First time out with the 30D

I'm a big fan of the Formula 1 Racing series. (now you know). I have followed F1 since the middle of 2006, and have been following it closely till now. (Yes even in the off season).

Now i know thats not long to call me a Big fan, but hey, i embrace the technical side of the series, especially in the area of aerodynamics. Ever since i was young i have had a thing for machines (no not the fresh thing), particularly machines that have to do with aerodynamics.

First it was trains, i remember how i always wondered why the mrt were flat faced and not areodynamically efficient. Then onto cars, planes, then now this.

I love the aerodynamic components whos gentle, eye pleasing curves carefully pushes the air around a vehicle so that it slices through the air, not just barrel through it. Furthermore, it achieves this aerodynamic efficiency while also portraying beauty at the same time.

Well that is, until 2009.

Due to a regulation change in F1, the cars look...ugh
ahhh.. ill just bitch about it in another post.

Anyway, back on topic.

As you know, F1 came to singapore during october. I was phyced for it, grabbing walkabout tickets.

As the day drew closer, i somehow got interested in photography. So I had some discussion with my mom and with the help of Clement,(classmate which is also into photography), decided to get a DSLR.(camera)

I eventually got a Canon 30D from a camera shop in funan and an expensive lens to go with it.

It cost a painful $2000. And i paid in cash.

$2000 in $50 notes is thick enough to prevent you from folding your wallet... mmm.. fun fact

Fun, until you part with that neat bundle and hand it over the counter.

Yup, so i got the 30D on the day right before F1. That was on Thursday.

As for Friday, Clement and I skipped school for no good reason other than to sleep. (of course, the "reason" was because we were going to watch F1, but the session starts at a good 6+pm). We met somewhere i cant remember and entered the circuit at around 3pm.

First pictures i took at the circuit were these:


Picture of 2 Safety cars Practicing
(again, the preview sucks, click on the picture to view the proper thing)

The composition of the shot wasnt great, its a boring picture to me. But still, as first shots i was quite happy with it. Notice i was focusing on the fence though, i was using autofocus...

Well then we walked about for quite a while, tried to get over to the other side of the road but had to walk very far just to find a crossing bridge. Complicating the task further i had to find my uncle in the mess...

While doing all that, i took more average pictures, though one has some composition in it:
i overexposed the sky on this one, too bad tho. At that time i did not know what was Bracketing..
with that i could have properly exposed the sky, leading to a better looking pictures.

By the way, most of my pictures are cropped or resized, and their quality reduced slightly. I aim to upload pictures below 500kb so that the blog loads faster. Exceptions are when the picture is really nice, i just might upload the huge file (talking about 8+mb size)

I found my uncle, and we (clement, my uncle and me) went to turn 14 of the circuit, where i thought was the best place to watch F1. It is just outside the esplanade, where i took more photos:
Lower quality image again..

Another one,cropped and resized.

Yup, then the support races starts and it was pretty darn loud. Yes, even i welcome earplugs, considering i loved the engine sounds. First to go was the BMW fsomething cup or something, with the cars looking like A1GP cars, or the old F1 cars (1999 era). Then the aston martins, then the porches.

Did not have good pictures of the BMW cup race cuz i was constantly focused on the fence..

Then the Astons:

Yes the fence is irritating, Cropped..Cropped a lot due to ugly fence and lack of telephoto lens.

more astons..

Here with my uncle, thanks to clement for helping take this photo.

Maybe i should stop using blogspot to upload photos, they preview like crap...

anyways, then the porches:


Cropped

Cropped

End of session, tho looks as if they are racing..



Managed a few pictures of BMW Cup later in the afternoon..and its getting dark.(grainy pictures)Beautiful sky, unfortunate for the dead tree to be in the shot though. Earlier in the afternoon, picture of the people around us..(and no.. thats not clement in the picture.. too old don't u think)


As the sky got darker, the photographing got more and more difficult. Aggravating the issue was that the cars got faster and faster. I was already shooting the earlier cars at a shutter speed of 1/2500 sec to prevent blur, and had to bump it up to 1/5000sec to capture the F1 cars.

Mind you, we were situated about 100m from a tight corner, and yet the cars were still travelling too fast. To tell u how far, consider this, i had to press the button of my camera just before the car enters the viewfinder. Considering that DSLRs has a really small lag between pressing the button and the camera taking the shot, and considering that the cars were already slowing down for the corner, that was still really fast.

Notheless i manage to get pictures of the cars, though sacrificing shutter speed for noise(Grainyness of the picture). First few pictures were out of focus, as the view finder was small and it was hard to find a proper focus.


Redbull car with sparks at the back..
BMW...The red glow of the brakes..The lighted buildings..

Then inbetween the 2 practice sessions we changed position to get better pictures.



















Most of the pictures are cropped and slightly lower quality, again the preview sucks so click on the picture to get the full picture.

Anyway, it was a good first day out with my Canon 30D, learnt quite alot about the different modes in a day, also learnt that focus is really hard to achieve on the small, dark view finders of DSLRs. And also, post processing photos is a pain in the ass, i ended up with 400++ photos of the cars..


Well thats it for this post, and yes, i still have not gotten the bintan trip photos, so more past events post next..