon Smith.
Commercial use without express written consent of the author is prohibited.
Back to Autocrossing.com