British Superbikes (Oulton Park) 2nd May 2011

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On Monday the 2nd May 2011 I was lucky enough to go to the British Superbike Championship at Oulton Park in Cheshire. 

Having never been to anything like this before it represented something new and exciting. It also represented something challenging from a photography point of view. I've never really done any type of action photography and I'm not exactly set up for it but you have to make the best of what you've got and enjoy yourself. 

John Hopkins

When we arrived at Oulton Park the first thing that struck me was how big the place was and also how many people were there. 

We decided to attend the Pit Walk so I attached my trusty Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 and try to get some images of the riders in the Pit Area. Although the Pit Lane was busy the riders were only to pleased to sign autographs and pose for photos as were the models that were stood with them.

All too soon it was time to find a vantage point before the start of the first race. Sitting down on the grass bank I began to get an idea of just how far away from the track we were. I attached my Sigma 70-300mm f4 and got ready to take my first pictures of the race. 

I'd seen motorcycle racing on the TV but it's not until you're actually there that you get an appreciation of just how fast these things are travelling. More to the point, you realise how quickly they pass through your viewfinder. I realised that if I was going to stand any chance of getting some usable shots I needed to be running a high shutter speed which, with the limitations of my lens, meant running with a high ISO. 

I put the camera on to Auto-ISO so that I could concentrate on the shutter speed and the action. We tried several vantage points around the track. Some gave better results than others. I shot over 200 images and ended up with about 60 usable ones that I've posted on the British Superbikes page in my gallery at photoshop.com.

I learnt a lot of valuable lessons from my visit to Oulton Park but sadly I had to delete a lot of images of empty track and safety barriers. Those bikes really do move fast !!!

Next time, macro photography using flash and coloured gels. 

Cheers for now, Chris

Wiggle Enduro 6 hour Mountain Bike Race

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Race start

On the 1st of May 2011 my son Ben and I went over to Catton Park near Swadlincote, Derbyshire to watch the competitors in the Wiggle Enduro 6 Mountain Bike race. The race is an ideal place to take photographs with lots of opportunity for trying different lenses, exposure settings and, of course, techniques. 

As the name suggests this is a race lasting six hours through the grounds of Catton Park. The terrain consists of uphill and downhill sections including forrest paths, dusty trails and a very tight snaking section which exits uphill causing the most experienced rider a headache. Finding good locations and vantage points is the key to photographing this event.  

Passing By

Although the cyclists are not always moving quickly they are always moving.  To keep the riders in focus I used continuous servo focussing combined with a mid-aperture such as f5.6 and a fairly high shutter speed to freeze the motion such as 1/500th sec. I kept the camera in manual mode for the most part and switched to auto-iso so that the camera automatically adjusted the iso to suit the exposure settings. This occasionally led to high iso settings but allowed me to capture the action. It's a trade off but worth it. 

On Track

On some of the brighter sections I changed from my Tamron 17-50mm to my Sigma 70-300mm which let me get a closer to the action and enabled me to capture some more unusual shots such at this close up of one  rider passing through one of the dustier parts of the course.

After downloading the images to the computer it was a good hour spent cleaning the camera and lenses before traveling to Oulton Park on the 2nd of May to photograph the British Superbike Racing. More of that race in the next blog post. 

As always I took a loads of images which I've posted on a page in my gallery at Photoshop.com called  Wiggle Enduro 6.     Please click the link to view them.

See you next time.