The Sun is Shining in the South of France

- March 26, 2013

While the UK is still in the deep freeze of winter I have come down to the South of France for one week for the European Le Mans Series (ELMS) and FIA World Endurance Championship (FIA WEC) official tests at the Circuit Paul Ricard in Le Castellet. With the sun shining, and not a cloud in the deep blue sky, it was a very different scene to the one I left in Grantham yesterday morning.

Today was the first day of two days of testing for the ELMS and I decided to go out around the track to have a closer look at this fantastic circuit. I have been to Paul Ricard for tests and for races but I have never been trackside with my camera as my media delegate duties normally don't allow me the me the time. However with only sixty media on site I was able to go out with Jean-Michel Le Meur, my lead photographer from DPPI, the sports agency I employ for the ELMS and FIA WEC.

I was also interested to see how the Nikon D800 handled as a sports camera. With only 4 frames per second and a massive 36mp sensor it has been said in the reviews that the D800 is not the best tool for sport photography. I would tend to agree, but only to a point. It certainly produces the goods photographically and you have to think about how you use the camera more. I also tried it in DX mode, which still gave me 16mp on the DX crop and this had the advantage that the frame rate improved to 6fps. This worked very well and improved the camera as a tool for sport photography.

Anyway I decided to try some creative / arty images around the track and capture a different side to the test session.

Here are some of the images I took with the D800 and the Fuji X100 around the paddock.