Dazecoop – Blog of David Cooper – Photography, Videography, Drifting & modifying cars

I processed a few more photos I took at the Autosport International show 2007 last night and I think they turned out pretty good.

These photos were taken at the Live Action Arena, which was included as part of the price. The action was just superb, although I think that the track was defiantly too small to show the cars full potential. Of course, this can’t be avoided since the arena itself is massive, but just not big enough! The cars on show were just awesome, and I especially enjoyed watching the drift cars, rally cars and the Mini vs saloon race.

The Mini above started the race at the back, and was against cars such as the Mk1 and Mk2 Escort, Ford Capri and other various British beef. After five or six laps the Mini finished 3rd place, with about 10 cars in total which was really impressive. Of course the larger cars had the edge down the straights, but round the corners, as always, the Mini was taking pride place. Brilliant fun to watch.

The shooting conditions for me were very difficult indeed. I could not use the flash since we were behind a fence and I don’t think the flash would have reached as far as the cars anyway. I used ISO1600 with my Canon 70-200mm f4 L lens on full-manual mode on the camera. At first, I was using Aperture Priority mode set at f4 to ensure that the maximum amount of light was coming into the camera, but the shutter speeds just were not fast enough. In the end I used full manual control to set the shutter speed to about 1/60th and the aperture to f4 which made a dark, but acceptable photo for most shots.

While processing them I found that even though some of them were quite dark, they could still be altered and the exposure/brightness adjusted to compensate for the dark lighting conditions to make an acceptable photo, thanks to RAW processing and Photoshop. Something to bear in mind in the future.