The Great Race-Le Mans 1988

Last year I -inadvertantly- saw the final lap of an Australian V8 Supercar race on TV.The commentator was shouting and screaming as if his underpants were on fire.The race was a minor race and the action was obviously contrived and it bought it home to me how the "sport" has been taken out of motor sport and it is now "motor entertainment" - really just a vehicle for brand promotion through TV,
This relentless promotion has homogenised events.Once there were just 12 Grand Prix in the F1 World Championship.The races were big events in the countries where they were held .Indeed Grand Prix is Big Prize in French.Now there are approaching 20 Grand Prix and they have lost their significance.They are in fact Petit Prix .The same applies to the Indianapolis 500.Once it was The Great American Race.Now it is just another race full of promotional"opportunities".Yawn.
The iconic Bathurst 1000 in Australia is now just a staged for TV entertainment package - a rather long round in the V8 Supercar Championship.
Arguably the only motor sport events which have maintained their iconic status are the Isle of Man TT motor cycle races and the Le Mans 24 Hours Race and the reason they have done this is that they are still run by independent enthusiast clubs and by their nature the events are not suitable for packaging as instant gratification TV.

The 1988 Le Mans 24 hour race rates in my book as a really great race because it saw the return of Jaguar as a winner of the race after an absence of 31 years ( Ron Flockhart and Ivor Beub won the 1957 race in a D-type Jaguar) ,it broke Porsche's  iron grip on the race ( they had won the previous 8 races), it was a very exciting race right down to the chequered flag and the atmosphere generated by the very large number of very partisan British spectators was wonderful.

It's difficult today to appreciate the level of support for Jaguar at that time.Mrs Thatcher was the British Prime Minister and the head of Jaguar,John Egan, was one of her poster boys leading the "reinvigoration" of Britain.Jaguar had been pulled out of the appalling nationalised British Leyland in 1984 and was once again a public company.The Jaguar XJ40 launched in 1986 was apparently a major success - although this was illusionary- and Jaguar seemed destined for great things as a public company.
The bubble was soon to burst and in 1989 the company was a takeover target stalked by GM and then taken over by Ford who kept it until selling it to the Indian Tata Group-along with Land Rover-in 2008.
GM opted for second prize and bought Saab after losing out on Jaguar and then did absolutely nothing with it and running it into the ground over 20 years.And leaving it to go bankrupt.A very sad end to a great company. But that is another story.

Back to the 80's and Egan and his management team decided that winning Le Mans was an imperative to reestablishing Jaguar's sporting credentials.After a toe in the water dabble with the US Group 44 team in 1985 Tom Walkinshaw's TWR racing was commissioned to mount a full scale assault on the World Sports Car Chamionship with a particular emphasis on Le Mans.These were the days of fag money sponsorship and the Silk Cut  funded this very serious effort.
The first two attempts in 1986 and 1987 were unsucccesful and the Porsche juggernaut kept the prize.In 1988 Jaguar hit the jackpot and car No 2 the 7-litre V12 TWR XJR-9 of Jan Lammers,Johnny Dumfries, and Andy Wallace crossed the finishing line at 3.00pm on June 12th to take the chequered flag .But it was a very close call .The works Porsche of Stuck,Ludwig and Bell was on the same lap only 2mins and 36 seconds behind.A second Jaguar finished 5th but Porsches took the 8 other places in the top 10.
in the final 15 mins of the race the Jaguar had to make a "splash and dash" pit stop to take on a few litres of fuel to ensure that it made it home.Late pit stops at Le Mans are always fraught as there is the very real danger that the car will not restart as the engine is so hot and tired and the fuel system gets a vapour lock or as has happened many times a starter motor will jam.The atmosphere in the pit during this stop was beyond tense. Below is my photo of the final critical pitstop taken on my Leica from the grandstand using a 135mm lens and heavily cropped.
As it turned out the second placed Porsche was also very short of fuel and could not press the Jaguar harder but the Jaguar team did not know that at the time.
It was far from a David versus Goliath battle-more like a Goliath versus Goliath battle.TWR had enormous resources for the race.They fielded 5 cars and had a 14 drivers plus a team of 110 people plus a huge catering operation for the team.There was a TWR plane on standby in Kidlington in the UK ready to shuttle across any parts required during the practice days.Dunlop had 2500 tyres covering all eventualities just for the Jaguar team.And Jaguar had a mountain of champagne bottles ready to open after the race.And it tasted wonderful.
We all came back in 1989 but that year it was Sauber-Mercedes who took victory although Jaguar were back in the winner's circle in1990 but by then Ford were firmly in control.John Egan was gone, and the new management had no interest in going racing so that was the last victory for TWR Jaguar .Anyway dark forces were at work in the international administration of motor sport intent on nobbling Group C sports cars to ensure that F1 prospered.If you are at all familiar with motor sport you will be able to fill in the names of the personalities involved .
Photos of that great race by myself,Roger Putnam who was Sales and Marketing Director of Jaguar at the time and Peter de Rousset-Hall .
It would have been nice to adjust the colour cast of all the photos to a common base but as they come from slides and negatives which have aged at different rates via different scanners this would have just been a very time consuming exercise so please excuse the variations.

TWR paddock tent pre race day

Jan Lammers - Friday morning

Dusk falls

Goliath versus Goliath ,Esses du Tetre Rouge

Jaguar on pit straight dusk from the pit balcony

Winner making routine pitstop

From the main grandstand

Refuelling

The "splash and dash"stop.Tom Walkinshaw far right behind counter.

The three Jaguars cross the line in formation

5th placed Jaguar slowing down on pit lane

British cheer squad -about 80.000 strong in total

Winners are grinners.Tom Walkinshaw after the race

Winners are grinners 2.Roger Putnam centre,author on left.

Photobooks

Over the last few years I have made photobooks of my travels and other subjects.I have even dug into my archives and pulled out early photos of my children and made photobooks for them as presents .In 2011 I started what I hope will be a long standing process of making annual photobooks of my best photos from the year.
I initially started using Snapfish who are pretty good here in Australia and well priced but in the last 12 months I have also used Blurb as I find their software -downloaded on to my computer as opposed to generating the book on Snapfish's server- a more convenient and faster process and they have the edge on quality and paper choices although they are more expensive.
There are many other suppliers particularly in the US and all use the same underlying software either on the cloud or downloded onto your computer.
Photobooks are a very convenient way of displaying your photos off the computer and they do allow you to be very creative.Just take a look at some of the amazing books displayed in the Blurb bookshop online if you are looking for inspiration.See Blurb Bookshop.
You can see my 2012 Photos book on PHOTOS 2012

Groan-a baby photo

I realise it's not usual The Rolling Road territory but here's a photo story not about travel or motor sport .
In my book newly born babies rank way below kittens and puppies in terms of photogenic qualities.Cue howls of indignant protests from doting parents/grandparents,aunts/uncles and friends at this point .And as we all know those same doting parents/grandparents etc take millions of cliched newborn baby photos each year.We've all seen them.We can't avoid them.
Anyway presented with our first grandson 3 weeks ago I've tried hard-but maybe failed- to avoid the cliche shot of Otto with his mum.You can be the judge of whether I have been succesful.
I used my X1 on a very gloomy day last saturday to take this photo as a jpeg on the"natural"setting.The Leica does not fear wide apertures and if you leave it on auto ISO it always goes for the slowest shutter speed, widest aperture at lowest possible ISO combination.In this case it was 1/30th at f2.8 at ISO 125.This is the photo with just minor tweeking in Lightroom..

Some local colour

This was taken at wooden boat regatta at Davistown,NSW in September last year. I was expecting to get some photos of the boats but nothing was suitable and then I saw this colourful sight .Leica X1 photo .

A colourful photo taken in 2001 of the River Arno in full flood at Florence in the middle of August when it normally is a slow trickle .Taken by Roger Putnam on a very early Leica digital camera- actually a rebadged Fuji model- and given the HDR treatment in Photoshop.

Porsche problems.

I've always enjoyed taking motor sport pictures in the pits/paddock.The cars and the people who work on them make great subjects whereas great action shots demand long lenses and big gear.Here's a couple of shots of Porsche problems at the Le Mans Classic .From my Leica X1 & Canon G9.
Yes ,it is a 911 gearbox he has apart on the Friday afternoon and yes the car did race on the Saturday although I do not know whether all the gears were there.

Today it's Apple's turn

After my recent rant at Microsoft for their appalling Windows 8 OS which I had to accept on my wife's new laptop it's Apple's turn in my gun today.
I do not use iPhoto nowadays as I now have Lightroom as my cataloguing system but when I set up my Mac I transferred thousands of images into iPhoto initially.
I had big computer problems today.I ran out of hard drive space -- not surprising given the rate I download images etc- and this day has been coming for a few months but I have been managing it but today I downloaded some big files which filled the drive and then it locked up. And then I found there was not enough space to work any of the apps I need to clear it.
Also I found that the iPhoto trash bin had 16000 images in it -- I had not cleared it for 3 years .I thought it was the same as the computer trash bin which I clear regularly.I tried to empty it but it would not empty and just kept going and going and going.So I Googled it and found that there is a well known problem with the iPhoto trash bin which means it will not clear if it has more than about 100 photos in it.Apple have apparently known about the problem for years and still have not fixed it which really is a disgrace and there is no easy workaround.
So I will have to restore all those 16000 deleted images and I face the daunting task of deleting them again a hundred at a time and then emptying the trash can for each batch of 100.I had better find a monk to do this .Problem is that I have to do it otherwise the hard drive space will not free up.The alternative is to move the iPhoto library to a remote hard drive which I may well attempt as I do have everything well backed up.
The lesson is if you use iPhoto check the trash can and if it's got more than 100 images in it it may be a case of hard luck -Apple doesn't care.

Since I wrote this I have spent a few hours unravelling my iPhoto library( another Apple walled garden full of strange files ) and losing all the images and then restoring it with Time Machine and managing to get the iPhoto trash can to clear itself eventually.I seem to have lost a few photos along the way but nothing that matters.If at first you don't suceed try,try again but make sure that you have it all backed up before you do the try bit.

Now this is understeer.....

A Mini showing amazing understeer at Kidney Bend in the saloon car support race at 1968 British Grand Prix meeting,Brands Hatch UK.It is not starting to spin-this is the normal cornering angle.
The Minis were giant killers taking the fight to the front running cars -particularly the Jaguars - up until the mid 60's when a new class of competitors -particularly Escorts,Lotus Cortinas and Ford Falcons- outpaced them.Nonetheless even in this their twilight period the Minis were still spectacular to watch.The drivers kept their pedals to the metal and did not lose momentum on the corners making up for a lack of power by amazing cornering speed.The front tyres barely lasted a 20 lap race-look at that tyre smoke.

Photo taken by me on my 1936 Leica 3A with a 50mm Elmar lens (my only lens at the time) on Kodak Tri-X film- home processed and dried in a very dusty place going by all the dust specks on the negative.
A vintage photograph taken with a vintage camera a long time ago.Amazing to recollect that in 1968 when I bought the Leica it was still considered an almost contemporary design- cameras progressed very slowly then.Today last year's camera is considered ancient by many photographers.
Over the weekend I have found hundreds more interesting photos in the muddle which I laughingly call my archives.I now need to find a monastery full of monks prepared to scan them in for me as it is very tedious and slow work which I do not enjoy.What a pity they did not invent digital cameras 40 years earlier.

Tom's secret

Group C world sports car championship racing in the 1980's was fabulous.The cars were big and fast and made great sounds.It attracted major manufacturers as competitors and big crowds.
I took this photo of the TWR Jaguar pit prior to the start of the Spa WSC race in September 1989.I was there with Jaguar and I knew Tom very well but he asked me to stop taking photos in the pit.Why?With Tom you'd never know.Was it a secret mod (legal or perhaps questionnable) he was hiding or was he just being melodramatic?
Anyway 25 years later and with Tom sadly gone it doesn't matter and I'll never know .
Tony Southgate the car's designer is on the right of the picture.
Photo taken on a Leica M6 with a 28mm lens on Kodak Tri-X film.

Photography is so easy now...

My recent post on Kodachrome made me realise how much photography has changed in the past 20 years and how today's generation of photographers do not realise how lucky they are because photography today is so easy and so accessible.
Film used to be expensive,slow- particularly colour slide film-and difficult to use to get good results .Cameras did not have autofocus until about 25 years ago and even built in automatic exposure metering was not widely adopted until less than 30 years ago.The photos of the 1987 Australian Grand Prix in a recent post were taken on my Leica M4P which had a separate exposure meter fitted in the accessory shoe.I transferred the exposure settings to the camera and I focussed it manually using the coupled rangefinder.Nothing automatic about it .

The design and manufacture of sensors which are the electronic equivalent of film and which are at the heart of a digital camera has made very rapid progress in the past 5 years - particularly in terms of sensitivity.Now some cameras can take pictures in almost total darkness.

This picture of Phoebe taken last week in late evening, just lit by a table lamp,was taken on my Leica X1 handheld at 1/30th second at F2.8 at 3200 ISO.I just picked up the camera,composed it and shot it -something which would have been impossible even with a digital camera even 5 years ago.
 If I had taken it on Kodachrome 25 film it would have needed an exposure of over four seconds at F2.8.Clearly not possible.And the image quality (IQ) of the X1 photo is excellent and the X1 is not in the frontline when it comes to sensor sensitivity .Now ISO 32000 and even 64000 are available in the latest top end cameras.
Kodachrome slide film was available in ISO 200 but most colour films were ISO 100 or 125 and ISO 64 was pretty common.Also colour films were either daylight or tungsten and really tungsten or artificial light was for the pros as amateurs found it impractical to switch between different films. Now you set your digital camera on AWB (automatic white balance) and for most situations that is fine.

Despite all the improvements size still does matter when it comes to sensors and as a friend recently discovered there is nothing for free.He purchased one of the new generation "superzoom " cameras which offer a massive zoom range on a very small camera.What he did not appreciate that this trick is achieved by using a tiny sensor so that the lens does not end up extending 20cms from the camera.The so called "superzooms" sacrifice image quality and in particular low light performance for their extreme zoom range capabilities.

Despite all the improvements in sensor technology the basic rule that the bigger the surface area of the sensor the better the image quality of the camera- all other things such as lens performance being equal -still holds.You can determine the surface area of the sensor for all cameras on the market -past and present-from dpreview.com.

A few months ago I was reading a camera review and I inadvertantly started reading the banal comments that people who are socially disadvantaged submit in the comments section below the reviews.One idiot said that he could not consider buying the x camera as the autofocus speed would totally inhibit his photography.What utter drivel.For starters the autofocus speed of this particular camera was nothing special but was not really an issue and secondly before autofocus became widely available thousands of brilliant photos were taken using cameras with manual focus.Indeed even today many superb images are being made by photographers using the Leica M9 - a digital camera with only manual focus with a coupled rangefinder.

Peter de Rousset-Hall has sent me this photo of the 1988 Le Mans 24 hour race and it was taken on film with a 400mm lens which he had to manually focus whilst he was tracking the cars.No autofocus for him.

However perhaps to disprove the point I have just made below it is another of Peter's photos,perhaps featuring one of those same Jaguars,taken at the Silverstone Historics in 2012 using a full frame sensor Canon DSLR with,of course, autofocus.Bitingly sharp but remember this is an original big digital file whereas the 1988 shot is aged slide film scanned in and converted to digital.Both great photos-thank you Peter.I prefer the 1988 shot but I'm a Le Mans fan so hardly objective.

Mystery solved

Thanks to some excellent detective work by John Maries in the UK the identity of the mystery car below is solved.It is a Vimp.

Created in Kingswood, Surrey (UK) by Tom Karen (the driver) and Andrew Waddicor. Vimp was a cross between imp and vamp.
In order to sit in the car the windshield together with dashboard and steering wheel had to be folded forward. Max speed was 80 km/h.(!) In spite of the planning there followed no serial production.
Later Tom Karen joined the Ogle design team. In 1969 he designed the cult vehicle the Bond Bug.

He is still alive (perhaps surprising given some of the vehicles he designed) and was honoured at Loughborough University in 2001 for his contribution to British design.
See TOM KAREN

What is it ?

I found this photographic print in amongst hundreds of other prints last weekend.I have no idea what it is or where it was taken or why I have the print.The scene looks English and I guess it is the 1960's and the "car" has what may be a registration disc on the windscreen and a number plate so it must have been road registered.It seems to be three wheeler -or perhaps there are twin rear wheels very close together so that it does not need a differential.It is obviously rear engined and aircooled as there is no front radiator.Surely it is a home built special or was this a prototype for an economy vehicle and was someone hoping to manufacture and sell it ?

Australian F1 Grand Prix 1987

Between 1985 and 1995 the Australian F1 Grand Prix was held on the Adelaide street circuit in South Australia.It was the last event on the F1 calendar every year and it had the most wonderful "end of term" party atmosphere and the fans,drivers and the teams loved it .
Adelaide is a very pleasant city and the whole city got behind the race.The circuit was great and with a couple of exceptions the race was held in beautiful weather.Then in 1995 the little money grabbing gnome decided that he could make more money by giving the Grand Prix to Melbourne and the Adelaide Grand Prix was no more.Typical.
I have literally just found these atmospheric shots from the 1987 race taken by me on the saturday afternoon practice from the roof of the pits.I can't remember how I got up there but nowadays it would be impossible unless I was a FOB ( friend of Bernie).Which I never will be.
The first photo shows the Minardi of Alessandro Nannini outside his pit.Minardi was an Italian team which was always underfunded but always professionally presented and always pushing hard.Luck was not running Alessandro's way that race.He started in 13 position on the grid and had an accident at the first corner after the start.Adelaide is a long way to go to go off at the first corner.
The second picture shows the cars massed on the pit lane waiting for the practice session to start.In those days the cars circulated together in practice -- no single flying lap qualifying.No glass offices and banks of computer monitors on the pit wall.Just umbrellas and old style pit boards.Many on the pit lane look like they are actually enjoying themselves whereas nowadays it is almost compulsory to look as if you have just been told of the death of a dearly loved relative if you are on pit lane.Look at the cloudless sky -- and the size of the crowd on the practice day.
The photos were taken on Konica colour negative film on my Leica M4P.
All wonderful and great fun and sadly long gone .Now money rules and fans don't count.

A McLaren,Kodachrome and an Olympus.

These photos taken by me on Kodachrome slide film in 1978.They show the Australian Unipart team Formula 5000 McLaren M23 -built and raced by John McCormack.The car was powered by a modified Leyland P76 power unit -which was originally based on a Buick V8-which John "shoehorned" into the McLaren.
The photos were taken at Adelaide International Raceway( Mallala),South Australia and Sydney's Oran Park .Mallala is still in use but sadly Oran Park is a housing estate.Look at the size of the crowd at Oran Park.

I took these photos on an Olympus OM2 SLR camera.The OM2 was very popular at the time.It was a small ,compact ,very well made SLR with great lenses.It had a very nice feel and I always thought that it was a camera with "soul".

Recently Olympus have introduced a digital retro OM and whilst by all accounts performs very well I feel that its retro styling is rather forced( the pentaprism is just for effect) and it is very light to hold and it just feels soulless.Perhaps I am just spoilt having owned and used the original .

I recently posted  photos of Myanmar and said that their "look"  resembled Kodachrome.I have since realised that quite a few readers of this blog may not know the story of Kodachrome so here is an update of a post from two years ago.
 Kodak made the last Kodachrome film in 2009 and the last processing laboratory shut down its processing machine at the end of 2010 . So the shutter has clicked for the last time on one of photography's iconic products .Kodachrome was launched in 1935 and in the following 74 years it was the colour film of choice for generations of keen amateurs and professional photographers - still and movie .
Kodachrome was exceptionally sharp and was renowned for its vivid colours -- "Kodachrome " colours .Paul Simon even sang a song about it. It was also very stable.In my photo archive the old colour negatives and Ektachrome/Fujichrome slides are fading and discolouring but the Kodachromes retain their original brilliance .Who knows but given the lack of attention to archiving today's electronic images maybe in two hundred year's time all that will remain of today's images will be Kodachrome slides ?
 Despite its considerable strengths Kodachrome had some real weaknesses .It was slow.Originally only the equivalent of today's 10 ISO-yes really slow- it speeded up to 25 for its peak years and was later available as 64 and a high speed 200 which was a lesser performer .
It was also very expensive .A 36 exposure 35mm cassette cost the equivalent of a sizeable memory card today .
Processing was a complex task and it could only be processed by Kodak's own laboratories originally .Later independent laboratories came on stream although these were mainly in the USA .So processing the film involved posting the film in a little prepaid wrapper and then waiting patiently for a week or longer - often a lot longer if the lab was overseas- for the little box of slides to return by mail.Worse still the slides sometimes went astray in the post or were mixed up in the lab .Kodak in the UK had a small staff locating and redirecting incorrect slides .
Another major weakness was also that the film had very little latitude in terms of exposure .Correctly exposed photos were beautiful however even a little under or overexposure resulted in very dark/black or very washed out slides .

A Lotus Pub

A piece of automotive trivia.The idea of a car manufacturer, particularly a high performance car manufacturer,having a pub seems very non PC nowadays but back in 1974 Lotus ,in conjunction with the brewer Ind Coope,opened the Pub Lotus in Primrose Hill ,South London .The common thread was that Ind Coope were part of the Imperial ( (Tobacco) Group who were sponsors of the Lotus F1 team (Gold Leaf and later John Player Special).
Some pics,thanks to Roger Putnam,of the opening night of the Lotus pub -called Pub Lotus.
Lotus boss Colin Chapman-look at those sideburns- being interviewed by Gordon Wilkins with Ron Dennis,now el supremo of McLaren, with his default superior aloof expression in the background immediately to left of Chapman.
Team Lotus driver,Australian,Dave Walker,in the Lotus F1 car with Bobby Moore a soccer player and finally Stirling Moss being Stirling Moss being interviewed by Judith Jackson.

I don't know how long the Pub Lotus lasted.The exterior looks pretty grim but maybe all pubs in London looked like that in1974.The 1960's and 70's and well into the 80's were a pretty grim time for beer in the UK .The few major brewers controlled 90%+ of the pubs and horrible, warm carbonated,lolly water was marketed as beer with names such as Red Barrel ( later shortened to Red- what marketing genius thought of that one?) and Double Diamond.Yuk.
 And how about the two classic 60's cars in the street? A Morris Minor and a Triumph Herald -one of the worst cars ever made by the British car industry- which is saying something- probably only just edged out of first place by the Austin Allegro.Just look at those door gaps even on the little photo they are huge.Those were the days.

1981 Italian GP Monza -revisited

Of the thousands of motor racing photos I have taken over 50 years this is my absolute all time favourite .

 I have put this photo on the blog previously but I have just rescanned the original Kodachrome 25 slide to utilise  Lightroom 4 software to try and optimise it and this is very close to the original slide -on my monitor anyway. It was taken on an Olympus OM2 with an Olympus 28mm lens.

It was taken during the Saturday afternoon practice session at the 1981 Italian Grand Prix at Monza.It has it all -Monza- a fantastic,historic circuit with a unique atmosphere-that diffuse yellow light you get on a hot late summer afternoon in Northern Italy-wonderful cars being worked on in the pit lane in full view of everyone-not closeted away behind closed doors as happens now-a pit lane dolly in shorts-enthusiastic onlookers everywhere.And those great big slick donut tyres-no silly one-make control tyres in those days.And it is Italy.Wonderful.And perhaps above all else it has that wonderful film "look" is so appropriate for the time.

Windows 8 nightmare

My wife's ancient Dell laptop was running so slowly and the screen was so dim that I went and bought her a new Samsung running Windows 8 yesterday.I would have preferred to have bought her an Apple but we could not justify the price difference for her modest use.

Windows 8 is an absolute nightmare.And if you think that I am exaggerating just Google"Windows 8 nightmare" and see how many million references it brings up.It is appalling.It scores a minus score for usability.It is as if the designers and developers at Microsoft have deliberately set out to design an operating system that was totally confusing and difficult to use.Apple must be ill with laughing.
I am told by a major retailer here on the Central Coast of NSW that customers have been returning their Windows 8 laptops a couple of days after purchase and exchanging them - for a hefty changeover fee-for Apple laptops because they cannot understand how to operate Windows 8.

Microsoft management should be charged with crimes against humanity for Windows 8.The problem is that it is a duopoly.Very premium priced and easy to use Apple or appalling market dominant Microsoft.
I just cannot comprehend how this mess was signed off for sale.And the size and the number of updates being loaded up onto the new machine has to be seen to be believed.Didn't they test it before launching it?

Three days later

What a difference to Tuesday morning.Terrigal beach at 6.30 am today.Calm sea,no wind,sea mist and hot and humid.Only reminder of the big storm is the seaweed on the sand.Leica X1 photo.