Club Arnage

As in previous years / races, I’ve now sorted out and uploaded my Le Mans 2006 photos to Steve's Webshots Homepage (http://community.webshots.com/user/route66weasel) for your perusal.

The various sections are subdivided into folders (all in large resolution) –

Le Mans 24 Hours 2006 - Campsite and Camping (http://community.webshots.com/album/551780317cdLckC)

Le Mans 24 Hours 2006 - Circuit & New Village (http://community.webshots.com/album/551780341BfWvjM)

Le Mans 24 Hours 2006 - Classic Race (http://community.webshots.com/album/551781457tQCgox)

Le Mans 24 Hours 2006 - Club Arnage (http://community.webshots.com/album/551781463CYamQf)

Le Mans 24 Hours 2006 - Finish Line & Prize Giving (http://community.webshots.com/album/551781492aJiHIq)

Le Mans 24 Hours 2006 – Pits (http://community.webshots.com/album/551781515favifP)

Le Mans 24 Hours 2006 – Race (http://community.webshots.com/album/551783634gQKeED)

Le Mans 24 Hours 2006 – There and Back Again (http://community.webshots.com/album/551785897TtKTaV)

Some tasters (smaller image size) follow -

Some racing


(http://static.flickr.com/67/177570508_693c0b0e8e.jpg)

(http://static.flickr.com/47/177570507_4eec86251e.jpg)

(http://static.flickr.com/61/177570509_203b8c2dd4.jpg)

Henri in the Pescarollo shop?


(http://static.flickr.com/77/177568553_134f43475b.jpg)

Curry chef Bob


(http://static.flickr.com/74/177568554_3d71f7eaf3.jpg)

1. Team Impala
2. Petra and JPC
3. Piglet


(http://static.flickr.com/45/177568556_bd0fed39ec.jpg)

(http://static.flickr.com/70/177568559_502cc49594.jpg)

(http://static.flickr.com/74/177568555_aa59816f0e.jpg)

All roads lead to Le Mans (truck route for Audis!)


(http://static.flickr.com/63/177568560_6b215fec4f.jpg)

There and back again


(http://static.flickr.com/70/177570511_eae4234652.jpg)

(http://static.flickr.com/67/177570510_3405852a0e.jpg)

Hi Steve,

great shots and well sorted! Can I use some of them for the 2007 CA guide?

Cheers

Werner

Beaten me to it!!

Werner / Peter, please feel free to use whatever you want.

There's also photos from previous races at the 'homepage'.

As I'm off to the Classic next week, do you want any more campsite / village / general area pics?

Steve, that will be great, I'll add my list and Werner can add his shopping list as well!

Road signs for me, also the ACO road signs where they point out the coloured parking directions, you know, like, Parking Vert etc.

Some outside shots of the Temple!!  Stella Bar please and some shots from the back.

I have a think for any thing else.  Many thanks Steve. Peter

Thanks a lot, yes, Peter will pm you and send you a "wishlist" ;D ;D ;D

have fun at the Classic

Steve, picking up that you intend to re-write or use a slightly different route for the classic, can you grab some more scenic shots for us please.  Tree lined sweeping roads, picturesque towns, roads crossing over stunningly beautiful bridges.  Rest stops at a good restaurant or picnic spot, that type of thing.  Peter

Some great pictures there.

Especially liked the 'long and winding roads'.

What 'gear' do you use to get such full and clear pictures at Mulsanne?

Thanks,
I use a fairly simple Fuji S5000 and position myself where I can get an uninterupted view over heads and fences on the banking.

(http://dpnow.com/images/archives/fuji s5000.jpg)

There are so few places to take picture. 

Was this the inside of Mulsanne? What size lens/how much do you crop?

That is a bit of a surprise, but in a good way, something to think about now. Becasue some of my companions were using some pricey technical stuff and the results were a little disappointing (their words).

I may have to re-view the 'content' of my plan to go digi.

I've so far resisted the temptation to buy a digital SLR.

I sold a whole load of 35mm SLR gear a couple of gears ago and bought the Fuji S5000 to get a feel for digital.

I set the resolution to maximum (6 mp on the S5000), fast shutter speed and don't zoom in too tightly.

Then I crop the image later on the PC  - stills give a respectable image size.

Lorry - in answer to your queries, the photos were from the public viewing banking on the outside of Mulsanne corner.  Lens - the one bolted on to the front of the camera!

nice pics Steve..  just about glimse us (well our black flags anyway!) in the podium shots your have there!

http://community.webshots.com/photo/551781492/2239512020052760295CgSOiQ

Christopher, I converted over to digital in 2003 with a professional Nikon DSLR rig, my first shots were to say the least rubbish.  Depending on what you are coming from and depending on what you are actually using the amount of variables that are available on modern day cameras is vast.  You really do need to get and use them and fully understand what all the knobs do!

No good leaving it on auto and expecting the computers to know what the shot should look like.  To be honest, I believe you need to know more about photography than ever before.

Could be the reason why your chums shots didn't meet expectation.

Sorry, I should have looked, its the inside of Arnage.  I didn't know you could get there

My photos have got worse over the years, and the old slr with 3 knobs took the best pictures.  The current film slr has 18 knobs, and is not as good.  I moved to a digital slr this year, which has even more knobs, but played a hunch.  Instead of using a zoom lens (with more glass than the Crystal Palace) I stuck an old telephoto lens on the front, ignored autofocus and the results are wonderful.  If I could have remembered how to change the film speed, even the pictures in the wet would have been good.  But when the instruction book is 200 pages...................

I think you'll find it the outside of Arnage in the public bit and the cars are on the way up to the Porsche Curves. Nice photos Steve. I'll have to take a camera one year.

Have you all been on the sherbert already?

As previously mentioned, the photos I posted earlier here http://www.clubarnage.com/forum/index.php?topic=5722.msg70575#msg70575 were all taken at the public banking at the outside of MULSANNE CORNER.

I know because I took them  ::)

R U sure Mr Moderator, Mr Stu is one of the senior members of CA and I'm sure he knows his way around the track by now. ::) ::)

No good leaving it on auto and expecting the computers to know what the shot should look like.  To be honest, I believe you need to know more about photography than ever before.


This is my personal belief also.

For the last 3 years I have been persevering with a film SLR with telephoto lens on manual set up. I have sort of promised myself not to go digital until I can repeatedly get the end result that I pictured in my head when I opened the shutter.

I get a lot of pi$$ take because of the amount of film I go through, but some of my friends rattle off lots of pictures and still don't get any more acceptable pictures. Some of them on the other hand just seem to be gifted.

That's why digital is so much better, you don't keep on buying the film!!

you rescue so much more in digital, I use photoshop elements 3 & 4, only because its on different computers.

Fantastic medium photography, I just love it.

If its no good on a digital (and you can zoom in and check) you delete it.  Plus you get 200 photos to a 1G card.  Don't worry too much as a third should be scrap, and another third duplicates, so you might just end up with some decent photos out of the other third.  Just keep pressing the button

You must be doing something wrong.  Is it left-right blur or just general blur (I suspect all zoom lenses), or are you too far away

I agree with all the 'plus' points you make for digital, and I am not knocking it.

I just have a personal desire to improve my skills before I convert to the dark side.

But then again, playing with diigtal to learn the skills is going to be less costly and I can see when I am making mistakes earlier, rather than waiting to get the film back.

I beleive effective use of phot shop is the new skill to photography, and something no doubt I will end up converting to also.

I think the main problem with motorsport photography is that you cannot always get that close, that is probably my biggest disapointment with my photos.

But hey I'm not moaning, I enjoy what I do.

And I love looking at some of the great results that other people get.

My thoughts exactly Christopher.
That's one of the reasons I bought a middle range fixed lens digital so that I could "learn digital" without jumping in with a digi SLR to start with.

It gives a more gentler learning curve.

if you've not seen it have a look here,  http://www.ten-tenths.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=47

it may be of some help.  I guess the most important part is to know what you are trying to capture, what is it you want from the photograph.  Too many times you see very good technically accurate shots of cars, but is that enough.

Personally i don't think so, for me its about capturing the essence of the event.  Big lenses may not be the answer?

These are shots I would of been proud to have taken.

I was on about these ones
http://community.webshots.com/album/551783634gQKeED
(the ones that say Arnage)and I'm just about to go on the sherbet.

Good man  ;D

Great shots Steve...

I have such great memories of this my first Le Mans. I was totally overwhelmed and still cannot get this
s!ht eating grin off my face! ;D

It was a great pleasure meeting so many ca'ers!! Foregive me if I don't remember everyone's name.
I was truley overwhelmed like a kid in a candy store... Thanks to everyone for makeing me feel welcome!!!!!

Cheers,
Mike


B.T.W......Is it a acceptable practice to use others photos to post humor in the forum? Or is it taboo?

Nice pics Steve, great shot of Henri P  :)

See you at the Classic,

>Martini...

Mike, I upload my photos to a public space on the www.  They're not watermarked, copywritten or in a 'subscription to view' area.

So, basically, anyone can do what the hell they want with them!

Great to see you at Le Mans, Sebring planning kicks in pretty soon  ;)

Thanks FS and SB for the chat and hints.

Has certainly given me something to think about on how to proceed and develop.

I'll take a trawl through 10 tenths and see what tips I can take away.

Chris there are plenty and i mean plenty of web forums out there, do a search of "photography Forum" in Google, the travel and wildlife ones are worth looking at, I guess there are about ten regular ones I look at, will PM them to you later on today, Peter

Get in contact should you wish, be pleased to help.  Peter

Here,here FS.  My little Nikon D70 takes perfectly good pics for my purposes and with a couple of 2gig cards I can just snap away and dump the grotty ones when I get home.  Am also finally cracking the web publishing stuff (after several hiccups.)  The conversion from film to digital hasn't been that pricey as I can still use all 3 of my lenses from the old camera, plus the dozen or so that Mr Termite has!
See Werner's guide for some of the shots I took at scrutineering.  OK, not David Bailey, but great memories nonetheless.

"Not too expensive" and using 2gig cards!

I use a couple of 1gig cards (£12) which in raw format give 100 pics each.  Any obvious errors can be deleted immediately, so I don't have too many to sort out when I get home.  With jpeg its 250 per gig at 6mpixel.  I've just sorted them all and hope to photobucket them this weekend.

As for Arnage, the photos are taken across the corner.  There was me thinking someone might be hiding in the bushes on the inside of the circuit.

Soon seems cheep compared to the cost of 20-odd sets of 36 prints - a number of which didn't deserve the paper they were printed on!  Anybody need 20 rolls of 35mm print film, by the way?

This year the Bonusprint bill was only £7 compared to the usual £40+.  So thats the memory cards paid for.  The camera should pay for itself in 12 years.

Digi is great for sure! I finally took the plunge earlier this year. Replaced the Canon EOS 3 with an EOS 20D body for £800 and got 2x 2GB cards and a 20GB hard drive with 3.5inch preview screen all for just over £200. Threw another £250 at 4x batteries and a battery grip so total layout was £1250. 20D is 8 megapixel and 5fps. Now discontinued but replacement 30D slightly better specced.

Canon 35-350 lens and Canon flash from old body still work  ;D

I took 2500 shots at Sebring, 2000 at testing and 1500 during race week. Local photo shop used to charge £2 a film for processing and then £5 to scan 8 films to a CD (which was a mega cheap and time efficient way of doing things!). Either way, that's well over a hundred 36exp films there, so that's at least £325 I haven't had to pay out already!

With 2x Tour De France stages (1 is a time trial which means LOADS of shots!) and the Classic next week, then Spa, Donington and the Vuelta a Espana time trial later this year, I won't be far off having recovered the cost of all the new kit by the end of the season!!!

BUT THE BEST BIT OF ALL ABOUT DIGITAL in my mind is that you can review what you've taken on the spot; so if a prefocussed point is proving to be not quite spot on, you can do something about it! Or even expreriment with shutter speeds etc. and see which works best, all whilst there! Quality now is just as good for me (if not better ... no grainy scans!!!) so for anyone considering whether they should or not, don't consider it any more ... JFDI!

I LOVE DIGITAL!!

Just my two (euro)cents worth!

 ;D

Hi all

Dabs are offering 2gb cards for under £25

http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx?quicklinx=43z5


>Martini...

hi ,,
pic are very good steve.
past  3 years, since going digital, ive been well impressed with my (efforts!!), esp time laspe night time stuff ,
but this year couldnt seem to get it together, new tripod wasnt panoz or vette proof!!
 :( :
ps, if i do get the push year end, sebring might beckon as aft 22yrs i reckon they owe me ;D

It's a common misconception that there is nowhere to take photos at Le-Mans - or at Motor racing in general.

This photo is one of several lovely shots I got at the BTCC at Thruxton with no press pass just a bit of resourcefulness.

(http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y119/BradRWills/IMG_8048-1.jpg)

And these taken at Le-Mans this year:

(http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y119/BradRWills/IMG_9051222.jpg)
(http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y119/BradRWills/IMG_9017.jpg)

And lets face it, if I can do it, anyone can!!