| Joined: | Mon Apr 2nd, 2012 |
| Location: | South Lakeland, UK |
| Posts: | 4066 |
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I am finally reunited with a computer, I have offloaded Saturdays 1000+ image files into the MBP and I am slowly weeding the dross.
There are some good to excellent images, plenty are acceptable; not sure if the ratio is better or worse than my experience using the Nikkor 300 f2.8 MF. The huge advantage with the zoom is my ability to vary the focal length to suit the scene, on the fly. In the past I have used the 300 f 2.8 on the main body and the 80-200 f2.8 on the secondary body, which is cumbersome. With car racing I feel there is a sweet spot with range, too long a focal length gives too short a DoF, or too small an aperture, key to me is to get closer to the action, and in that respect Cadwell is wonderful, you can almost reach out and touch the cars through the curves section and you can get pretty close with uninterrupted views in plenty of other places.
There is also a trade off here, the comparison between a mid range zoom with VR and my normal racing lens, the trusty Nikkor 300mm, f2.8 MF isn't a simple and clear cut as many might imagine. Cadwell is so different from almost all the other circuits I visit, the range of viewpoints is so diverse a zoom makes sense but on most circuits the options are greatly reduced. At Rockingham for example the only viable option is one hairpin, even for those with media accreditation, they seem to concentrate on that same hairpin because the rest of the circuit is pretty well inaccessible. My technique with the 300mm f2.8 is to focus on a particular part of the bend and as the cars approach that point make a quick burst of exposures, with the cars travelling relatively slowly and exposing at 11fps, there are usually at least a couple of acceptably sharp images to be had from each burst.
I have just come to the pigeon which was watching the racing intently, it was taken with the D3 fitted with the Nikkor 70-300 VR, 300mm, 1/200 sec @ f6.3, ISO 1600.
The day started well with brilliant sunshine but the second race was declared 'wet' despite starting in sunshine! By the end of race two the track was becoming very slippery with most cars still on slicks. There were several spins and 'off's' including our star driver who spun at the hairpin. Before lunch I had to put the 70-300 VR away because it was starting to put some serious rain down, not wishing to give Eric's nice lens a soaking. I pulled out the trombone 80-200 f2.8, which seems to have survived the very heavy rain OK. It did show signs of condensation inside the UV filter which I am unable to remove because it's so tight/seized on. It has been on the lens since I bought it about 2006. The condensation seems to have cleared now.
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Robert.