This past weekend was the Tour of Lancaster (Pennsylvania) which consisted of a Saturday road race (which I skipped to ride my own bike and have a family day on the Chesapeake Bay) and Sunday, which consisted of a morning Time Trial and afternoon Criterium. My plan was to shoot both races on Sunday.
Weather was some light rain when I left the house at 6:15am. Get to the race and since it's still light rain and overcast I'm thinking great, no worry about which way the sun is pointing today (little did I know). Right from the start I mounted my Think Tank Hydrophobia to my D700/300 f/2.8vr set up (also started out the day using a 1.4x mounted as well) due to the race I shot last month when the rain dropped on me suddenly and I really didn't have time to weather up that well https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/783421/0#7192317
Not soon after the first few racers rolled out the rain started coming down a bit harder until it was pretty much a steady Torrential Downpour. It ended up being so bad that I had to find sections of road to shot from so the wind wasn't blowing the rain into my lens. The 1.4x came off right away as I ended up shooting most of the race at High ISO. Thank goodness I keep rain gear in the trunk. I came thru pretty dry and the Hydrophibia was great as well as no wet gear
The only downside was I only had an eyepiece for the Hydro for the D300 and I was using the D700 so I had issues keeping the eye viewer open to see what the heck I was shooting....ordering the D700 eyepiece today.
I ended up skipping the afternoon criterium due to the amount rain and lightening - I figured even if the held the race the participation would be so low that it just wouldn't be worth my time.
Anyway, here are some of the High ISO sample images from the race for C&C. As always I'm running a slide show of my favorite images from the race on my website home page www.MLKimages.com
It's the Nikon 300 f/2.8vr...and I agree I LOVE that lens now that I have a good copy. The original lens I owned had some issues with the focus tracking not working properly. Ended up at Nikon Service a few times for the same problem. 3rd time Nikon replaced the lens with a brand new one and it's a GEM!
Problem is, now I really don't shoot enough to warrant keeping the lens...but it's one lens that I'd be hard pressed to part with.
Michael,
Great work as always. . . #5 is my fav, with the curvature of the roadway, and the riders expression.
As for the weather, I just can not imagine shooting in those conditions, but I've shot a few 'cross races in snowy, icy conditions. It just doesn't seem as bad.
