formula ford crash

The following sequence of images of a Formula Ford crash at Donington Park were shot in 1994. They were taken with a Canon EOS 620 using Ektachrome 200 pushed to ISO 400. Consequently they are quite grainy and the original transparencies have been slightly damaged as well.

The car is briefly airborne upside down

Although they capture the incident very well they also illustrate the downside of film cameras for sports photography and that was the number of exposures available. Film was usually 36 exposures long and I took this sequence during the last race with perhaps seven frames left. Nick Fleming and Omar Bettin had been dicing for some laps and I sensed that something was going to happen. I could see by the marshals reactions before they came into view that they were close. Sure enough, they appeared out of the corner with wheels interlocked and I shot the inevitable sequence of events. Nick Flemings car became airborne and rolled over.

Fortunately no one was hurt and I got several decent images. Unfortunately I didn’t capture the car catching fire or the marshals tackling the blaze because I ran out of film. I sometimes think back to my Olympus OM2n and EOS 620 with great affection, very different cameras but both very capable in their own way. Now I’d find it hard to go back to film with its limited number of exposures, grain and that agonising wait for the roll to be developed? It would be unthinkable now.

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