Tag Archives: 40d

2008 IDRC International Finals

Posted on by
Reply

It was pretty short notice.. it seemed like this year’s event was a little last-minute.. but it went OK nonetheless. Mike actually asked me to go just to check it out and snap some pics.. to be honest, I wasn’t all that excited. I told him if there was no drifting, then there’d be nothing to watch. He didn’t like that too much and bombarded me with a handful of insults. 😆

After checking out the schedule and since I’m relatively close to Cal/Auto Club Speedway, I figured I’ll check it out in the morning and get home in time to go to a friend’s kid’s birthday party. But I have to say, one big reason I decided to go was because DLo (AKA Eric Hsu) mentioned on his blog that he was going to be taking out the Beast AKA his XS Engineering Skyline R32 GT-R. I’ve seen the car in person many times, but never “mobile”. Plus, Mike and Wen said that they had contacted a handful (10-12) Skyline owners and that they’d come out for the “GT-R Shootout” at the event (it turned out to be a separate heads-up class, basically).

The event was actually much better than I had expected. There were lots of racers/racecars. I also have to hand it to the Honda drag racers who have kept at it. I saw Honda after Honda blast down the quarter mile running 9s and 10s. When I left Saturday morning, the cutoff for the Pro-Am FWD class was at 10.56 or something like that.. very impressive. I also saw a couple Hondas run 9.60s. But the highlight of my day was definitely seeing the R32-R35 Skylines line up and race down the track. One R35 (from Titek?) was running mid 11s and one that looked stock ran a 12.0 while I was there. Wen’s R33 that made 870+ WHP only managed a 12.1 (while I was there) but he figured he had broken something in the driveline, which is why the car was trying to drive itself into the wall. I heard Eric Hsu ended up qualifying Sunday and won the GT-R Shootout with a 10.40 pass.. not bad.

So anyway, here’s some of the images I took in the 2 hours that I was there.. look for full media coverage in an upcoming issue of DSPORT Magazine or on their website, http://www.dsportmag.com

[photopress:IMG_9421_PS.jpg,full,centered]
Wen’s HKS turbo.. don’t ask me what size it is, but I’m guessing its a T51R

[photopress:IMG_9467_PS.jpg,full,centered]
Hubie Fuh’s 10 second Mini Cooper S.. how about them gypsies, huh Hubie?

[photopress:IMG_9487_PS.jpg,full,centered]
An orange Nissan Skyline R33 GT-R

[photopress:IMG_9543_PS.jpg,full,centered]
TiTek Nissan Skyline R35 GT-R running mid 11s

[photopress:IMG_9603_PS.jpg,full,centered]
Speedline Racing & DSPORT’s Wen Lai and his Nissan Skyline R33 GT-R

[photopress:IMG_9680_PS.jpg,full,centered]
A random 10 second Honda Civic with about 1,100 more feet to go..

[photopress:IMG_9711_PS.jpg,full,centered]
A 9? second Scion tC.. who knew it existed? Not me.. but very impressive

All images were shot with my Canon EOS 40D and Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L. Can you tell I’m trying to be more creative in my cropping? 🙂

At Last: Canon EOS 40D Shutter Count Retrieval! (Works on 40D, 50D, 450D, and 1000D)

Posted on by
Reply

At the time of this writing, this program should work on all DIGIC III and IV cameras EXCEPT for the 1D and 1Ds. The author, Astrojargon, believes it should work on the Canon EOS 5D Mark II, but until someone actually receives one or tests this program, we wont know for sure.

Reading his FAQ #7, he says that most people believe this number to be correct. Well, you can add me to that list as well. My last image (a picture of Rhys Millen standing on the podium aftering winning $25,000 from his 1st place victory at the Red Bull Drifting World Championship) was numbered 9612. Astrojargon’s “40D Shutter Count Version 2” reported 9613. Its off by one, but he mentions that if you actuate the shutter without a CF card, then the IMG_XXXX would not incremement, obviously. This, I can confirm, is my case (I left the house once without a CF card and tried to take a picture before realizing I didn’t have a CF card in the camera).

So.. at last, a real way to obtain a shutter count on a Canon EOS 40D (or 50D or 450D or 1000D).

Anyway, enough BS.. you can find his program here:

40D Shutter Count

Thanks, Astrojargon!

Formula Drift Finals 2008 @ Toyota Speedway

Posted on by
Reply

I’m using the “blog this” function again from Flickr. Its actually quite useful and easy to use. But I wanted to post this photo because I’m still surprised at how well it came out.

This was shot with my Canon EOS 40D and Canon 70-200mm f2.8L IS lens. The manual exposure was set at 1/125, f2.8 and ISO1600. I cleaned up the noise using Noiseware Pro. Pureists will say that the pictute has a plastic look to it.. to which I would say STFU 🙂

Click on the picture to see my Flickr album of some of my shots from the 2008 Formula Drift Finals at Toyota Speedway in Irwindale, CA.

Surprise: Canon EOS 50D and Canon EF-S 18-200mm IS

Posted on by
Reply

I wasnt planning on upgrading to another 1.6x crop body.. I figured I’d just keep my 40D as my 1.6x and get a full frame later on down the line. Even then, I didnt expect Canon to update the 40D so soon. Odd that when consumers demanded the 30D be upgraded, Canon stuck to an 18 month lifecycle back then. You can definitely give Nikon the credit for pushing Canon to update the XXD body so soon.

I think Canon is ready to play ball.. and what makes me say that? 15.1 megapixels. We’ve long known that megapixels is all for show (marketing).. but hey, thats what sells. With Nikon’s D90 coming in at 12+ megapixels, I think its a rather strong statement from Canon to “skip” that game altogether and move right on up to 15.1 megapixels. Think about that. Its 50% more pixels than the 40D. The largest jump in pixels ever, I’d guess. Also with the 50D comes the new Digic 4. That means the Digic 3 was rather short lived. Hell, the Digic 3 is in their 2 flagship models, the 1D Mark III and 1Ds Mark III. So its a pretty huge step to introduce the Digic 4 so soon. Also take a page from Nikon’s playbook, Canon will be stuffing a 3″ 920k pixel screen in the 50D.. its about freakin time. ISO 12,800 (also from Nikon’s playbook) is mostly marketing hype, but its the hype the sells.

I’ll admit I gave some thought to dumping my 40D.. I cant help it. But I dont think it’ll happen this time. Unless the 50D has MUCH better AF tracking, I dont think I need it.. thats mainly what I’d want at this point.

Another surprise is Canon has FINALLY made the 18-200mm lens. It’ll be an EF-S, but thats probably where its needed the most anyhow. I was actually looking at the Sigma version of this range as a “Disneyworld” lens (as much as I’d like to pack my 24-70 and 70-200, its just not worth it). At $699 MSRP, I’m not so sure I’d bite. But if Canon’s last few offerings are any indication, the 18-200 EF-S will probably sell for around $500 (or less) on the street. That might be do-able.

In the meantime, here’s what B&H had to say about the 50D:

Canon’s newest entry into the fall season Olympics is the EOS 50D, which sports an impressive 15.1-megapixel APS-C format CMOS sensor that takes full advantage of Canon’s new DIGIC 4 image processor.

The EOS 50D can knock out up to 90 Large/Fine JPEGS or 16 RAW images at burst-rates of up to 6.3 f/p/s. If you often find yourself shooting under low-light conditions, the new camera can be set for ISO ratings up to 12800, which means you can not only photograph people standing in near darkness, you can also photograph what they’re thinking about. (Just joking folks… don’t get alarmed)

To keep noise under control and maintain optimum image quality at higher ISO ratings the EOS 50D allows you to choose from four levels of noise reduction – Standard, Weak, Strong, and None. The camera’s DIGIC 4 image processor also features in-camera peripheral illumination correction, which can automatically smooth-over uneven blue skies and other large areas within an image that can benefit from smoother tonality. This feature, along with other image enhancing tools such as Auto Lighting Optimizer can also be performed post-exposure using Canon’s Digital Photo Professional (DDP) software, which is included with every camera.

Image viewing has also been improved via a greatly enhanced 3″ LCD that employs 920,000 pixels for breathtaking clarity. Canon also tweaked the Live View function by incorporating a ‘Quick Mode AF’, ‘Live Mode AF’, and ‘Face Detection Live Mode AF’ that can detect up to 35 individual faces within the camera’s frame.

Other features of the Canon EOS 50D include an Integrated Cleaning System for preventing dust and other forms of airborne schmutz from gathering on the sensor’s low-pass filter and a choice of two smaller RAW formats (sRAW1 and sRAW2) in addition to the 50D’s standard RAW mode.

The Canon EOS 50D will be available in October as a body only, or in kit form with a Canon EF 28-135/3.5~5.6 IS USM zoom lens, which covers the field of view of a 44.8-216mm lens on a full-frame 35mm camera.

Check out some Canon 50D sample pics here

Formula Drift: Streets of Long Beach 4/12/08

Posted on by
Reply

Well, I have to admit, I was kind of excited that the 2008 Formula Drift season finally got started. Drifting events (and maybe soon, Time Attack) are the one time where I’ll go out and spend a whole say shooting pictures. I’ll goof around with the camera at home and whatever, but shooting cars at speed going sideways is a different thing altogether. So when you do nail a good shot, its much more rewarding.

Oh, also its a good reason to buy new photo gear too. 🙂

When Formula Drift was in Long Beach in 2006, I struggled with a 70-200 being long for most photo spots on the track. I tried a 16-35, but that was generally too wide/short. So prior to the 2007 Long Beach event, I bought a 24-70mm f2.8L. That was pretty much all I used this year. If you’re good, you can probably get by with a 70-200mm, even from the inside of the long sweeper. But there’s no way you’d be able to get two cars drifting in tandem unless they were on top of each other. And even then, you’d probably only get 1.5 cars in the frame. So what did I buy this year? Canon 40D 🙂 .. but more on that later.

Anyway, you can check out more of my Formula Drift: Streets of Long Beach pictures on my flickr page: 2008.04.12 Formula Drift: Streets of Long Beach