Gernby

I attended a Driver's Edge event at TWS (Texas World Speedway) about a month ago with a group of people from my office, and one of the guys is a great photographer. He didn't drive in the event, but wanted to spend a day taking pictures of cars. I don't know anything about photography, but I was blown away by his equipment. All I know is that his camera was a BIG / heavy digital SLR with an even bigger / heavier lense. I think he said it would take 9 uber-high res stills per second with variable shutter speeds. He spent the day taking essentually the same picture over and over trying to get the perfect shot of each of us. He was trying to get a shot of each car while it travelled FAST down the long straight with a low shutter speed, so that everything but the body of the car would be blurred by movement. He wanted to capture a true glimpse of "speed" without using any computer editing (PhotoShop). He did use PhotoShop to clean up imperfections in our cars (rock chips, dirt, etc.), but that's all. Note the the word "Speed" in the picture below is actually on the wall ("Texas World Speedway")

Below are the shots he got of my car, but here is a link to his Flickr page, where he posted the shots of the "lesser cars" (Audi R8 V10, a couple Vipers, and a couple C6 Z06's).

pmptx

Really nice shots. Those are some to frame on a 3 picture montage

Gernby

I bought an 8X12 print of each one on a special metallic paper, and plan to frame them. The metallic paper really makes the image "pop". A video monitor really doesn't do these justice.

tomauto

Yep, this guy gets it. Looks like f11, 1/160 ish... iso 200

trentor

true. And a very steady hand or monopod too. Awesome shots.

chef-j

Hoo hoo!! Nice shots!!!

indopinoy

#3 is a great picture. Would it be weird if I posted someone else's car on my desktop hahaha. (right click save as)

How was the event for you? Me and a friend have been looking at driving classes in Texas (he's become a little gun-shy after an accident on 635 and wanted to improve his skills.)

Gernby

The event was great, but way too expensive in brakes, which easily exceeded $500.

mxt_77

$500 for brakes for one event? Surely you didn't burn through a full set of pads in one event. Especially at TWS.

But, yeah... I had forgotten how expensive this hobby can be. I just bought new track pads for my car, and they added up to about the same amount. But I fully expect them to last 10 or more track-weekends.

Gernby

The Cobalt XP10s that I had on the front were almost full thickness, since I had only used them for a few autocrosses. Since I have the thicker NSX rings on my Racing Brake 2-piece rotors, I actually had to squish my calipers ALL THE WAY open just to install them. By the end of the 2 days, not only were the XP10's gone, the backing plates were concave (bowl shaped), and my friction rings were extremely scored from metal-to-metal contact. The NSX rings are $400 IIRC (first track event on those rotors), and the XP10's are probably $170.

However, the biggest brake issues I had were on the rear! I have always had good luck with OEM rear pads on the track, so I went to TWS with 50% OEM rear pads (stupid mistake). I thought they would make it fine. Unfortunately, they were toast half way throug the first day. I put in my backup set of 60% used OEM pads, and they were gone by the end of the day. That evening, I went to AutoZone, and bought a new set of their pads. They lasted 20 minutes, and were all the way down to the backing plates. Then I found another S2000 owner who had a 40% used set of XP8's that he sold me for $70. Those lasted for the rest of the day, and still have usable material left over. However, I paid the on-site mechanics to install 1 of those sets of rear pads, which was about $70. In all, I might have spent $700 on brakes.