Today was my first day of tech. It is fair to say, that on orientation day last Friday, I walked away from campus with a variety of emotions, including, but not limited to, fear, excitement, disappointment, anger, upset, overwhelming etc. Some of those feelings were due to an error with my enrolment which saw me nearly in tears at the business school reception desk.

I decided it was sink or swim and in the car on the way to class decided that I would swim. I did this about 12 months ago when I moved into race control. Someone had their idea of shocking me to see if I would sink or swim. Whilst they were hoping I would sink, I swam. For my life. Doing that 12 months ago, proved to me then and now that I can do this.

I’m now only nervous about exams, tests, quizzes and assignments. I’ve met the lecturer for this semester and he seems like a nice enough person. Yay.

Given that I’m working full time throughout this and my library time will be limited, I’m taking the expensive route and purchasing the recommended text books instead of borrowing them and copying what I need. This way, I have everything, when I need it and I’m not limited by my own timetable.

So now, I’m a student as well as a full time wage slave, photographer and race ‘troll. I’m as prepared for all of this as I ever can be. Bring it.

Yesterday was the six hour race at Pukekohe Park Raceway and as I mentioned a few days ago, I had a brainwave to do a time lapse of the front straight of the track. I’ve done one time lapse before, but this was the first time I’d attempted something on this scale.

I set my camera up on the top level of the members grandstand. It had a view of the start/finish line, a bit of the grandstand and the area behind “Jennian Homes” as well as across to Buckland and the skies above the track. This time, I had the power of 3x spare batteries up my sleeve. Or so I thought. Turns out I grabbed 2x Spares and a spare for another nikon camera that has *very* similar looking batteries. Le Sigh. But I didn’t know this when I set up my tripod.

Basing my calculations on a 4gb memory card and two batteries every 3 hours, I should have been home and hosed, but given my f**k up with the spare battery, I had to change my plan and it worked in my favour I think.

Equipment:

1x D200
2x 4gb CF Cards
3x EN-EL3e Batteries
1x MB-D200 Battery grip
1x Slik Tripod
1x Tokina 12-24 f4 Lens

I used my auto focus to focus a point on the track just in front of the flag point at pit exit and then engaged the clutch on the lens to manual and adjusted the focus. The images are very slightly out of focus, but there isn’t much I can do about that now, and you wouldn’t know looking at the video either.

Set to ISO 200 and aperture to f11 and the camera in Aperture Priority mode, I left the camera to make the best decision about shutter speed. While this does deplete my battery even faster, it allows for long shutter speeds as the light fades. And the lower the ISO, the longer the shutter speed. That whole triangle of exposure thingymajig. We kicked off with a shutter speed of 1/200.

Using the built in interval timer in my camera, one exposure every 15 seconds. As the light failed, and so did my batteries, I darted out onto the balcony and changed it down to one every minute and by then the shutter speed was adjusting itself to 1.5″ every minute. Awesome.

Over two compact flash cards, I came home with 1597 photos. It took a while to import them all into Lightroom. From there, I adjusted the exposure for the sky to bring the clouds out more and cropped them to 16:9 widescreen for HD video format. I took the finished product and exported them to ProShow, where I dropped the image count down to a more respectable 1326 frames and display them for 0.125 seconds, and so, the whole positioning period, safety car, rolling start, race, safety cars etc and to parc ferme are all captured.

Of course I’m really impressed with the results. Dropping down the shutter at the end of the day means a lot less boring stuff at the end, but meant I was able to capture the whole race. Funny how these things work themselves out.

So without further ado, I present 300x Laps, 1326 frames, 6 hours all squeezed into 2:47

By Terri O’Leary who is a marshal in Britain. I thought it was appropriate I share it with you as we start the run to Bathurst this weekend! I have also illustrated it with photographs of the marshals in action around Pukekohe Park Raceway here in New Zealand. Some photos are recent, others are much older, but we need to save this endangered species

IDENTIFYING

This shy and retiring creature can be found at motor racing circuits around the world. Colouring differs, but the common marshal or Pumpkinus Maximus will generally have orange plumage. There are 2 common variations on this plumage in the UK and Ireland – the Pumpkinus Silverstonius which can be identified by its handsome black plumage with orange stripes; and the Pumpkinus Rescuecrewinus which is generally green. The Rescuecrewinus is an interesting specimen. This type of marshal usually starts with orange plumage, but when they reach maturity, the plumage changes colour. Strangely, unlike most creatures, the plumage of the marshal seems deliberately designed to attract attention, rather than camouflaging the creature. Naturally, this makes it vulnerable to predators, which may account for the decreasing numbers of this fascinating beast.

HABITAT

The habitats of the marshal are as varied as its plumage. For the purposes of this article, we will concentrate on the Pumpkinus Maximus variety. Pumpkinus Maximus can be found on grassy banks around race circuits. This creature seems to thrive in cold, damp conditions and is often mistaken for a form of fungus on wet days. Marshals become confused and lethargic when exposed to sunshine and exposed patches of skin can become red and irritable. Read more »