Motorvation 26 - Photo Blog

This January, I covered Motorvation 26 for Perth Street Car Magazine, along with editor Trevor Pickett and photographer and writer Jordan Leist. This is a small sample of some of the photos I took over the weekend.

Jeff Clarke had a number of cars on display and out on track over the weekend.

Chuck Haynes spent the summer in Australia and brought the Jet Dragsters to Motorvation.

Everyone loves the supercruise.

Some of the crowd trackside.

Russell Woods debuted his VL Commodore burnout car, 'Rollin', at Motorvation.

Cruzin' Magazines Gavin Kelso was head judge for this years Miss Motorvation.

Earl Salter won the blown category of the burnout competition in 'Feral'.

This beautiful Cadillac has a road racing history.

Jordan working the crowd.

WA's burnout crowds are pretty vocal.

More classic American iron on the supercruise.

'Blownwgn' gets the flames out at both ends.

Michael Butlers 'Hollyhood' on the supercruise.

More ReplayXD Videos

Over the last couple of weeks, I've done a bit more experimentation with the ReplayXD 1080 and the Camzilla mount. I've put it on a few mates cars while they've been out having some fun, and I've set it up as a fixed camera and made a time lapse video as well.


This first video was the first time I fitted the camera to the outside of a car competing in a motorsport event. This is Franz Esterbauer's Mitsubishi Lancer Evo 8 MR, and he's competing in the first round of the McRae Motorsports Twilight Rallysprint Series, held at the Perth Motorplex. Franz has always done pretty well at these events, and this run was no exception, Franz's quickest run of the night, it was also good enough to help him win the event. The experimentation side of things, saw me running the camera with an exposed microphone opening, which I have since realised was not such a good idea, and as a result, I've had to overdub this video with some music to hide the deathly silence left behind after I muted the sound from the ReplayXD the instant Franz leaves the start line. If you want an idea of how bad the wind noise was, watch the video to the very end, as I left the original audio intact as Franz drives off from the stop control.


The next video we have today is from Gerrin Good's 'TYAFRYA' burnout car. TYAFRYA is a methanol fueled Ford XE Falcon, and Gerrin's certainly not afraid to swing the big ol' girl around on the burnout pad. For this video, I had covered the microphone opening with a small sticker, supplied by ReplayXD with the camera for that purpose, I also turned down the microphone gain to 25db to see if that helped. As you will pick up while watching the video, there are still some noise issues with this setup, either wind noise or the sticker vibrating.


For the next attempt, I replaced the flimsy sticker with some good old race tape and fixed the ReplayXD 1080 to the side of Nathan Hollis' "TANK" burnout Sigma. This is where I'd wanted to put the camera on Gerrin's car too, as you get a good view of the drivers hands during the burnout (and while that looked good on Franz's car, it works even better on a burnout car), however, TYAFRYA has stickers on the rear windows, and that causes some issues with the suction cups on the Camzilla clamp. As you will notice in the video, there's still some wind noise or vibration issues, but they seem to be getting a bit better.


The final clip for this blog post, is a time lapse video that I shot with the ReplayXD 1080 and Camzilla rig at the Perth Motorplex's December 2011 round of the Australian Top Fuel Championship. I mounted the camera to the glass inside race control, and set the ReplayXD to shoot 1 shot every 3 seconds. The camera managed to fill it's 4 gigabyte card in around 2.5 hours, and I resized, cropped and compiled the results into the video above.

ReplayXD 1080 POV Camera

I've been interested in doing some in car video work for some time, and in the past I've experimented with a Canon Legria FS-200 and a Camzilla mount(you can check out that post here). Recently I came across the ReplayXD line of cameras, in particular, the ReplayXD 1080. After checking out some footage of the Poteet and Main streamliner at Bonneville, and a number of other videos on the web, I decided that I had to have one of these cameras.


I've now had the camera in my possession for a little over a week, and have yet to put it inside a race car, instead I've been testing it out in my daily driver, a VN Calais. The results so far are fairly promising, with the Camzilla clamp and ReplayXD 1080 combination proving very stable (on a road car at least). I've put a couple of videos up on YouTube, which are most likely not going to be of much interest to anyone, but they give you an idea of the cameras capabilities. (That said, I have yet to start tweaking the advanced settings, which may yield some further improvement)


The video above is also a drive through of the roadworks currently in progress to widen the Kwinana Freeway from Leach Highway to Roe Highway. The road works to date seem to have focussed on moving the traffic away from work areas, starting with narrowing the lanes to provide room to work safely on the side of the freeway itself, and lately there has been work to modify the on and off ramps to move traffic away from where work will be done on to realign those ramps to suit the new freeway width. So far, I have to say, the traffic is flowing remarkably well in both directions, with a permanent 80kmh speed limit in place until the road works are complete, during the peak times, the traffic is moving just as well as it did before the roadworks commenced.


The last video on this page is taking the ReplayXD 1080 away from it's comfort zone. I had the camera in the Camzilla clamp, resting on the wall of the Hankook Tyre Snake Pit at the Perth Motorplex. Between taking photos of the burnouts, I would move the camera to suit what was going on out on the pad. Night performance has always been the biggest challenge for a POV camera, and using the camera as a handicam makes it even more challenging, so this is a chance to see what could reasonably be expected to be the worst footage you'll get out of one of these cameras. All up, I'm quite happy with this purchase, between the clamp and the camera, I have less than $450 invested in the setup, thanks to the strength of the Aussie dollar in recent months.