Nissan Micra Cup - Calabogie Motorsports Park
May 30, 2016Greetings everyone and welcome on my blog. As an aspiring photographer, my goal with this blog will be to share with you the knowledge I’ve learn over the past few years and also to share some mistakes I did along the way.
Over the post, ill go over some technical aspect of my equipment, either good or bad and in order for me to not repeat myself all the time, here’s a list of some of the gear I used for this event.
- Nikon D600
- Nikkor 70-200 f2.8
- Nikkor 24-70 f2.8
Two weeks ago I went to the Calabogie Motorsports Park with one of my friend Marc-André Gauthier (let’s call him Marc) a car journalist for The Car Guide (Le Guide de l’auto), the most reputed book for car enthusiasts in Quebec, Canada. The goal of the weekend was to cover the Nissan Micra Cup and their first event of the season. After a two hour and a half drive at 4:30 in the morning, we were finally there, ready to shoot the qualifications and later on the first of two races.
Saturday’s qualification
The weather, as expected, wasn’t really good with some small rain reducing the visibility of the drivers and making the track slippery. Hopefully the rain would have stopped for the main event simply because it is annoying to photographe in this weather… you know… the kind of rain where it’s just annoying but not strong enough to keep you indoor. It also was a beautiful 15 degree celsius making it ideal for me to wear shorts. Here’s a picture of myself, rocking the umbrella for the beauty of the shot (The umbrella wasn’t necessary).
It’s actually after a bit of scouting that I noticed that these turns, the #17 and #18 to be more precise, were a really good spot to have multiple angles on the vehicles. It’s actually an hill that leads to the parking lot and makes it perfect for spectators to look at the race. As seen on the picture of me, I was standing on the lower part of the hill, yet, not at the height of the cars creating that small angle as you can see on those pictures following. Since I was looking at the side of the cars from my position, I decided to do some rolling shots with my biggest zoom, my trusty Nikkor 70-200mm f2.8. Not only does it focus really fast, but it gave me the ability to zoom in and tight the shots.
One of the problem I encountered, while shooting from this location, was the turn. In order to have some clean race rolling shot with a full focused car, you would first of all get a small aperture (larger f-stop), a slow shutter speed and then you would try to have the car facing sideways from your location. If you don’t, you may end up with this kind of result where the front of the car is out of focus. I also have a bit of struggle with my camera since it is set to 5.5 frame per second. Note that I wouldn’t trade my sensor for more speed (fps)! A good lens will land you those sharp and focused images after some try. Remember, it’s all about practice and getting the feeling of the cars in the section in which you’re shooting from.
So I wasn’t a huge fan of this shooting location since I wasn’t able to capture enough water coming out of the back of the car, so I decided to get to turn #2 on the opposite side of my current location and get some great side shots of the cars.
After a while, you get used to your camera screen and you’re able to tell if the picture will be sharp of or not. Although, you may have some surprises while looking at them on the computer screen. Here’s a 1:1 zoom on 2 images from the same series of shot.
I like to fixe myself some standards and if the pictures are not meeting them then I will not use the picture at all. It’s also a good motivation to push myself every time and not being lazy!
Saturday’s race :
Qualifications were done and we were waiting for the main event while constantly looking for updates on the weather. How awesome! We had some clearance for the race! I adjusted my iso in order to keep the same setting I used for the qualifications and decided to get to a new shooting area where I could have some flat ground right before turn #16. Since I was really close to the race track, I had to put own my safety vest so I could be spotted appropriately.
Mid race, I moved to the hill I talked to you before and decided to see what I could get from there since I had enough of those rolling shot. Well, it turned out to be a good bet!
The race turned out to be pretty straight forward and that concluded our saturday at the track. Quick edit and writing from Marc for The Car Guide’s website and we were off for a good supper.
Sunday’s event :
The next day, the weather was terribly cold and no one was expecting that. I wish I had my winter coat… Since the qualifications would give me pretty much the same pictures, we decided to only cover the race and then head back home. My first concern was to get different pictures since rolling shots can be really repetitive during a race and this is why I though about getting back to the #16 and #17 turns where a lot of options were available for me. One my other concern is that I wanted to get more than one car in the frame and since the cars were not close enough during the race itself, I decided to move to turn #2 where I would have a great view on the first turn and all of the pilots lined up right after the start of the race.
Getting the picture of a car from the front mean that you need a quicker shutter speed in order to freeze the moment and have sharpness. Although, if you can see the wheel, even just a little bit, it will feel weird just to have the wheels not moving. This is why I used a quicker shutter speed, yet, not extremely fast. When the cars got on the track they took a turn with the safety car in order to get ready for the start. At this time, I was able to test and set my shutter speed for the upcoming first turn of the race. Then the unexpected happen.
Those pictures are all crops since I was pretty far away from the scene and wasn’t expecting this turn of event. Thanks to the 24.3 MPX and the full frame sensor of the D600, I was able to get real tight on the mistake. I was pretty lucky to be at this exact place at this exact time. So I guess photography is sometime about how lucky you are! The race ended up without any other intermission and we headed back home with a great story to tell.
In the end, any race is always enjoyable even if it’s not the best car out there. You get to understand that racing is not just about what you’ve got under the hood and it’s a lot about how the driver can handle the car and the paste of the race. As you can see, a small mistake can change everything and this is why I give credit to anyone participating in those kind of events. I really enjoyed seeing those (now 2 years old) cars battling after a long winter (actually a small one this year) and not giving an inch to the others. The Nissan Micra Cup will probably be really interesting!
And that’s it for that first blog post!
If you want to see the full story and all the picture head over here : http://www.guideautoweb.com/articles/38191/coupe-nissan-micra-2016-coupal-remporte-une-course-marquee…/