Sunday, March 23, 2008

Formula One - Sepang International Circuit

Panning shots have never really been an interest to me - I've always felt that it's a "guy thing" - but this first experience at the F1 really got me excited.

I received a phone call from a friend from the photography forum just a few days before F1, offering me free ticket as someone could not make it last minute so was giving up his/her ticket. It was quite a tough decision to make coz it's my birthday weekend and I simply cannot go on Saturday as I was going to have dinner with friends and all the rush can foreseeably ruin the night. I decided somehow just to go on Sunday.. i.e. my birthday itself.

Turned out to be an unexpected yet fantastic "birthday gift" from a certain unknown someone :) I wish I could thank this person personally but don't actually know who he/she is. Well so I joined the mytikas group from Singapore (Olympus DSLR users). I was a bit skeptical about this at first coz I didn't know any of them! But decided what the heck - impromptus are fun!

I woke up very early (again despite the late night out) and sped to Subang to meet up with the group at their hotel (thanks to Blu who arranged the meet-up). Left for Sepang together with them after a good session of breakfast at the mamak :) They simply loved our iced milo kao!

It was a very fun experience though quite a challenge at first - to get the tyre-spinning effect and the blurred background yet not sacrificing the sharpness of the subject. My first attempts with the 40-150mm were not very good... then someone from the group offered me the 50-200mm SWD *grins* Woohoooo.. it was a different "feel" altogether!!

Me with the mytikas shooters from Singapore ;)









































Then another offered me the 50-500mm Sigma.. ooo it was not easy to take panning shots with this due to its weight and I was not using a tripod.. but still it was amazing!













Me with the 50-500mm Sigma (otherwise known as BIGMA.. which is so aptly named) Btw, this thing is H-E-A-V-Y!!

...And all equipped with the powerful 50-500mm, I could zoom from afar and took candid shots of others which turned out to be quite.. haha.. interesting :P














Some Japanese kids


This boy started young with DSLR..






Ferrari supporters!























































































Was a wonderful experience shooting with the mytikas bunch - they're simply generous with their lenses and offered very good tips :) My shots were definitely nothing to shout about, but the experience that came with it was more than anything I can ask for :)
I was exhausted from the heavy load of lenses and the afternoon heat, coupled with the minimal hours of sleep. The jam getting out of Sepang F1 circuit was horrible, but hehe I wasn't driving.. and I dozed off :P

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

phwarrrrrr... panjang bya bazooka tu.......