December 20th, 1998 Autocrossing in Tucson
Yes, sometimes when you're really in to something, you'll even drive
150 miles to another city just to do it and take some pictures of it
there. Maybe because of the track conditions, and possibly because
of my inability to get my car to pull well in 2nd gear, I didn't
actually have very much fun at this event. I don't even know what my
time was, or who won. I know I lost, but I don't know if there was
more than one car even in my class. I suppose I could check, but in
a way, I'd rather not know.
The good news is, I did take some pretty good pictures at this event.
This is actually the last autocross which was shot with my venerable
manual everything (except light metering and shutter speed) Pentax SLR
camera. It's actually a fairly good camera, but once I'd moved into
something as demanding as fast action photography of this kind, it
became painfully apparent that my Pentax wasn't going to provide the
kind of pictures I wanted. Guess what went on my Christmas list after
that. Well, if you've already read other parts of my web site, you'll
already know that I now have a Nikon N90 with a few good Tamron lenses
and a monopod so that I should do much better at the next event in
February.
Since this whole race was down at the Tucson site, I didn't really get
anyone's names, and no newsletter was ever mailed to me with the results.
Thus, I have no idea who's driving this car, nor do I have any clue as
to what year it is. My guess is that it's a 73-84 vintage Porsche 911.
At any rate, it was mighty fast out on the asphalt.
This shot is a scanned enlargement of the original picture I took,
which is of a supercharged BMW M3. I don't know exactly host much power
this thing generates with the blower, but it's a whole lot. This was
easily one of the fastest street cars at the event. My guess is that
if it's the Dinan kit, it's making about 100hp more than stock for a
total of 340hp. That's a lot for such a light-weight car. As such,
this was one of most fun cars to watch.
From a photographic standpoint, this was my first real success of the
kind. Although the car's pretty far away, and thus the detail's a
little low (I had to scan at 300dpi instead of the normal 150) you can
tell I finally got motion blur in the wheels. This may be a very small
victory for me, but it's something that I'm glad I actually managed
to get right. The next picture, however, is probably the best one of
the roll.
This is probably the best picture from the roll. The lighting was a
bit harsh, but this still turned out well. Shooting at 1/60th
(I think) was enough to get slight motion blur in the wheels, just
enough that you can tell it's rolling under speed, yet the rest of the
car is totally sharp. I don't remember if it was 1/125 or 1/60 though,
so the next event will be a little bit more experimentation, I'm
afraid.
Even so, I finally have the confidence to take pictures of racing and
know that I can get them to look the way I want them to instead of
looking like pictures that anyone with a $30 throw-away camera could
have taken. The Nikon should allow me to refine the shots even further,
and from there, I can start playing with all my filters for special
effects. Now it's starting to seem fun again.
Yep, here's another pictures of that M3 again. This was like the top
one. I had to scan a very small portion of the original photograph
at 300dpi, instead of being able to scan the whole photograph at 150dpi
just to get the car to appear to be a normal size. As such, some
detail is lost in the process. Still, because I like this car so much,
the photo's here anyway. Notice the whifs of tiresmoke from behind
the rear tires.
Alright, as usual, by the time I start reaching the bottom half of the
page, I don't have a whole lot of anything to say. What we've got here
though is a Camaro Z28 piloted by Tucson guy Wiggy Greacen. If ever
there was a shot I'm positive was at 1/60th of a second, it's this one.
There's simply so much motion blur in the nice chrome wheels that it
had to be at 1/60. I just kind of wish there would have been a better
place on the track to shoot pictures from that this perspective.
Hey, it's a Porsche 928. Well, that's kind of it. Like I said above,
I wasn't taking pictures from the best location, and actually, I hardly
had any time to really take any pictures anyway. Ok, in the future,
I'll be able to do much better than this.
Well, this is the last picture I had time to get. It's a Firebird,
as you can see, and it probably would have photographed better if I'd
had a little more time and a few more runs to take pictures instead of
picking up cones and losing races and stuff. Oh well. Stay tuned for
the next season, starting some time in February or so.
Page Created: 1-15-99
All pictures and text Copyright 1999 Brandon Smith.
Commercial reproduction without express written consent of the author is prohibited.
Back to Autocrossing.com
Since this whole race was down at the Tucson site, I didn't really get
anyone's names, and no newsletter was ever mailed to me with the results.
Thus, I have no idea who's driving this car, nor do I have any clue as
to what year it is. My guess is that it's a 73-84 vintage Porsche 911.
At any rate, it was mighty fast out on the asphalt.
This shot is a scanned enlargement of the original picture I took,
which is of a supercharged BMW M3. I don't know exactly host much power
this thing generates with the blower, but it's a whole lot. This was
easily one of the fastest street cars at the event. My guess is that
if it's the Dinan kit, it's making about 100hp more than stock for a
total of 340hp. That's a lot for such a light-weight car. As such,
this was one of most fun cars to watch.
