A balmy early June Sunday meant going to Brands Hatch for my Dad’s birthday (thanks to my brother, Steve). There it was the weekend for the American Speed Fest featuring the Whelen Euro Series NASCAR, Bernies V8 racing series and various other lively races and static car displays.
Meeting there proved to be surprisingly successful (considering I missed my train by 10 seconds while fumbling with the ticket machine!), parking was really easy and 30 seconds from the main pedestrian entrance. Inside we were met rows of car clubs with everything you might expect at an American car meet plus more; Clubs Corvettes, Mustangs, Chevy and Dodge, Lowriders, Monster trucks, Ford100Es, Pro Street Series dragsters, and famous cars from Hollywood and Del Boy’s Robin Reliant!
The American Speed Fest was a very welcoming event, all the guests enjoying it, not too crowded or too far to walk, no queues and pleasant friendly hosts at Brands Hatch made the people watching as enjoyable as the racing.
For me and photography a leisure day and so just a small lightweight kit: The Sony A7Riii, with 3 small lenses all packed in a tiny shoulder bag; Sony Zeiss 35/2.8 and 55/1.8 and the Sony 28/2. Years ago I used to waste endless films and memory storage trying to photograph the motion of the cars and with limited success. This first time shooting motor racing with the Sony A7Riii I started by using the old tried and tested techniques of zone focus (first find your focus point on the track, lock or manual focus and then shoot when the car comes into that area). But with this clever little camera I found the auto focusing could keep up with the cars even when at speed on the straight. Quite an achievement for the “slowest” of the Sony cameras due to it’s high resolution 42megapixel sensor which still doesn’t seem to slow it down much at all!
Anyway, enough of that; enjoy a small few of the photos from the day. (Touch and it gets bigger… no sniggering!)
One Response
That was indeed one of the best days of my life.