[cooltouch]

Well, my main CPU still being packed away from our recent move, I'm having to rely on images I have stored at my website to share here. I've still got several race car images up there, though, you guys might find interesting.

This first shot is of a Bug-eye Sprite racing in SCCA competition at Willow Springs, CA. The camera was probably a Canon F-1, the lens was a Sigma 600mm f/8 mirror (see the tiny donuts in the OOF highlights?) and film was Fujichrome 100. I got pretty good at taking race car picks with that big old Sigma 600, despite it having a very thin depth of field. The trick I used was to prefocus on a specific spot on the race track and then to trip the shutter once the car entered the "zone."

This slide was one of a batch of photos that I developed myself. Probably back in about 1986 or 1987, the slide's color has remained remarkably close to true. Better than many E-6 slides I shot around the same time and subsequently had various labs develop.



A pair of SCCA racers -- a Triumph TR-4 and a Datsun B210 -- at the same point in the track as above. Same camera, lens, same batch of self-developed film.



SCCA Formula Atlantic racer, negotiating the esses at Willow Springs Raceway, Willow Springs, CA. Circa 1986 or 87. Canon F-1, Sigma 600mm f/8 mirror, Fujichrome 100.



A pair of SCCA club racers in the esses at Willow Springs, CA. Canon F-1, Sigma 600mm f/8, Fujichrome 100.



Just to give you an idea of that Sigma's sharpness, here's a 100% crop of the above racer's face. Great detail. It's no wonder those Sigma 600 mirrors routinely sell on the used market for more than they did when they were new.



Speaking of doing my own developing, here's one I took a couple years ago, developed using Arista chemistry from Freestyle. My friend, Cliff Holland, racing around on his old BSA single. Probably my Nikon F2 with some version of Fujichrome. Provia, I think. The image appears grainy because this is a small crop from a larger slide.



A pair of drag boats at Lake Ming, outside Bakersfield, CA. Kodachrome 64. Canon A-1, unknown lens.



Drag strip funny car blur. Canon A-1, unknown lens, Kodachrome 64:



Porsche-powered March 83G at the 1986 IMSA race at Riverside International Raceway, CA. This shot was taken at Riverside's famous long back straight. That March was doing at least 200 mph as it passed me. Canon F-1, Tamron SP 60-300mm f/3.8-5.4, Kodachrome 64.



Another racer at the IMSA race at Riverside -- a Porsche 962. Canon F-1, nFD Canon 200mm f/2.8, Kodachrome 64.



A Super Production Mustang racing in SCCA competition at Riverside International Raceway, CA. Circa 1985-86. Canon F-1, Canon nFD 200mm f/2.8 IF, Kodachrome 64. I saw this car often at the SCCA races. It had a big block motor -- a 428, I suspect. When all the other V8 racers would come howling by, this car would just go rumbling past, turning much lower engine revs, but going just as fast.



I have lots more scans of slides from my motorsports days, but this is all I have up at my website.

---

Last edited by cooltouch; 03-20-2015 at 10:20 AM.

[eddie1960]

Well, my main CPU still being packed away from our recent move, I'm having to rely on images I have stored at my website to share here. I've still got several race car images up there, though, you guys might find interesting.

This first shot is of a Bug-eye Sprite racing in SCCA competition at Willow Springs, CA. The camera was probably a Canon F-1, the lens was a Sigma 600mm f/8 mirror (see the tiny donuts in the OOF highlights?) and film was Fujichrome 100. I got pretty good at taking race car picks with that big old Sigma 600, despite it having a very thin depth of field. The trick I used was to prefocus on a specific spot on the race track and then to trip the shutter once the car entered the "zone."

This slide was one of a batch of photos that I developed myself. Probably back in about 1986 or 1987, the slide's color has remained remarkably close to true. Better than many E-6 slides I shot around the same time and subsequently had various labs develop.



A pair of SCCA racers -- a Triumph TR-4 and a Datsun B210 -- at the same point in the track as above. Same camera, lens, same batch of self-developed film.



SCCA Formula Atlantic racer, negotiating the esses at Willow Springs Raceway, Willow Springs, CA. Circa 1986 or 87. Canon F-1, Sigma 600mm f/8 mirror, Fujichrome 100.



A pair of SCCA club racers in the esses at Willow Springs, CA. Canon F-1, Sigma 600mm f/8, Fujichrome 100.



Just to give you an idea of that Sigma's sharpness, here's a 100% crop of the above racer's face. Great detail. It's no wonder those Sigma 600 mirrors routinely sell on the used market for more than they did when they were new.



Speaking of doing my own developing, here's one I took a couple years ago, developed using Arista chemistry from Freelance. My friend, Cliff Holland, racing around on his old BSA single. Probably my Nikon F2 with some version of Fujichrome. Provia, I think. The image appears grainy because this is a small crop from a larger slide.



A pair of drag boats at Lake Ming, outside Bakersfield, CA. Kodachrome 64. Canon A-1, unknown lens.



Drag strip funny car blur. Canon A-1, unknown lens, Kodachrome 64:



Porsche-powered March 83G at the 1986 IMSA race at Riverside International Raceway, CA. This shot was taken at Riverside's famous long back straight. That March was doing at least 200 mph as it passed me. Canon F-1, Tamron SP 60-300mm f/3.8-5.4, Kodachrome 64.



Another racer at the IMSA race at Riverside -- a Porsche 962. Canon F-1, nFD Canon 200mm f/2.8, Kodachrome 64.



A Super Production Mustang racing in SCCA competition at Riverside International Raceway, CA. Circa 1985-86. Canon F-1, Canon nFD 200mm f/2.8 IF, Kodachrome 64. I saw this car often at the SCCA races. It had a big block motor -- a 428, I suspect. When all the other V8 racers would come howling by, this car would just go rumbling past, turning much lower engine revs, but going just as fast.



I have lots more scans of slides from my motorsports days, but this is all I have up at my website.

they sound like a cool bunch but nothing is showing up how have you linked?


EDIT - a couple of hours later they are there and they are cool shots - not sure if it was my work server or something else

[skierd]

I'm seeing them fine. Great photos!

[Cuthbert]

Heh, well it didn't seem like it at the time. Only occasionally would I come across another F-1 user. Everybody else was shooting F3s and F2s. Oh, and mine were the original mechanical ones:


Those old Motor Drive MFs were monsters -- 10 batteries and a whopping 3fps. These days, I still have a couple of the original models, but I finally added one of the New F-1s to my stable a couple years ago. Gotta say, it's mighty cool in its own right.

Lessee what I got up at my website. I know I've got some scans of slides from airshows and auto races.

By 1989, I'd switched to Nikon -- for a while. Now, I have both systems and I like them both about equally. (It was also at this time I bought my first Pentax, a black KX.) But some of the later slide scans I have are from when I was shooting with Nikon. Like this one here. Nikon F2A and a Nikkor 180mm f/2.8 ED lens. Fujichrome 100. A-6 Intruder cockpit. Note Garfield. That 180 ED was an incredible lens. I ask you -- would a digitial version of this image hold significantly more detail? I doubt it personally.



Boeing B-17 G-model, I believe, "Sentimental Journey" Canon FTb, Canon FD 300mm f/4, Kodachrome 64. This image is a sizable crop from the original slide, thus some loss of resolution detail:



F/A-18 approaching the sound barrier (vapor puffs are indicative of this). Circa 1986. Probably an F-1, Tamron SP 60-300mm f/3.8-5.4, Kodachrome 64:



P-38 Lightning. Nikon F3, Tamron 300mm f/2.8 LDIF, Fujichrome 100. Circa 1990.



And I'll wind things up here for now with a sunset pic of a P-51D. Canon A-1, Vivitar Series 1 28-90mm f/2.8-3.5, Kodachrome 64.

I remember when I was a kid I could see everywhere stickers or the Canon logo in almost ALL the sport events so in my psyche I always associated the pros of the 80s with that brand, on the other side I associate Nikon more with the 70s, the Vietnam war etc...however old or new, the F-1 is a milestone in camera history.

I also have a F2AS, excellent camera as well, and for me a duel between the F1 and the F2 is a clash of titans:



However, terrific pics, very 80s, I am a private pilot and I'm a mechanical engineer working in the automotive industry (with some experience in motorsport as well) so I remained very impressed by your work back in the day...and still I feel I was born in the wrong era.

These are my boring pics with my K1000...I can't find anything so interesting to take pics at I assume.







My best motorsport catch of that day:



An MGB GT...parked!

---

Last edited by Cuthbert; 12-16-2014 at 04:24 PM.

[LesDMess]

The trick I used was to prefocus on a specific spot on the race track and then to trip the shutter once the car entered the "zone."

Speaking of doing my own developing, here's one I took a couple years ago, developed using Arista chemistry from Freelance. My friend, Cliff Holland, racing around on his old BSA single. Probably my Nikon F2 with some version of Fujichrome. Provia, I think. The image appears grainy because this is a small crop from a larger slide.

A pair of drag boats at Lake Ming, outside Bakersfield, CA. Kodachrome 64. Canon A-1, unknown lens.

Porsche-powered March 83G at the 1986 IMSA race at Riverside International Raceway, CA. This shot was taken at Riverside's famous long back straight. That March was doing at least 200 mph as it passed me. Canon F-1, Tamron SP 60-300mm f/3.8-5.4, Kodachrome 64.

Another racer at the IMSA race at Riverside -- a Porsche 962. Canon F-1, nFD Canon 200mm f/2.8, Kodachrome 64.

A Super Production Mustang racing in SCCA competition at Riverside International Raceway, CA. Circa 1985-86. Canon F-1, Canon nFD 200mm f/2.8 IF, Kodachrome 64. I saw this car often at the SCCA races. It had a big block motor -- a 428, I suspect. When all the other V8 racers would come howling by, this car would just go rumbling past, turning much lower engine revs, but going just as fast.

I agree the prefocus on a spot worked really well on those shots but clearly your panning technique on the drag boats on down - except the blurred funny car, are exceptional. Target is sharp and background is sufficiently motion blurred.

BTW, if the "grainy" cropped image is Provia 100 then I believe the grain is from the scan particularly if it were done on a Noritsu minilab scanner as Provia 100 is for all practical purposes grainless when well exposed.

[arnold]

Last of my fav's from Tahiti.

Speaks well for film. Lovely record.

[cooltouch]

Thanks on my panning technique. I worked on it quite a bit back in those days. 1/125 or slower to blur the wheels. (Also works well for blurring aircraft propellers, too). I recall even discovering an unusual effect with horizontally traveling shutters -- at least when shutter speeds were a slit moving across the film frame above flash sync, there was the occasional situation where part of the image would be sharp and part of it would be blurred. It actually made for an interesting effect.

I'd have to dig out that slide to see if it was Provia. It might not be. I was paging through some other images at my website and ran across a shot of a B-17 I took shooting an old roll of EK160. This might have been that same roll. I used my Canon DSLR together with a slide duplicator I cobbled together for digitizing the slides. That rig definitely doesn't add to the grain. That EK160 had been in the freezer for quite a while -- like many years?.

Cuthbert, wow, I haven't seen an MGBGT in years! And that's an earlier one, before the introduction of the horrid 5mph bumpers.

---

Last edited by cooltouch; 12-16-2014 at 11:46 PM.

[LesDMess]

Thanks on my panning technique. I worked on it quite a bit back in those days. 1/125 or slower to blur the wheels. (Also works well for blurring aircraft propellers, too). I recall even discovering an unusual effect with horizontally traveling shutters -- at least when shutter speeds were a slit moving across the film frame above flash sync, there was the occasional situation where part of the image would be sharp and part of it would be blurred. It actually made for an interesting effect.

I can appreciate the panning technique especially with props when you have to use slow shutter speeds to blur them on as long a lens as can be had. I took many shots - and many more, to get something reasonably decent!

This one on Fuji Velvia 100F at a Reno Air Race. The whole roll was boring without any background as reference to blur so I just combined three of the reasonably sharp planes into one frame. Although in some passes they get very close but no such luck for me as I didn't have a big enough lens for most of it.

[cooltouch]

Wow, nicely done, Les! I believe I recognize that center Sea Fury -- probably Dreadnaught. I don't recognize the leading F8F or the trailing Sea Fury. Could just be new paint jobs, though.

Honestly, I would prefer boring blue skies to washed out haze or worse, having to shoot into the sun at some angle. Back in California, at a few air shows I went to, it was possible to get mountains in the background, which made for a nice backdrop. I believe it was the El Toro air shows. At the warbirds show at Minter Field outside Bakersfield, it was possible to get some of the distant mountains in shots when there wasn't too much atmospheric haze. Here in Houston, the annual show is at Ellington AF Base -- totally flat. So about all I can hope for at that show is blue skies.

So what camera were you using for the above shots?

Here's an image that I did a lot of post processing work on. Caanon FTb, Vivitar Series 1 28-90/2.8-3.5, Kodachrome 64. First, the unaltered image (except for being resized for display here):



And the extensively PP'd version:



Here's another cool, and very effective before-and-after processed image. The original is a Kodachrome 64 slide, shot using a Canon A-1 and a 50mm f/1.8 lens. I even used a flash, which did absolutely no good pertaining to the subject. This photo was taken in 1984 (in Hawaii) and I was still stuck on the photographic basics, committing substantial errors, but I was able to rescue the shot to nice effect.



And the "saved" image:

[cooltouch]

When Kodak announced the discontinuation of Kodachrome, and then when Dwayne's announced no more developing after the end of December, 2010, what did you do? Me, I found that I still had a couple rolls in the freezer, one of K25 and one of K64. I put things off, until it was almost too late. I recall just barely getting my rolls sent into Dwayne's a couple days before the deadline closed. I also recall actually driving around the city (riding, actually, I was on my bike), looking for suitable subjects for the last roll. It was a bit of a struggle -- Houston just isn't very photogenic. But I persevered. Here are a few of my final shots of Kodachrome:























I wish my shots would have been more memorable, considering how memorable the film was, but I was glad to have gotten to shoot those that I did, nonetheless. I have more shots, stored on my desktop CPU's hard drive, but they are no more memorable than these here.

Whenever I think of the end of Kodachrome, I feel a very real feeling of sadness and loss. The most archival color emulsion ever devised, and it's no more. Even digital is transient, by comparison. Kodachrome is concrete. You can hold it in your hand and observe the captured images directly, without having to use any other tool or device. Kodachrome was vastly important to me, as a photographer. Its narrow latitude and slow ISO taught me discipline, and rewarded me greatly when I followed its rules.

So, if you've got your last roll of Kodachrome digitized, care to share some shots?

[womble]

When Kodak announced the discontinuation of Kodachrome, and then when Dwayne's announced no more developing after the end of December, 2010, what did you do? Me, I found that I still had a couple rolls in the freezer, one of K25 and one of K64. I put things off, until it was almost too late. I recall just barely getting my rolls sent into Dwayne's a couple days before the deadline closed. I also recall actually driving around the city (riding, actually, I was on my bike), looking for suitable subjects for the last roll. It was a bit of a struggle -- Houston just isn't very photogenic. But I persevered. Here are a few of my final shots of Kodachrome:

I wish my shots would have been more memorable, considering how memorable the film was, but I was glad to have gotten to shoot those that I did, nonetheless. I have more shots, stored on my desktop CPU's hard drive, but they are no more memorable than these here.

Whenever I think of the end of Kodachrome, I feel a very real feeling of sadness and loss. The most archival color emulsion ever devised, and it's no more. Even digital is transient, by comparison. Kodachrome is concrete. You can hold it in your hand and observe the captured images directly, without having to use any other tool or device. Kodachrome was vastly important to me, as a photographer. Its narrow latitude and slow ISO taught me discipline, and rewarded me greatly when I followed its rules.

So, if you've got your last roll of Kodachrome digitized, care to share some shots?

Last photo of me with K64 par Kris Lockyear, on ipernity


My last frame par Kris Lockyear, on ipernity


Rupert (second edit) par Kris Lockyear, on ipernity

The first two were from the very last roll. The last from the batch I hurridly finished up that autumn. There is a 'last roll' album on my ipernity account: click here

[manntax]

Here's an image that I did a lot of post processing work on. Caanon FTb, Vivitar Series 1 28-90/2.8-3.5, Kodachrome 64. First, the unaltered image (except for being resized for display here):

You might call me nuts :P .. but I honestly believe that the first unprocessed shot is simple superb ! Your PP'ed version doesn't appeal to me nearly as much.
hmmm.. ;-)

---------- Post added 12-17-14 at 10:14 AM ----------

When Kodak announced the discontinuation of Kodachrome, and then when Dwayne's announced no more developing after the end of December, 2010, what did you do? Me, I found that I still had a couple rolls in the freezer, one of K25 and one of K64. I put things off, until it was almost too late. I recall just barely getting my rolls sent into Dwayne's a couple days before the deadline closed. I also recall actually driving around the city (riding, actually, I was on my bike), looking for suitable subjects for the last roll. It was a bit of a struggle -- Houston just isn't very photogenic. But I persevered. Here are a few of my final shots of Kodachrome:

The first two were from the very last roll. The last from the batch I hurridly finished up that autumn. There is a 'last roll' album on my ipernity account: click here

Excellent series and stories guys - thanks for sharing this !

[Cuthbert]

You might call me nuts :P .. but I honestly believe that the first unprocessed shot is simple superb ! Your PP'ed version doesn't appeal to me nearly as much.
hmmm.. ;-)[COLOR=Silver]

I wholeheartly agree: the unprocessed pic is better than the final result IMO...I've seen something similar in the critique angle:

https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/41-photo-critique/280736-people-seductive-look.html

Also in that case IMO the photographer tried to "improve" the shot through post-processing but the final result was worse (the head of the model merged with the background), this is a similar case because the backlighted silhouettes of the kids had some kind of attraction (a sort of ET thing for me) while the post processed figures look completely unnatural and distinct from the background, almost like they have been photoshopped or added to an existing shot.

[Jonathan Mac]

You might call me nuts :P .. but I honestly believe that the first unprocessed shot is simple superb ! Your PP'ed version doesn't appeal to me nearly as much.
hmmm.. ;-)

---------- Post added 12-17-14 at 10:14 AM ----------


Excellent series and stories guys - thanks for sharing this !

Agree, the first version is much, much better.

I like some of those Kodachrome shots too - it's something I never used.

[Dartmoor Dave]

So, if you've got your last roll of Kodachrome digitized, care to share some shots?

That could make a great thread in itself. Here's frame 37 from my last ever roll of Kodachrome 64. I had to dig the actual slides out to make sure, and ended up spending a couple of nostalgic hours with my lightbox and loupe and increasingly misty eyes. Now I'm thinking that I'll be taking the projector along when my family all get together for Christmas next week.