Photography Bay

Digital Camera News, Reviews and Tips

 

2007 WERA Grand National Finals

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The 2007 WERA Grand National Finals were held at Road Atlanta on October 13. I took a trip down there with my cousin Joe, who’s an avid motorcycle enthusiast. This was my second year of watching and shooting the WERA GNF. I took my trusty Canon Rebel XT and Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8. While this setup performed quite well at Road Atlanta, due to the track setup, I could’ve used a longer lens and/or more megapixels. 200mm wasn’t quite long enough to reach out on some of the corners. I would like to have had a EF 100-400mm L or something longer to really get in tight. Unfortunately, those weren’t an option for me and I was limited to cropping in on some of those shots that were way out there, which is where more megapixels could’ve come in handy.

That said, here’s a few of my keepers from the day:

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Race start coming out of Turn 1.

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Close in on Turn 1.

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More from Turn 1. Seeing a pattern here? Turn one was the one place that I really had close access to and the light was on the face of the riders coming at me.

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Coming out of a deep lean on Turn 1.

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Showing off a bit out of Turn 10B.

If you dig these, you can see more on my Smugmug page. Also, you can check out Steve Beck’s photos from Road Atlanta. I met Steve at Road Atlanta this year. He had a great setup for shooting bikes at Road Atlanta – Canon 1D Mark III and a 500mm f/4 L, which enabled him to really get in tight.

Canon 40D Ad – “Coming this fall.”

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Another image of the Canon 40D has surfaced. This time in the form of an ad bearing the caption “Coming this fall.” This is supposed to appear as an ad in Shutterbug soon. (via POTN forums)

Keep up to date on the Canon 40D here.

UPDATE 8/15/07: I emailed the editor of Shutterbug yesterday re: this ad. He says to regard it as bogus attribution and that “all our production team are women.” The significance in that factoid is that the original poster of the ad (on the POTN forums mentioned above) said that his “man” at Shutterbug emailed the image to him. . . . Your guess is as good as mine, but I thought I’d just pass along the info.

[tags]canon, eos, 40d, dslr, rumor, fall, news, release[/tags]

Fast Bikes, Low Light and Fog

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Makin’ the Gap

Originally uploaded by hawridger.


Here’s another shot from the 2007 NORBA Showdown at Sugar. This particular shot comes from part of the downhill course where there riders clear roughly a 10′ gap over a creek. Needless to say, they’re moving on at this point. That’s where my problem arose though.

Thankfully, it didn’t rain (much) at the race or I probably would have packed up my Canon Rebel XT and headed home. However, the conditions were less than ideal for shooting action shots. It was plenty overcast, this part of the course was complete under cover of trees, and it was rather foggy at times due to the elevation.

I think I would have felt fine without the fog; however, the fog really caused some lighting issues that I didn’t know how to resolve on-site. This left me with several photos that seemed washed out – like a white film over the whole image due to the moisture particles reflecting the flash. The only solution that I could come up with was in Lightroom – and this is where shooting RAW, I think, saved my butt. I was able to boost contrast and blacks enough to resolve the fog issue on the image for most shots so that they are now usable.

All of the photos at this creek jump has some fog in them (see gallery). Some more than others. I am satisfied with the post-processing results; however, I’d like to know what some of you guys (and gals) think about my lighting quagmire on-site. Is there a better solution for shooting in fog with my setup (particularly, you strobist wizards)? If not, is there something else that I need in order to be prepared for these conditions?

My setup: Canon Rebel XT, 18-55 Kit Lens for wides & Sigma 70-200 f/2.8; EX 420 Speedlight.

My settings: Shutter priority — Wides – roughly 1/60s to 1/125s with panning — Zooms – 1/200s minimum; ISO 400 (I really don’t like the grain above 400)

[tags]photography, lighting, fog, cycling, bike, mountain, biking, downhill, jump, strobist, canon, sigma, flash, how to[/tags]

Head of the Pack

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Head of the Pack

Originally uploaded by hawridger.


Here’s a shot I took with my Canon Rebel XT and Sigma 70-200 f/2.8 at the NORBA Showdown at Sugar on Sunday, June 29, 2007. This is Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski (aka, JHK) of Subaru-Gary Fisher) at the front of the pack. He went on to win this short track cross-country race with a killer final descent pass after Todd Wells attacked on the climb. If you’re interested, you can get the whole scoop on Velonews.

If you haven’t guessed already, I really dig cycling. So, give me a camera and a bike race and I’m in heaven. This is my second year spectating/shooting at the NORBA Showdown at Sugar. While I caught the pros this year, there was a lot more racing and wrecking going on last year when I attended on Saturday.

For me, cycling is a great spectator sport because of the access opportunities that you get. I generally can’t go up to guys at, say, a pro football game and shoot the breeze with them after a quarter. With cycling, be it road, mountain , downhill or whatever, I can usually get a pro rider to spare a few seconds to pose for some pictures or an autograph. Similarly, the course is extremely spectator/photographer-friendly. I’ve really got my choice of where to shoot from at most venues.

You can check out some more of my cycling pics here on smugmug and here on flickr.

[tags]photos, cycling, mountain biking, jhk, Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski, gary fisher, subaru, climbing, canon, sigma, 70-200[/tags]