More on motorsports photography

I attended the AMA Superbike Championship weekend at Laguna Seca to see Ben Spies edge out Mat Mladin for his second title in a row. Great racing, and great fun taking pictures!

The first thing that went my way this weekend was the parking situation, which I mention because it had a big affect on my photography. I approached Laguna Seca from the east this time, having driven down 101 instead of Highway 1. I entered at the main gate, which for the MotoGP event was reserved for special parking access. The AMA event was even lower attendance that the recent Historic Races, based on the number of cars parking on the interior of the track at least, which means the track felt like a ghost town compared to MotoGP weekend. I was directed to the lakebed parking area, or so I thought. I kept getting pointed closer and closer to the vendor area for some reason, and when I’d driven almost to the south end of the bridge between Turn 3 and Turn 4, I was told to park right there! It was fantastic having my truck so close. It was very convenient to be able to get to my laptop, snacks, etc without having to hike up to the Purple parking area at the top of the west hill area.

One of my previous tips to myself was to bring my laptop, and this turned out to be a great benefit, especially since my truck was so close and parked right by some marshals, so I didn’t worry much about someone breaking into the truck. Not only was it very helpful to be able to look at photos on a screen larger than the one on the back of my camera, but I was able to transfer pictures from memory cards to free up more space. This more or less removed any concern about running out of memory card space on track. When you’re shooting in burst mode, those cards fill up quickly.



Out on the track, I found again that upping my shutter speed when trying to get sharp shots of fast bikes makes a huge difference. I try to stay at least 1/1000 of a sec, even if I have to boost ISO, and the percentage of truly clear shots I’m getting has risen dramatically. I shot most of the on track shots with my friend Derek’s 100-400mm lens, and the more I use it the more I love it. I’m getting much better results with this lens than I did with the monster, but to be fair, I should really rent the 300mm f/2.8 again and try it for comparison, as my skills and experience have come a long way since July.

The main thing, at least when shooting at 8.1 megapixels, is still to fill the frame with the subject so that you needn’t crop too much. This makes getting the image much harder, though, when shooting a fast object like a racing motorcycle. But as further proof that video gaming helps in life, I had a breakthrough this weekend, especially with my panning shots. At some point while standing on the hill inside Turn 6, trying to track the bikes at a fast turn, I noticed that looking through the viewfinder, trying to keep the center focus point on the back of the passing rider, I was doing something quite similar to aiming in shooting games on Xbox Live. Suddenly I had quite a bit of experience in that frame of mind, and could really concentrate on that. This allowed me to zoom in a bit tighter and fill the frame even more with the bike. I still missed a lot, just as I do in video games, but I was hitting my target much more often, and when I got it right, the photos look much better than anything I’ve done yet.

That’s all for today, but before I go, I'd like to thank my wife and daughter for letting me go to the track again, to my dad and his girlfriend for letting me stay at their place Saturday night, and to Derek for the continued use of his fantastic Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L lens!

Caveat Emptor Ebay

In the market for a second battery for my Canon 30D, I happened across an article in the September 2007 Popular Photography about counterfeit camera items. According to the article, not only are most of the batteries, memory cards, and ink cartridges sold on ebay are counterfeit, but some sources of these fake items represent “a significant tributary of funding for terrorism.” Huh? Now Al Qaeda is buying weapons with money we send them in exchange for fake camera batteries?

Yes indeed, according to the Department of Homeland Security and the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center via Pop Photo.

That tastes a bit salty to me, but there are certainly other, more verifiable reasons to make sure you’re buying genuine equipment for your cameras and printers. Imagine that your new ebay bargain battery works fine until you smell smoke coming from your camera and find it’s a molten write off? Or your new 4-gig compact flash card for some reason only holds 2 gigs of data? Or worse, the new card stops working just as you take the shot that will finally get you on the cover of National Geographic?

Canon buys samples of their own goods on ebay to test for authenticity and found that: “Sixteen of the 29 batteries [Canon] bought in the first six months were fakes.” Ebay’s own resources section has tips on how to spot fake items, from small differences in the molding to the more obvious lack of a serial number printed on the item. Of course, by the time you have the item to inspect for fakery, the scammer has your money.

Apparently the Midnight Run is largely to thank for this overabundance of fake stuff we want. Imagine that you operate a production line somewhere in Asia making memory cards. One day a week your supervisor goes home a bit earlier than usual, so you have your friend meet you at the back of the plant with his van at midnight, by which time you’ve rushed through several cases of 1 gig cards sporting 2 gig labels, and you haven’t been as conscientious as you are when your product will have to go through the company’s quality control. You’re working for speed and quick profit on the gray market. Your goods are ‘genuine’ in that they come from the real factory. But they aren’t the real deal. Not that the cousin who’s going to unload them on ebay for a great price and huge profit for you is going to care. And not that the sucker who thinks he got a great deal on ebay is going to come looking for you.

There are opportunities to get deal and save money, but I’m not going to shop for my new battery on ebay.