Ok, thanks for that. The only reason I questioned it was because there are a lot of learning photographers on here and I'd hate for them to think that you need a lot of expensive equipment to get great shots. A loooooong time ago I saw piece on TV about an elderly woman that only took landscapes using a Kodak Instamatic camera which is about as cheap and primitive as you could get back then. She had some amazing work she was showing in a gallery and her thought and purpose was to show that it really comes down to the person behind the lens and not what they are holding. That made an impression on me back then and I feel it still holds true today.
It does still hold true - up to a point. There's a rather arrogant photographer who says "it's not the sword it's the swordsman" or some nonsense like that. He's right - up to a point. Any DSLR will do the job - except it won't when you want to be able to shoot 15 frames in a row with no pause or you want to shoot after dark or a few other scenarios. Then you get into the pixel-peeping and the Nikon has X % better resolution and dual-sensors and crop vs. full frame and it just never stops. Before you know it you're $20K into it and you still don't like your results because you never developed any skills.
Great race, and here are a few thoughts: 1) Sorry Ferrari owners, but the new 488 was not impressive and never really in the hunt for class wins. I have no idea why, but others have guessed that the chassis is out-of-date; maybe so. Another reason may be that Townsend Bell defected to Lambo. 2) Early Sunday am, the Ford GT had fastest lap in its class. This is astonishing, for its performance was worse than the 488's. The cars looked great but had new car troubles and a lack of front-runner speed. They sounded horrible coming out of either horseshoe as if they were bumping off the rev limiter of there was traction control limiting them from putting down power. 3) The Delta Wing was astonishing & really dominated the 1st 3 hrs. Legge went from 11th to 1st with relative ease & then climbed back from 6th when she stalled leaving the pits. Don't forget that after the Roar the DW got a weight penalty and a restrictor on the air intake. One of the DW drivers told me (and, no, I'm not saying who) that IMSA doesn't want the DW to do well because of politics. (Maybe because it's the Panoz team?) BTW, the DW has finished well in at least 2 of the 10 hr Petite LeMans races. 4) If there are two nicer and more fan-friendly drivers that Simon Pagenaud and Ryan Hunter-Rhey, please let me know. Many pics to follow! I have enjoyed those posted thus far, and I join others in saying that I completely disagree that 100,000 worth of crap is needed to take excellent pics. I think it's a case of "mine's bigger"!
It seemed like everyone in GTLM held the lead at some point in the race, even the Fords. I have gone back through some of the coverage that IMSA posted on YouTube and it is amazing how many issues those cars had. Once they get sorted, I think it will be a competitive car. I agree that they sounded like crap. Then again, now the the Ferrari's are turbo, they don't sound that great either. If IMSA doesn't want the DW to be fast, why do they get their entire special rule book that no one else follows. It was slightly obnoxious how quickly they caught the leaders and passed them. We were all taking bets on when they would crash/break/catch on fire.
That wasn't the point of the post at all and the bit about "mine's bigger" is rubbish. It takes a certain level of equipment to consistently obtain the results that clients demand which is a totally different situation to a hobbyist obtaining good results with an older or lower priced camera.
Counterpoints? The 458's in the GTD class were all GT3-spec, but at a disadvantage. The 488's in GTLM absolutely wanted a better result, they had their share of mechanical and contact issues, but IMHO they were slower due to BoP. I hate blaming BoP for anything, but the feedback and data showed they were great in braking and the infield, but were losing out on the banking at top end. Daytona is also a different race track, Sebring will be a better (more accurate?) test of where things really are. FWIW, I was surprised at how (relatively) weak the Porsches ran, both in RSR and the new GT3R. The RSR was near the front until the end, but the C7's blew them away at the end (unsure if tire or fuel strategy had any implications, of if they had tech issues). OTOH, the Lambo GT3 had a good year last season in Europe, but when all Lambo's are 1.5 sec/a lap faster than the aggregate field in GTD at Daytona, it's a BoP issue (we'll see, all 5 cars had engines impounded). Lambo would have done better overall other than the 2 faster cars destroying each other and the 3rd having a strategy issue (i.e. ran out of fuel). The P1 Audi barely made it to the line. Will be interesting to see where things stand once 488GT3 is running and sorted later this year. The Ford GT's showed great pace, if you watched them at the ROAR they certainly had some pace in-hand. (nobody shows their real pace until it matters, which is in the race). They had some bad surprises with their gearboxes....reminded me of early DCT issues with 458's. The Ecoboost is not a great sounding engine, and yes that was TC you heard out of T3, T5 and mid corner T6. No different than other GTLM cars, but sound seemed more noticeable on Fords. The DW was a surprise to everyone in pit lane. At Daytona (where top speed duration is worth gold), they have an aero advantage. They ran well last year, but only for a short while before gearbox imploded; reliability and not pace has been their problem with results. I"m not sure about politics, but the priority in the P class is to grow the (new) P2 cars and eventually DP1....to grow the class, and series, they need entrants that are competitive in the new classes, and that's not DW. From what we saw in the race, they had no issues getting up front or staying there, so unclear what grousing has any basis. They are underdogs in prototypes, the way the Mini's are in ST....
Nice shots Bill! Also, I love how you usually throw in an interesting shot of the fairer sex for good measure. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks. The photo editor for Playboy Magazine once told me I had an eye for beauty. Eventually girls became to high maintenance for me and I switched to exotic and race cars. Image Unavailable, Please Login
Ford GT in 1st hour. Ganassi DP at 2:45 am. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Damnit... this is what I wanted my pics to look like! The noise reduction in PS helped a little...but not enough Image Unavailable, Please Login
The pics I posted this pm looked far better on the screen before I posted them. Anyone know why? I copied them as JPEGs just out of ignorance of other formats, but they look lousy as posted. From the card I can read the names of drivers on top of the doors ... even the night scenes, so I'm frustrated. Any ideas?
I'm not sure but I think FerrariChat compresses the pictures because they store and host them. Perhaps someone can verify that. Some of my pictures are super clear but fade by the time they get posted here. Your picture can only be 800 on the longest side so if you upload a larger picture it is resized to appear here and I think that degrades it. I make all my pictures the right size before uploading them thinking they will get compressed less. I'm liking your stuff so far so please post more when you can
That looks great for ISO400! I would've guessed at least 800 and probably 1600 to get a fast enough exposure time, but then again I use a T5i, which can't shoot nearly as fast as a 7D. What did you do for post-processing, if anything?
Picture 1 is the pic I posted and the second one is exactly how it came out of the camera except I've resized it to 800 on the longest side to post here for the reasons above. Looking at the second pic I've cropped it a bit and while doing that I added a slight tilt down in the direction the car is heading. ( I add a slight tilt like that because it has almost a subliminal effect of speed as we all know its faster going down hill. If you tilt up you feel like the car has to chug uphill. I'm not fond of overly done tilt shots especially side to side. We know how flat the road course section of Daytona is so tilting the car so it look like its taking the corner on its side seems silly to me and way too far from realistic but to each his own. ) I also cropped it so there was a little more space in front of the car for it to drive to and left less behind it as opposed to centering it. It wasn't completely dark yet so I used the " burn " tool to darken the background and the lights. Then I added more " contrast " and a touch of color saturation to help make the colors pop. Adding more contrast tends to darken some areas like the wheels or the driver so I used the " Dodge " tool to lighten a few areas that I wanted to bring out the detail. Last thing I do after resizing it for Fchat is a bit of sharpening. This particular picture wasn't sharp to begin with and the sharpening tool only helped it a bit but I liked the picture enough to post it because of the colors and how well the R8 livery worked with the ferris wheel. I don't want to sharpen anything but the car so I used the " Lasso " tool to surround the R8 and then added some sharpening. I didn't do anything for noise but adding contrast and saturation seems to also add noise so I had to watch for that. All of the above are simple and quick adjustments that help make the picture come to life. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
That is some great info on what you did to edit the pictures. I am going to have to follow some of your steps for the next pictures. Most of the day shots I have posted all I have done is resized them. The night ones I have played with some of the contrast, saturation, etc.. Here are a few more from me. Will post more later this weekend. I want to try some of what Bill has described to see how it works for me. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Str8, thanks for the encouragement! I think you are right about the compression, because my static photos (namely the 1st ones in this thread) are clear, while my others aren't. And, seriously, the 3 I posted just above are very clear on my laptop, and they are blown up even larger than they appear as posted.
I was shooting with a D7000 and a 18-200VR. @ night with the ferris wheel in front of me (entry of T3), I think (think...) my ISO was set between 2400 - 3200, shutter speed @ 125-200...I did a lot of playing around with settings. Most shot with no flash, some shot with built-in flash. I really need to get a shoe mounted flash. I'll post some pics sometime this weekend...I've had a boatload of other high-priority To Do's to complete.
With the built-in flash you probably might as well hold up a Bic lighter but a shoe mounted unit is surprisingly effective in some corners. I personally prefer no flash but have used one in the past to make reflective markings "pop".
That's all I was trying to do...splash some flash on some of the cars with reflective decals...the Delta Wing being one of them.
