Racing by Candle Light

My coworker, David Struve, loves speed. As you can see here, he is quite a hooligan. I remember that told me that he learned to drive like this from his grandma. Rumor has it that his whole family has been in jail for extreme speeding or street racing at one time or another. Anyway, you get the picture...

As part of his probation and promise to keep his racing off the streets (ha ha), he participates in a  a racing league at a local indoor karting track every weekend. See www.procupkarting.com for details. Last season he won top honors in his class, and this season he looks to win at the next level up.

The karts that they use are not your average bumper cars either. These things corner, accelerate and wrestle you during a race. Helmets, gloves, rib protectors, racing shoes and neck braces remind you that you can get hurt if you make a mistake. The course is tight and technical and has every kind of corner you can imagine. It's good fun and you can do it too at Andretti's Indoor Karting & Games in Alpharetta, GA.

Dave is also the web master for the racing league  and was telling me how difficult it is to get good video and photo coverage in the dark warehouse where the races take place. I asked him if I could try out my Canon 5D Mark 2 and Canon 7D's video capabilities during a race to try to get some good promotional footage for him. He agreed.

When I arrived, I found that he was not exaggerating. My light meter indicated the perfect exposure was at the low edge of the limits of hand held photography: ISO 6400 at a 15th of a second at an aperture of F2.8. Take my word for it... that is extremely dark to try to capture clean stills and video without blurring.

Still, the Canon 5D Mark 2 was up to the task, and we got some useable footage from the event.. to be posted later after it gets edited. Stay tuned...