Happy New Year everybody.. well, I did it.. I took the plunge.. I ordered the Canon 20D to replace my current Digital Rebel 300D.. I’ve used my friend’s Canon 20D on many occasions.. in fact, I think I may have used his Canon 70-200mm f2.8L IS zoom lens more than he has.. everytime I used his gear at Formula D or D1, I’d give it back thinking that I should upgrade.. that feeling would last about a week or so until I realized that I for most circumstances, I didnt need the extra speed (5fps versus 2.5fps).. this time was different though.. this time, I was asked to take some pics for DSport again.. but I had a birthday party to attend that started at 1PM.. the practice session started at 10AM at D1.. so that was the only time I’d be able to photograph the cars.. with a 2GB CF card in hand and an hour or so to shoot, I really had the opportunity to “waste” shots.. in the past, I’d have to ration 1GB or 2GB for the whole day.. but with 2GB (about 700 shots) and 5fps, I went nuts.. and it paid off. I ended up with lots of garbage, but the percentage of good shots, I think, was much higher than in the past.. which makes sense.. if you only shoot 3-4 pics of one drift and end up with 1 good one, then it would be reasonable to assume if you shoot 6-8 pics, you’d get at least 2 good ones.. however, I think with the faster camera you get a lot more good pics to choose from.. if I take 5 consecutive shots over a period of 1 second, its true that the 5 shots may look very similar to each other, but in that span of 1 seccond, you get different drift angles, different amounts of smoke, different “backgrounds”, etc.. I really think the camera speed helped a lot.. I had my 300D with the 16-35 f2.8L on it just to take “supporting” shots of the cars towards the end of their drift.. and even then, I ran into times where my shot buffer was full (4 shots) and I missed shots that I wanted to take (usually when the cars were close together during tandem drifts)..
Anyhow, now I’ll be selling my Canon Digital Rebel 300D with BG-E1 battery grip on eBay.. the prices have been decent, which was a big factor in me deciding to upgrade.. the other factor being Canon’s triple rebates ($300 rebate on the 20D alone)..
In the meantime, here are a few more D1 pics that I hand picked as “good”..
