Lighting

Dusk and night environments were a first to me when it comes to photography, it was a pleasant surprise which surely helped me out during the shooting of these photos.

I covered two different places during sunset, where the sun was hitting the passing cars differently: one was in the third sector complex, from the back straight to the last turn, the other one was in the start finish line.

The start finish line section was the best as the sun highlighted the curves reflected by the subject in the same side where the shots were taken, i wasn't awarded with the same result in the last sector, where the sun was hitting the front of the car, while i was in line to capture the rear end.

These situations also require a lot more of dynamism and possibly more planning, as you have very limited time before the sky turns dark and you must plan your spots ahead of time in order to extract the best out of this important and unique times, motorsport in general doesn't have a lot of races in these lighting conditions, which is a shame.

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Panning & Stills

This will probably me a section which i will repeat in a lot of reports, as i always say the natural representation of a race car is by making it look quick, panning does exactly that and i must admit is what drags me to race weekends so often: it gives a great challenge and amazing satisfaction when you "hit one of those", where the car is extremely sharp and the background is blurry.

Stills however are a great way to highlight the details of the car, the driver and gives the possibility to give depth to the image, prior to this weekend i only had a 70-200 F4 on my bag, however i found a deal on a prime 400mm F5.6 just prior to this weekend, it was my go-to for stills and it's sharpness allowed me to capture a lot of details, however i'm still missing out on giving picture depth.

Misano had very limited spots and i couldn't find a spot where i could highlight the subject on stills, however the lens responded really well when it came to sharpness, it wasn't brilliant on maximum aperture, we'll talk about that very soon, i'm looking forward to test this lens at Imola next week, which contains a lot of spots where stills can be taken.

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How the gear responded

The Canon 7D had it's struggles during the last part of the race in night time, it's not a camera that really enjoys high ISOs: the image starts to radically degrade above 800 ISO, on AI Servo mode it wasn't particularly enjoying focusing on far out objects, probably due to it's 19 autofocus points. I still think the camera is not limiting me, i also have the feeling that the camera is having more tolerance towards me than what i am having towards the camera.

It's not the first time i bring my 70-200mm F4 L USM with me and it's always a guarantee for panning shots and paddock catches: i usually use it with a monopod (a dead basic one) due to the lack of stabilization, on top of that i use a variable ND filter to reduce the light coming in without having to overly reduce the aperture, which can lead to highlights of dirt in your sensor.

The Canon 400mm F5.6 L USM was a new entry for me, i used it principally for stills and a bit of panning shots aswell, i was reluctant on using such a long lens for panning shots, but increasing the shutter speed to about 1/100 gave me some good results, such as the #14 shot previously shown, really happy about this lens considering it costed me about 400 euros.

Now i just need a 24mm for pit and grid walks...(i'm incapable of resisting the urge to spend money on photography)

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A note on the event

Misano has yet again proved a great arena to unleash GT3s, as well as Porsche Cups, GT4s, GT2s and the almighty Clios, however it would be great to have more places to watch the race from, currently it's heavily limited to 3 grandstands which cover the last sector, the start finish straight and a limited view to sector one's straight, it would be great to have the fields facing sector two's hairpin and the subsequent part of the back straight...

The paddock was a great experience too, teams really try hard not to bother you even if you get close to the back of their garages, unless you...well..cross the line and get too close to the car.

I'm glad that GT World Challenge recently announced that Misano will be confirmed for 2026, hopefully by then they'll be able to expand the spectator's spots and insert a few fountains to refill your canteen, anyway here is my favorite photo of the weekend.