AMOC, Donington 28 June 2015

[grantp]

This meeting seemed to have slipped under the radar here.

An interesting day. The paddock was far from heaving which was great for viewing things.

A nice mix of races too and as a few of them were firmly in JT territory I thought I would proffer a few photos.

[grantp]

Part 2

[grantp]

Part 3

[John Turner]

Yes, some lovely cars there, Grant, some of which do indeed also run with FISCAR.

[skentellytubby]

Amazing photos Grant. Love them.

[grantp]

Originally Posted by skentellytubby

Amazing photos Grant. Love them.

Thanks!

I'm still working through them and finding the best way to process them. All manual controls and shot through the debris fence which influences the "look".

The down side is that having set up the camera at the far end of the circuit ... that's how it is. Not much variation. Sorry.

But I do like the location and have used it for years.

It's a great place to go to meat people as well. Usually several who are hoping to walk all around the track and find that they can't ...

And sometimes, very unexpectedly, random Tenthers turn up, unrecognised on the basis that .... well who would have expected them to turn up entirely out side any possible context?

The last one was NickJM. I thought for a moment I was hallucinating.

[skentellytubby]

Oh he appears in the most unexpected places. One wonders if he himself knows he's going to be there ...!

[grantp]

Originally Posted by skentellytubby

Oh he appears in the most unexpected places. One wonders if he himself knows he's going to be there ...!

Ah! That explains it ....

It was the presence of the bike that threw me.

It's a long way from Bucks.

The only person I know who could achieve that is my neighbour who, at 70yo, thinks nothing of a 90 mile ride in a day - sometimes more than 90 miles.

I blame him for lack of decent road infrastructure development in the past 2 decades or so.

[Moosehead]

Thought I saw you from a distance Grant. I was there, spannering a Mustang. Can't say I was impressed with Intermarque driving standards!

[grantp]

Originally Posted by Moosehead

Thought I saw you from a distance Grant. I was there, spannering a Mustang. Can't say I was impressed with Intermarque driving standards!

Ah, missed you then but were you at Donington earlier in the month too?

Thought I saw you but I was just chatting to someone as you passed nearby and having finished the sentence you, if it was you, were gone.

Intermarque was a little interesting at times. And the gravel shot I posted above was from an earlier race and was the third or fourth "excitement" for that car that I had observed from my position at Coppice. Still only half way through the race at the time! Who knows what might have been happening at other parts of the circuit.

2 spins heading into the esses, one recovered excursion at Coppice and finally a deep embedding in the gravel requiring deployment of the snatch tractor.

To be fair at the end of the race the driver had the courtesy to drive back slowly off the racing tarmac thus avoiding the need to to remove what must have been a huge amount of gravel from the surface.

White Mustang with blue stripes? I think that was in the Intermarque race - I haven't got around to working out which shots were which race yet.

[brands]

Lovely cars and shots.
I wandered up to that corner for the Masters 4 hour meeting in the morning but didn't shoot any photos that good. Is the corner better in the afternoon ?

[grantp]

Originally Posted by brands

Lovely cars and shots.
I wandered up to that corner for the Masters 4 hour meeting in the morning but didn't shoot any photos that good. Is the corner better in the afternoon ?

Hi John,

Many thanks for the kind words.

In general it's not bad most of the day depending on the time of year.

The sun is mostly behind you whereas with many of the other accessible locations at Donington it isn't (unless the GP loop is in use).

Mid-summerish it starts off right off to the right and finishes pointing down the straight to the left.

If one is trackside there are quite a wide spread of positions that offer an almost "over the apex kerbing" shot - partly because in the non-pro races the "apex" point can be variable.

If one is on the plebian's side of the fence, as I was for these, a very long lens is handy since one can't get right up to the primary debris fencing.

My typical 70-200 f2.8 with a 2x extender can be set to AF through the fencing but the results tend show the fencing pattern as a large blurred cross hatch as you might expect. That may or may not be a problem to reduce - at least the fencing is weathered so the effect is somewhat subdued provided the sun is not too strong at the time of the shot.

If one is prepared to go for a low hit rate it is possible, with care and preferably a crop body, to line up the lens so that the centre points through a hole on the mesh and therefore the centre of the image is entirely free of fence effect. But it's usually a bit of a frustrating exercise and requires a tripod for any level of consistency.

These shots were all taken with a Canon 600D and an old FD mount fully manual 600mm (f4.5-5.4) lens using an adapter. The nominal 35mm "full frame" equivalent length would be 800mm but with the adapter it's probably nudging 1000mm.

Mounted on a tripod and pointing right over the inner low fencing the front of the lens is probably about 2 or 3 feet from the main debris fence when working at an angle that gives alignment with the "apex". At that distance and with the lens wide open the fence almost disappears, just acting like a pale grey 'mist' filter if the sun is bright. That, along with a tendency for purple fringing to be visible, can be processed out to a reasonable degree in most cases.

As you will have noticed the images don't vary subject position much and that can be somewhat boring. However with manual focus involved and a depth of field that, with the lens wide open, is about 1 car length at best at that distance it's extremely tricky to do anything except set the focus and wait for the subjects to arrive where you want them to be. Then hit the button at the right moment or near enough the right moment to get the shutter to work at the optimum focus point.

The "gravel" shot is part of a sequence where by luck I managed to get the focus adjusted as the off track excursion developed so that 4 or 5 shots as the car was parallel to me came into focus. The first 4 shots in the sequence are not usable.The one Iposted is a full frame. No cropping involved. The car is about 1 car width into the gravel at that point - so still some distance away.

The other limitation of the long prime lens is that a close subject will be difficult to frame well into a meaningful subject although headshots can be successful. Minimum focus distance is 21ft.

One other point about the location is that the background concrete wall seems to have been daubed with blue and white paint at some time. For images where that is thrown out of focus by a wide open long lens it becomes sort of vaguely visually interesting in that it is different to the normal industrial background that is typical of so many circuits. It's no Cadwell or Croft but does have a little character to offer.

I do miss the days when Donington had trees.

Finally its worth mentioning that this is a lens that is pretty much impossible to use well without a tripod - or at least something to rest it on.

Nor would I consider carrying it around a circuit. It stays in the car and is only used if I can the car to or very close to the point of use. A younger, fitter and wealthier person might buy the modern version and get far better results more consistently but I rather enjoy the challenge especially when it all comes together once in a while.

For reference I usually head all the way round to the Christian Devereux memorial location to get my preferred angle onto the apex.

3 more with the big lens and 3 panning shots with the 1D3 and 70-200 + 2x extender.

[Moosehead]

Yes Grant, the white fastback with blue stripes.

I think I've only been once recently.............was there for the historic festival too but just spectating...........err, when was that? May? Must be getting old, can't remember where I've been!!

[brands]

Grant, thank you for your time and information.
I only had a 300mm lens to play with and no TC.
When I'm next visiting the circuit I will pack a TC and see what results I can obtain.

[Nick JM]

Originally Posted by skentellytubby

Oh he appears in the most unexpected places. One wonders if he himself knows he's going to be there ...!

Boing...

Zebedee suddenly appeared

[grantp]

Originally Posted by brands

Grant, thank you for your time and information.
I only had a 300mm lens to play with and no TC.
When I'm next visiting the circuit I will pack a TC and see what results I can obtain.

Once upon a time at Donington there were plenty of places where you you get right up to the fences and shoot through with little difficulty. But when the secondary fences and barriers were installed that became impossible, notably at the very popular Redgate corner where the crowd barrier is a long way back from the fences to allow the recovery tractor to pass through and return to station if it has been deployed in the race.

At the moment, with a 300mm lens available, you have some viability on the inside of the circuit at Redgate, some locations down the hill to Craner Curves and a little at the bottom of Craner curves.

The inside of Robert's esses is, afaik, still an option although I have not used it for a while.

If the full GP circuit is in use there are a few additional options around the loop section. The paddock "viewing" area next to the Petrol Station is probably the best of them but usually busy with spectators.

The downside of some of these infield locations is that are mostly south(ish) facing so when the light is good you are fighting the sun.

There are seemingly strong rumours that the infield will be ready for next year but right now It's not clear to me what positions that might bring to the party.

Quite a lot of work has been done on the outside access road for the new tunnel. That's promising but I couldn't see much evidence of any useful spectator access via the tunnel at the moment. It is possible that keeping vehicles and cars apart is intended or simply that whatever might be done is not yet ready for preparation.

Several more millions spent this year so far I was told, much of it on the Events Centre. And more to be invested in the infield developments soon.

What they may or may not add or detract from the photographic POV remains to be seen.

[gary396]

Some very good images there Grant, nice work.

Ref infield - I do hope that it gets sorted, it's really distracted from Donington these last few years. Appreciate it can't all be done at once but is dragging on a bit.

[grantp]

Originally Posted by gary396

Some very good images there Grant, nice work.

Ref infield - I do hope that it gets sorted, it's really distracted from Donington these last few years. Appreciate it can't all be done at once but is dragging on a bit.

Thanks Gary.

Donington is beginning to look serious again. Significant work has gone into the entrance of the new tunnel in the past 2 weeks. The infield is now nearly all green rather than brown.

I think that had the MotoGP gig gone ahead we would have seen the infield open for it and the tunnel access operating - but without that impetus (and funding?) it may well have been very sensible to plan for next year and allow all of the groundworks to settle some more before it gets a lot of traffic.

From what I can work out there is quite a lot of work expected over the next off-season. If that is the case then 2016 could be a great year and perhaps 2017 even better.