CAPTURE NEW HORIZONS

Brendon Hartley - Fujifilm GFX  + GF120mm f4 - 1/250s  @ f4 ISO400 There has been a lot of feedback from photographers using the new Fujifilm GFX50S for landscape, fashion, portraiture and weddings but not a lot from the world of sport.  Fellow X-Photographer John Rourke has been an early adopter of the new medium format system and I have one of the GFX cameras and the three lenses on test for three weeks. Today I gave it a first run in the pitlane ahead of this weekend's FIA World Endurance Championship event in Belgium at the wonderful Spa-Francorchamps circuit in the Ardennes forest.  I wandered down to the Porsche pit for the pitstop practice session which saw the drivers ready to play their part.  It gave me the opportunity to capture some portraits on the GF120mm f4 macro lens using the GFX's pinpoint focus to highlight the eyes through the helmet visor.   Setting the GFX's AF system to single point with the smallest setting for the AF I was ...

Kazuki Nakajima, Toyota Racing As usual during the first day of track action of a FIA World Endurance Championship event we held the pre event press conference with six of the drivers taking part in the 6 hours race.  For here in Japan we chose Kauki Nakajima from Toyota, Andre Lotterer from Audi, Mark Webber from Porsche, Alex Imperatori from Rebellion Racing, Darren Turner from Aston Martin Racing and Andrea Bertolini from SMP Racing. I set up one of the X-T1s on a tripod to video the press conference for streaming on the official FIA WEC website and on social media and used a Nikon ME1 external micrrophone to record the sound. For this press conference I used the XF16-55mm f2.8 lens.  The second X-T1 was fitted with the XF50-140mm f2.8 to take pictures of the drivers so I have a set of still images to accompany the video. Mark Webber sharing a joke with Andre Lotterer Mark Webber, Porsche Team Alex Imperatorii, Rebellion Racing Darren Turner, As...

Yesterday the 4th round of the World Endurance Championship saw a 1-2 finish for Porsche in their home race in Germany.  This was the second 1-2 finish for the German manufacturer of the 2015 season - they won the 2015 24 Hours of Le Mans in June - but it was the first victory for the no17 crew of Mark Webber, Brendon Hartley and Timo Bernhard. As usual I was videoing the press conference on the Fujifilm X-T1 with the XF10-24mm f4 lens and I used the second X-T1 fitted with the XF56mm f1.2 to shoot some stills of the drivers during the press conference. Here is the video of the press conference following the 6 Hours of Nurburgring, round 4 of the World Endurance Championship . The images shot on the 56mm f1.2 were taken with the aperture at f2 or f1.2 at 1/125s to keep the ISO as low as possible (200 ISO) and the results were converted to black and white in Nik Silver Efex Pro2. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------...

While at an FIA World Endurance Championship race weekend I organise at least three press conferences and two other media activities where the drivers meet the journalists for interviews.  This weekend in Bahrain has been no different from other meetings, but with seven championship titles still to be won there is plenty of interest from the specialist and local media in getting that  special quote from the driver of choice. Here are some the images I took yesterday on the Fujifilm X-Pro1 and the Fujinon 23mm f1.4 lens that I was able to borrow for a couple of hours to test. More on this lens later this week. 2013 World Endurance Champion and nine times 24 Hours of Le Mans winner Tom Kristensen (Audi) 2013 FIA World Endurance Champion Allan McNish (Audi) 2012 World Champion Andre Lotterer (Audi) talks with the only lady driver on the FIA WEC grid Keiko Ihara (Oak Racing) Australian race winner John Martin of G-Drive Racing Ima...