Medium format film at the Goodwood Festival of Speed

I haven’t shared any motorsport images for quite a while but as the Goodwood Festival of Speed took place last week, I thought I would share a couple of film scans from the 2017 festival.

I lugged a frankly unhealthy amount of camera gear round with me for the 2017 FoS (Festival of Speed), leading to very sore, swollen shoulders for a few days afterwards where my backpack straps had put so much pressure.

Besides taking my Fuji kit at the time—and having rented the big 100-400mm lens for the weekend—I also somehow contrived to carry my Bronica GS-1 medium format film camera too. At the time I just had the 65mm lens for the Bronica (roughly a 32mm full-frame equivalent) and, as I wasn’t going to try getting action shots with the beast of a camera on the track, that field of view worked quite nicely for a handful of car portraits while wandering the paddock.

Up top is an image of the Audi R8 Le Mans car, brought to Goodwood from Le Mans still with the dirt from the 24h race as has become a tradition of modern Le Mans cars displaying at FoS.

I also managed a decent image of the legendary Williams FW14B driven by Nigel Mansell that I later also photographed with my X-Pro2 and Voigtländer 50/1.5 in a ‘Brenizer effect’ pano.

For the number of images I made with the Bronica compared with the enormous weight it added to my pack, it certainly wasn’t a sensible choice. It was also a little awkward holding up space to take pictures with the slower camera, needing to take meter readings and set up for each frame.

That said, it was a nice change of pace and if/when I get back to FoS I’d certainly be tempted to take the GS-1 again, or maybe the slightly-lighter but older S2a. Preferably on a multi-day visit though, so I can split my kit across two days!