In short, I think my DJI Mavic Pro has become my favourite camera. This was shot as part of my "North Coast 500" trip around Scotland. Highly recommend it to everyone. More to come in a longer post.
Porsche
This shot I cheated haha, I stitched together 5 photos to make a panorama. You've gotta think outside the box.
Shooting A Car Meet With A 35mm
I'll be honest, I find car meet ups distinctly boring now. I've seen so many epic cars driving in their natural habitat that seeing a car parked on a slab of tarmac is about as boring as it gets. The Supercar Driver "Secret Meet" is fundamentally one of these situations. Every year they bring together as many members as possible for a group photo to start off the driving season. I wasn't going to head along originally as it's a bit of a trek from London but meeting up with MrJWW for lunch he mentioned he had an XJ220 for the weekend so why not combine hanging out for the weekend and larking about with some nice cars. I'm glad I did, what an absolutely amazing selection of cars they got together. I figured James was going to make a video of the day and have recently decided to only film things I'm actively enthused about as "faking it" doesn't come across that well on camera. This brings me to a task I set myself. Shoot the entire event with a 35mm prime lens. (The lens of choice was the sigma 35mm f1.4 Art}. Now I like the concept of 35mm, bit wider than 50, bit closer than 24 but in reality i've never really got along with the focal length. For some reason my brain doesn't "See" 35mm that well. Anyho it's quite a good lens for general day to day photography, you can shoot portraits and a bit of everything so figured I'd challenge myself and try and shoot the day with just 35mm. Like anything, the more you do it the better you get.
Booooost
One of the things you will never see in my photography is a moving car that looks stationary. I will do absolutely everything to have some motion in there somehow (look a bit closer at some photos you like and notice if the wheels are moving). Motion is also quite a good way of making really hectic situations a bit less so and help single out your subject.
Mr J Dub doing his usual hand waving antics. Seriously 90s looking dash in this thing.
Upon arrival at Bruntingthorpe Aerodrome there was the usual flurry of introductions, application of suncream and the obligatory burger to kick off the day. Once these were out of the way I had a chance to just have a wander around and chat with some like minded fellows about the usual car related stuff. Whilst on this initial walk I realised a brilliant "added bonus" of a meet of this scale. You get to see soo many different cars and different specs all in one space it's like a real life autotrader search. This allows you to argue back and forth about who chose the right colour, whether you should ever leave your wing up when you are parked. (There is no debate, if the wing isn't fixed or an actual wing like the p1 in racemode you should leave the damn thing down, yes 675lt owners..you included).
I'll be honest, I struggled. I struggled a lot shooting with just this lens but I ploughed on and here are a selection of my photos from the day. I used panoramas to help get a wider view and "zoomed with my feet" for close ups. I still think 50mm is more of "My" lens but I was reasonably happy with the results. Not as much variety as I would normally hope for and quite a few things I couldn't do but all in all an interesting challenge. I'd definitely suggest setting yourself the task of shooting with a fixed prime (or even just set your zoom to a certain length) at some point. It makes you think more and since more is always more it's gotta be a good thing.
One of the best sounding cars in the world
One of the other best sounding cars in the world haha altho needs proper pipes.
Pretty awesome get together. - Photo taken on my DJI Mavic Pro
3000 miles in a Classic 911 has changed my life: Part 1 - Prep
Car looking pretty hilarious in "Dakar" spec up on the lift.
Ok so maybe not quite 3000 miles (2692 to be precise + track driving and detours). It all started with a phonecall from my buddies Team Galag asking if I wanted to join them on The Snow Tour. A drive up through Sweden to Arvidsjaur to do some ice driving. I've done a tonne of miles in the gt3 and wasn't particularly sure winter tyres would be readily available so the idea came into my mind about taking my old backdated 911 (Autofarm 911). To be honest I was massively apprehensive about how the car would hold up in the extreme conditions driving with some significantly newer and more powerful cars. My car is a 1978 SC backdated to 73s looks. Boxster brakes and a bored out engine provide the extra stop and go I'm after.
The Prep:
After talking to Mikey at Autofarm about potential issues and speaking to Richard at Tuthill (Tuthill organise a bunch of ice driving in old Rally Porsches). Turns out the cars are pretty good but there is a potential issue of the carburettors freezing due to the extreme cold. With relatively little time we pulled together a solution to try and blow some hot air over the carbs and warm them up a bit.
Bit of a ghetto mod but worked and easily removable after the fact.
The main requirement for the trip was a set of winter tyres. After looking around at what was available it seems that we had to increase the sidewall dimension by 10mm to get tyres to fit. On the front I we could fit the Continental ContiWinterContact TS850 in 205/60R15 91 H and on the rear the older TS790 in 225/60R15 96 H. I actually think having this bias helped the overall handling of the car as a bit more front end grip is always quite nice on a 911.
Without doubt the most important change was fitting some winter tyres, the grip in dicey conditions really is remarkable.
Modification number 2 was to fit some additional lights on the front as the current headlights aren't particularly amazing. I wanted a unit that was removable so that if i wanted I could restore the car to how it was. These lights you can just pull out the little grill they are attached to and wack the old ones back in, bish, bash, bosh.
The final exterior mod was the latches on the bonnets. In the relatively short amount of time i've had the car i've not quite shut the front twice and with the prospect of additional cold weather and tiredness I figured these would be a nice little addition. Turns out this was an essential modification.
Now it was just the task of driving 3k miles. Onwards!
