The Long Bays Classic is one of the headline races of the Festival of Cycling that we have every year.
It's raced over a very scenic 80km ride from Christchurch City, heading partway towards Akaroa then coming over Gebbies Pass and around the bays of Lyttelton Harbour, then over Evans Pass and back into the city to complete the loop. All the local road riders use this loop for their training. The elite racers do this in about two hours. The rest take about 2.5 to 3 hours with stragglers taking closer to 4. My plan was to sit at the top of Evans Pass and take photos as the riders came past but I exhausted my creative ideas fairly quickly so I headed over the top and down the other side, bit by bit, until I'd run out of hill and wandered off to meet my partner who was visiting her grandfather. I've split this into two galleries because the software preloads all the big images in the background so I tend to limit myself to about 20 per gallery. The photos are arranged in the order they were taken. <http://www.multisport.net.nz/photos/580-2009-12-05-armstrong-festival-of-cycling-photos-1.html> <http://www.multisport.net.nz/photos/581-2009-12-05-armstrong-festival-of-cycling-photos-2.html> I think I broke some kind of personal record, taking 378 photos. I also broke the hood on my FA24mm f/2 lens AGAIN. I'll have to use stronger glue this time. My eyes are feeling a bit strained after all this time in Bridge and Photoshop, and my lower leg muscles are sore from an unplanned run down the hill without any kind of warmup. I ended up abandoning the use of both front and rear lens caps in my bag as I was changing lenses so often. I need zoom lenses for this kind of thing. Not that f/2.8 Pentax zooms come up for sale very often (do Pentax still make f/2.8 zooms?). I'm going to try and make it to the criterium race in the city tomorrow afternoon. I'm thinking about posting a short "outtakes" gallery as there were a handful of photos that were *almost* the best of the day... but didn't work out, mostly due to focus problems. This tends to frustrate me :) The one big lesson of the day is that I need to learn how to pan properly. It's not easy when a bike is coming past at 90k within 2 or 3 feet of you. I have a lot of photos of half a bike. Comments are appreciated, positive and negative. Many of the photos are not critically sharp but they're good enough for the size they're presented at. And you'll notice that the weather didn't exactly play ball so I tended to crop most of the sky out. Cheers, Dave -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
