Question: How do you take 5-10,000 images in one day?
Answer: You have five members of NCPS go on a photo shoot to Oulton Park for a day.
Yes, between them, Barry, Dave & Linda Hockin, Joyce Streets and Rob Hockney took several thousand images on the first day of the new Racing Bike season of Track Days at Oulton Park. For old hands and the uninitiated alike these near-weekly, free (yes, free) sessions are a brilliant opportunity to hone your skills at slow speed panning and composition and get some great shots of the bikers as they roar around the 2.6 mile circuit. You don’t even need a big lens and any 70-2/300 is the tool of choice in most locations. That said when I go again, very soon, I will take the whopper and the 1.4x again to get some more shots on the double bend at Fosters/Hislops. What I did find is that I needed a neutral density filter to get my shutter speed down sufficiently for slow speed panning. Actually, I didn’t have one, but a polariser did the same job for me so that I was panning at ISO 100, f2.8 and ca 1/350th. The only disappointment was that both footbridges allowing access to the outside of the track were closed. We don’t know why and nor it seemed did anyone else, but if you’ve been before and want to access Britten’s and the long loop south of Fosters you’d best check that they’re open before you go. If you’ve not been previously this is pretty much immaterial to a great day out.
If you fancy giving this a go the next event is Wednesday 26th March and then almost every Wednesday thereafter. The next pro race is early in May when you can shoot the fast and famous having perfected your skills between now and then.
If you don’t see any of the five of us for a week or two it may well be because we’re still processing images or, in Barry’s case, waiting for them to upload to his abacus.
