Malaysian GP, Sepang 2017

whyone

whyone

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Ian
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I have just home after a week in Malaysia, including 3 days at Sepang. It is such a good place to watch F1 cars and a great shame it wont be on the calendar next year. I have never visited an F1 circuit that offers so many good, uninterupted opportunitied to photograph the cars.

I've got over 500 photo's to sort through, but here a few which hopefully give a flavour of both Sepang and the weekend.

Tickets for Friday give access to all public viewing areas so I spent my time split between the tower over the hairpin at the end of the back straight and it the main grandstand over overlooking the start finish straight and the pits - interesting for Practice, but not a great place to watch the race IMHO.

Practice 1 was somewhat wet....

Sparks and spray




Lewis during one of Mercedes worst Fridays for a long, long time.


The Force India 'stegasaurus' rear fin on Ocon's car:






Horrid!



Better...even with flow-viz paint



All go in the Ferrari pit:



Not the most popular man in F1 just now...
 
I got to wish Max 'Happy Birthday' on Saturday, and received a pierce of his birthday cake for my trouble!



First corner of the race less fraught than last year:



Lap 4, Max up the inside of Lewis....



...and past, much to the excitement of the many Dutch fans in attendance.



Seb got oh so close to Daniel, but some great defensive driving from the Aussie kept him in 4th place:
 
I actually find F1 pretty boring, the racing, not your pictures, however, I love your first pit lane shot, really brings out the drama, very good indeed.
Matt
 
A nice set of images but to my eyes they would have been so much better if you had used a slower shutter speed to introduce so movement. What shutterspeed where you using?
 
hamster100 said:
A nice set of images but to my eyes they would have been so much better if you had used a slower shutter speed to introduce so movement. What shutterspeed where you using?
Click to expand...

I know what you mean, but, if you have limited opportunities to photograph F1 it's best to guarantee as much as possible, going home with some 'keepers' and I think Ian has done a great job here. I used to photograph F1 in the 80's and it took me a couple of years of photographing motor sport before I could even consider any 'artistic' efforts, after that I used Friday practice for my attempts at something different, Saturday qualifying for my normal shots and Sunday was mainly to watch the races. This was in the Film era when it was quite expensive to be trying different techniques.
 
When I go to events like this I mix it up. I take some keepers and also then try to experiment a bit, that way hopefully I have some shots that I'm really happy with. Don't get me wrong I think these are good, but could have been better.
 
Thanks for your comments and discussion.

Doug makes a valid point WRT shutter speeds being to high so wheels were generally frozen. I was trying to juggle actually watching and understanding what was going on on track, with taking a few photo's, so time spent being distracted by camera settings was limited and compromised as a result. I will try to mix things up a little as and when the next opportunity to photograph cars presents itself though. We all live and learn.
 
Ian

You have some really nice shots, and I don't know if I would have done any better, but on occasions like this I like to push myself and see what I can do.

Photography is a learning curve and like most of us I'm still learning , and I think I'm improving with each outing.

Keep going and as you say next time mix it up a bit and hopefully you'll be even happier with you work.

Doug
 
A nice set of photos of what must have been a tricky race to get photos of looking at the race on TV with high fences and what seemed like a bit of a no mans land. I am with Doug on the shutter speed it also helps blur out distractions in the background. The first 4 wet and the pit photos shine over the others but all are enjoyable.
 
The circuit certainly appears to offer some far better shooting opportunities than Melbourne that I visited earlier this year, it was wall to wall fences there, which put me off ! You have a good selection of shots there, mine were all low speed stuff to counteract the chicken wire fence, with not too many keepers. Yes I would have gone for a bit more movement too like others have said but at least yours were good enough to show on here ;)
 
I currently live in baku, 2 years running I have watched and shot the F1, I can only say it is difficult, 2 layer fencing and limited access areas, restricted to your ticketed stand and the general access (behind said fences). Malaysia looks great!!! And this is a cracking set!!
 
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