BSB test day Oulton Park
British Superbikes Oulton Park
This May Bank Holiday the British Super Bikes hold their second race of the Championships at the photographer friendly circuit of Oulton Park. We at PistonClick have produced a guide to the Circuit if you are going so you should to get a head start and be able to grab some great shots from this event.
If you get some great shots feel free to share your images on our Facebook page as we are always interested to see other photographers work, or better still send them in with a few words and we might just publish them.
Glenn Irwin
To inspire you our resident BSB photographer went along to the Oulton Park test day to capture the action and to give you some inspiration on what can be achieved from the spectator photographer's view point.
All of Keith's images were taken from the paying side of the fence, although it was free on the test day you will have to give some of your hard earned cash over to Oulton Park for the race day meeting.
Tommy Bridewell
When you go to test days they are generally poorly attended due to being mid week and there being no racing. The close fairing to fairing racing is what we want to see when we hand over our loot. But on a midweek wet test day you are not really going to see that, so not to many fans turn up.
Xavi Fores
However, I really enjoy the test day environment. As a photographer you are not restricted to a few races to get your pictures and you are far from rushed. You can take your time as you have all day and generally speaking the riders will be out for four one hour sessions. The super stock and super sport rides are also out on track so you have plenty of subject matter to test your skills.
Ryan Vickers
The test days are also good practice if you are going to attend the full race weekend. You can take your shots and review them later to see the best place to stand in each area as indicated on our guide. Just moving a few feet to the left or right can give you a very different feel to a set of images.
Luke Stapleford
The test day at Oulton was the usual mix of UK weather with sunshine and some quite bad downpours. Keith reported back that he was continually adjusting his camera to compensate for the changeable lighting conditions by using exposure compensation. This tip works well if the metering is being fooled by the lighting conditions or the subject.
Ben Currie
The exposure compensation button is usually found next to the shutter release. It will have + and - symbols denoting add (brighter) or subtract (darker) from the exposure. This is handy for the motorsports photographer when shooting in variable lighting conditions. In bright sunlight drop the exposure compensation by -.3 or more.
This will help with blown highlights (no detail in the whites) This technique also works well with black and white cars. Remember it's possible to lighten a shadow in post production but it's nearly impossible to get detail back into a blown highlight.
James Ellison
One less refined way to mitigate the variations in lighting conditions is to set your ISO to automatic. This trick helps to keep your setting the same but varies the sensitivity of the sensor, increasing it as it gets darker and reducing it as the light improves.
I have tried this technique a few times and it can save you a shot or two if you are in shutter priority and sometimes in full manual mode. I would only recommend this tip if you have the latest camera that can handle higher ISO settings. Some of the older cameras can go to high ISO settings but don’t handle the noise that is generated, ruining your image.
Andrew Irwin
In the camera menu setting you can set a maximum ISO to avoid this. On down side, if you like to do very slow panning shots the auto ISO setting can stop you selecting a slow shutter speed in Program and Aperture priority, both of which you shouldn’t be using in automotive sports photography anyway.
Personally I like full manual and setting the ISO myself as I like to fine tune the exposures for shadows and highlights since every day at the track is different. If it's very sunny you will have a high contrast image, if cloudy, low contrast. To do this I will take a shot of the track and look at the histogram. This is usually found in the review menu.
What you should be looking for is a peak in the middle of the display falling away to the left, shadow (black) area and the right highlights (white).
If your exposure (the peak) is concentrated to the left it will be dark and to the right light, you need a balance. However, if for example a motorbike is tipping towards you the underside might be in shadow so you might want to open the aperture to move the exposure to the right to lighten the shadow areas.
Don’t push it too far to the right or your highlights will be blown. This can help a lot on post production if you shoot RAW as there will be more detail to play with. I like to shoot jpeg and get it right in camera. So shoot the track including the background and review the histogram. 99% of the time this will give you a good image. Shoot the subject as it goes past, review while waiting for them to come round for the next lap and adjust the exposure if required.
Should you use the histogram to set your exposure? The short answer is no, the histogram is only a guide to your exposure, it will show you if there is a problem that you can't see on the far from ideal rear monitor.
In some situations the peaks will be rammed up to one side or the other on the histogram which could be what you want for that shot, a dark grandstand or white Armco.
As an example a white car will produce a peak to the right of the histogram.
If the highlight peek is all the way to the right, that’s indicating a loss of highlights.
Get busy with the exposure compensation button or adjust your exposure.
As a side note you can set your camera display to "blink" blown highlights -check your manual for details.
Enough of the techno babble what did we find out at the Oulton test day besides the obvious that Keith can take a stunning set of images?!
Well for me one very worrying fact was the speed round the track that Josh Brookes was achieving on the Be Wiser Ducati. He was a second faster than all of the other riders - a good thing for him but potentially a bad thing for the BSB fan.
Josh Brookes
If we take a step back and look at the World Superbikes we see Alvaro Bautista on another Panigale V4R Ducati dominating World Superbike (WSB). So far he has won 11 out of 11 races which has made this race series a little boring for me. At the start of most of the WSB races Jonathan Ray gets out to the front for a while then Bautista blasts past him within a few laps and disappears into the distance, yawn. However, Ray has won the WSB championship for the last 4 years so maybe this is a wakeup call.
It could be that Brooks liked the cold damp conditions. It could also be the Ducati is now getting into its stride. I really hope this is not an indication of things to come in our domestic race series. I will probably get pulled up on this when I turn up at the track with the "Well Scott Redding is on the same bike and he was 12th round Oulton." This is true but Scott is not 100% fit and this is his rookie year in BSB so will take time to understand the tracks on a superbike.
Scott Redding
What was encouraging for a close competetive season was the variety of machines at Silverstone that could take the title. We saw at the first round that the McAMS Yamaha are quick with Jason O'Halloran and Tarran MacKenzie on board and I can see a few double podiums for these two.
Tarran MacKenzie
Jason O'Halloran
As predicted a few months ago by this site, the OMG Suzukis are quick. We did say watch out for Luke Mossey and after his fourth and sixth place finishes - at the first round he looks to be going well.
Luke Mossey
But it's his team mate Josh Elliot that got a taste for the podium with first and second at the opening round at Silverstone. Admittedly Tarran MacKenzie was penalised 3 seconds for punting his team mate Jason O'Halloran off into the kitty litter after a dubious undertaking maneouver, gifting Elliot the win.
Josh Elliot
More encouraging news was the BMW teams of Tyco and Smyths Racing. As reported from our Silverstone BSB test day report the BMW team were absent but were in action the following day. We have exclusive pictures of Peter Hickman jumping the mountain at Cadwell (see previous report) the day after the official test day at Silverstone so the BMW couldn’t have been that bad, could they?
Peter Hickman
It looks now like they have sorted most of the problems out and were going well at Oulton. Christion Iddon on the Tyco BMW coming in 4th fastest just pipping by the tightest margin the worlds fastest road racer Peter Hickman to 5th on the Tyco BMW Motorrad.
Christion Iddon
As for the number 1 machine of the Team Appleyard Macadam Racing Yamaha ridden by Jack Kennady, he was on top form running out fastest on the day in the Supersport class. Following this up with his win in the sprint race and the main event at Silverstone he looks to be the one to watch in Supersport.
Jack Kennady
34 Alastair Seeley was second in both the Supersport races at Silverstone. Hopefully he will give Kennedy a run for his money and challenge for the title. He looked fast at Oulton but we were unsure of his times as he was having transponder issues.
Alastair Seeley
It wouldn’t be a PistonClick report if we didn’t have a picture of Keith Farmer. Keith has had the same issues as the rest of the BMW riders and wasn’t at the previous test days, so it was an opportunity to see if the team have improved from the 12th place finish on the Tyco BMW from the first round at Silverstone. Keith was still just outside the top ten during the practice at Oulton.
Keith Farmer
Keith made the jump from SuperStock 1000 after winning the 2018 championship last year to SuperBike this year. What with the testing problems and limited time on the machine it be interesting to see if he can break into the top ten riders at round 2.
Farmer has a track record of winning and even in this years very competitive BSB field he should do well. How well only time will tell. I'm looking forward to seeing how the man with the biggest smile in the paddock gets on this year.
Keith Farmer
Top Ten fastest riders from the Oulton Park test day
2 Danny BUCHAN Kawasaki - FS-3 Racing Kawasaki 1:35.996
3 Tommy BRIDEWELL Ducati - Oxford Racing 1:36.010
4 Christian IDDON BMW - Tyco BMW Motorrad 1:36.015
5 Peter HICKMAN BMW - Smiths Racing 1:36.071
6 Luke STAPLEFORD Suzuki - Buildbase Suzuki 1:36.124
7 Luke MOSSEY Suzuki - OMG Racing Suzuki 1:36.242
8 Tarran MACKENZIE Yamaha - McAMS Yamaha 1:36.325
9 Glenn IRWIN Kawasaki - Quattro Plant JG Speedfit Kawasaki 1:36.686
10 Dan LINFOOT Yamaha - Santander Salt TAG Yamaha 1:36.971
Brad Jones in the Superstock Class
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