I went up to Silverstone on Thursday 26th June to catch the last of three days of Formula One testing prior to the British Grand Prix in just over a week.

For £12, they open up a small section of the track for fans to go in & watch the teams thrash round Silverstone at high speed. This was my first view of real F1 – apart from seeing the Renault at the two Renault World Series days I’ve been to. The engine noise is really something to witness & boy, are they fast. You really don’t get the same sense of speed watching it on the box.

I’ll probably post a couple of entries about this shoot, if only because I took so many pictures. I think there were about 1998 shots of which I deleted  about 350 straight away due to missing the focusing or only getting part of the car in the shot etc etc.

This first batch are what I call my ‘arty F1′ stuff.

I really slowed things down with these shots, they were all taken on the 50-50mm Sigma on a monopod. All were taken at ridiculously slow shutter speeds, often right down to 1/3 sec. But I really quite like the effects which is what I set out to achieve.

On some of the shots I tried a ‘zoom burst’ technique, which is basically just zooming the lens while the shutter is open. It adds a little more movement to the image. I am quite pleased with the effect these slow shutter speeds have had. The general guidance on telephotos is to use a speed equal or faster to the focal length of the lens. So if the lens is set at 500mm, use a shutter speed of 1/500 or faster. If it’s set at 200mm then use a shutter speed of 1/250 or faster. Shooting at 30mm at 1/3sec is bound to introduce some very altered images, some of which work quite well, at least I think so, what do you think?

More of the ‘standard’ motorsport action shots to follow in part two.

Popped down to one of the parks at the edge of our town centre this afternoon to see some school student musical entertainment. 

I only took 40 shots, mostly of the Highfield School Jazz Band in which my daughter is the only female. That’s her playing the electric violin.

Despite the look of the first shot, the weather was sunny & dry. All shots were taken on the Canon 100-400mm L IS lens.

Unfortunately, I seem to be having problems with the 100-400 at the moment. It started at Silverstone, after taking a shot or two I get an ‘ERR 01′ error message which is a lens contact error. Today it happened quite a few times. What happens is after taking a shot, the camera locks up so you can’t take any more, the aperture changes to ’0.0′ & the ‘ERR 01′ message is sometimes displayed. I have to turn the camera off or release the lens from the camera & then refit it, or sometimes both in order to get the camera working again.

I’m hoping the problem will resolve itself with a bit of cleaning of the contacts but if not I may have to return the lens to Canon for repair, which will be a right pain as I have Silverstone F1 testing at the end of June & the Royal International Air Tattoo in early July, not to mention the summer hols in August.

I managed to persuade my resident model – my eldest daughter – to spare 15 minutes this evening so I could give the DIY Beauty Dish as quick test.

I didn’t have enough time to give it a thorough testing so just fired off a few comparison shots with the flashgun, beauty dish & DIY Milk Carton Diffuser which I made a while ago.

I still haven’t found a mirror to go inside the CD case to reflect light back out into the dish, so in the end I have made a small circular cone out of thin card & covered it in aluminium foil which reflects light from the flash out into the dish & then out onto the subject.

I set up the flashgun on a tripod using a wireless trigger mounted on the camera to fire the flash. The flashgun – Sigma DG 500 Super – was set on manual. Camera was hand-held & I used the Canon 50mm f1.8 for all shots.

All shots were taken using the following setup. I clipped a black cloth to the living room curtains for the backdrop.

Plain Flash

This shot with the un-diffused flashgun – 1/160 @ f18. Note the light is quite harsh with stronger shadows.

Beauty Dish

This shot with the Beauty Dish – 1/125 @ f6.3. Note the light is less harsh, more diffused with softer shadows.

Milk Carton Diffuser

This shot with the home made diffuser – 1/125 @ f3.5. Note a more even light including around the top of the head, due ability of the diffuser to bounce flash off the ceiling as well as straight ahead. Much softer shadows still.

Milk Carton Diffuser with Reflector

This shot as above but with the addition of a 80cm silver reflector to the left of the model – 1/125 @ f5. Note more light available to the left of the model’s face, hair & shoulder.

I think overall, while the DIY Beauty Dish does soften the harsh light of the flashgun, I prefer the look of the Milk Carton Diffuser for the overall softness of the light. It’s more portable & much cheaper to make than the Beauty Dish!! Having said that, this isn’t a full test & I’d like to do more test shots using all three setups.

I’ve decided to take a photography course.

I checked around on the forums & with the assistance of Google, I have chosen to take the Bureau of Freelance Photographer’s "Freelance Photography Course". It’s a corrspondence course aimed at assisting you into the freelance market & guiding you on ways to improve the chances of selling shots.

I enrolled a couple of weeks ago & received the course through the post this week. It takes the form of two A4 binders with a number of modules. There is not set time limit & modules can be taken at your own pace. You submit work for each module to the course tutor who gives personal feedback.

I’ve only skimmed through the content so far & not actually started on the first module. It should be interesting, not least to see whether I get back the value of the course fee in sales.

You can find out further details of the BFP at their website www.thebfp.co.uk – but beware, it’s not very inspiring in it’s design!

Sunday 15th June 2008 was Fathers’ Day. I got up, accepted some cards from the family & promptly left them all at home to go & meet a mate for a trip out to the Classic Car Show at Knebworth Park. 

The weather was pretty poor to start with. Lots of heavy cloud with only a few gaps of blue. It got better in the afternoon when eventually the sun came out, but the morning was heavy with the threat of rain. Fortunately, it never did.

I’ve not been to a car show at Knebworth before so was not sure what to expect. What we got was several hundred cars to suit all tastes. There were some from the 1930s all the way up to some modern Japanese performance cars & everything in between. The following shots are what’s under the bonnet of a Mustang.

I took tow cameras, my standard Canon 20D with the Sigma 18-50mm lens & the older Canon 300D on which I had my Sigma 10-20mm wide angle lens.

There were lots of people so taking photographs of the cars required some patience since people were forever walking into the shots. This was even more important with the 10-20mm lens as people could be quite far from the cars but still be in the shot & have no idea they were getting in the way. To make matters worse, many of the car owners & their families sat in deckchairs behind their vehicles meaning they were in every shot taken from the front of the car. I did manage to isolate a few cars though.

Because of the problems by all the onlookers I took quite a few shots just isolating various details of the vehicles.

Unfortunately, my knowledge of cars isn’t very large so if I’ve got any details wrong in these shots, please let me know!

I ordered this battery charger from Amazon a couple of weeks ago. It was recommended on the DigitalRelish photography blog & as I’d got some rechargable batteries at Christmas but my daughter had kept the charger, I was in the market for one myself.

On the same day I also ordered some extension tubes which I thought might be a useful addition to my macro photography setup. I already have the Tamron 90mm f2.8 Di macro lens & am looking forward to trying out the addition of the extension tubes. I went for the automatic ones which are a bit more expensive but maintain electronic contact with the attached lens.

I ordered both items on 30th May and neither has been delivered, which is bloody annoying. I’ve checked with Amazon & they tell me to contact the seller as it’s not actually Amazon who sold it to me, it’s one of their ‘partners’. So I’m waiting to hear back from them as to why my charger hasn’t arrived.

The extension tubes came via an eBay seller in Hong Kong. I’ve not had any previous problems with Hong Kong sellers & have purchased three lenses via eBay over there. So far the service has been great. I got my Sigma 50-500mm telephoto from there within 2 days of ordering. They replied to me within a couple of hours saying it went out on the 3rd of June, which means that it’s either lost, somewhere in the Post Office system or the Post Office have held onto it for import charges and haven’t yet gotten round to telling me about it.

I guess sometimes it just pays to go into a shop & pay the extra to avoid the frustrations of companies with poor service.

On Sunday 8th June I went off to Silverstone to take some photos at the Renault World Series event.

This is the second year I’ve been, last year’s was held at Donnington Park in Leicestershire. Tickets are available free of charge via the World Series website. It runs over both the Saturday & Sunday & there is racing the whole day long on both days. Given that it’s absolutely free, it’s a great day’s entertainment if you’re into motorsports. There’s also lots to do if you don’t want to sit at the trackside watching cars whizz past ever 2 minutes.

There is a ‘FamilyCity’ with a kids play area, F1 simulators & various other things to look at or try.

The event is formed around the Formula Renault 3.5litre series, much like the F1 series they have races in various countries. There is the Formula Renault 2.0litre & Formula Renault UK. Then for a bit of variety they also have a Renault Megane series & a Clio series.

I spent time experimenting with my shutter speeds. I took some 1300 shots during the day and used shutter speeds from 1/1250 right down to 1/30th of a second. The hit rate with the slower shutter speeds was lower but really slow shutter speeds doesn’t half give lots of movement blur on the background. I had to bin around 250 shots straight away due to the cars being too blurred from the slow shutter speeds.

Between races they have various historic Renaults.

They also get a Renault Formula 1 from the previous season to do a few laps for the crowd.

It was the first time I’ve ever been to Silverstone. The journey is quite straightforward for me, M1 & A43. Sadly, Silverstone is not as friendly towards photographers as Mallory or Donington; there are high fences around a large section of the track. I spent the whole day shooting from inside the circuit as it was the only place I found where the fence was lower than me. I think I was on the section between Bridge & Priory. I didn’t get a chance to walk the whole track to see what other vantage spots there are.

During the latter part of the day this aircraft buzzed the circuit & several times a helicopter took off from the middle of the track to do a few circuits before landing again.

And just one tip if you’re thinking of going to a similar event; remember the suncream! I didn’t and got burnt.

Our good friends & neighbour’s daughter got married this week. We decided to pop down to the church to see her coming out with her new husband & as usual, I couldn’t resist taking the camera.

The church was a lovely old English church out in Essex. I positioned myself opposite the front door so I could fire off a few snaps as they came out. I don’t think the official photographer was too impressed when he followed the happy couple out & saw me!

I stayed on the periphery & took a few candids which I’ll give to our friends as soon as I can process them.

It felt a little strange, like we were intruders. We clearly weren’t dressed for a wedding (I was in shorts). Although we recognised some of the guests & spoke to them I felt a lot of people were wondering who the hell we were. Nobody said anything, well not until I left & the official photographer caught up with me as I was walking back to the car, wanting to know if I was part of the guest party. When I explained we were the bride’s family’s neighbours he said he thought I might be a freelance out to get some ‘free’ wedding shots for my portfolio. Apparently, it happens.