# More changes at Buttonwillow



## Mr Paddle.Shift (Dec 19, 2001)

To all Socal Buttonwillow afficionados,

I attended another track event at Buttonwillow on Aug 26 by Speeventures. CCW config 13. Previously I had mentioned that 2 berms were re-paved. Turns out that Cotton Corners were repaved as well, along with Grapevine.

All re-paved berms are flatter and lengthened. In particular, you can ride on the berm at Bus-stop without upsetting your car too much. No more pot-hole at the berm out of Riverside.

Event went extremely well too. Had so much track time, I had to "pit to pee". :rofl: The last session literally had 5 cars on the entire track.

Couple of things I tried out were left-foot braking, different lines and finding the Cups' limit.

*1. Left Foot Braking. *

I have heard people using this technique but never quite try it myself until yesterday on the track. In fact, I have been practicing on the streets for the entire week before the event. I tried the light tapping technique for now. Good for entry into Esses, Riverside and Grape Vine if you are approaching too fast.

*2. Different lines?*

Yeah. I found two different lines taking the first turn Sunset and Riverside. For Sunset, instead of keeping the car all the way to the left, I tried center and 1/2 left from center. Maybe it's just me, but I felt that I can handle the car better. Also, for Riverside, IIRC, I was taught to stay 3/4 right, drift around to an apex on the left, then drift out right again. This time round, I tried sticking to the left for entry then slowing drifting right. Again car felt better with this line. I was able to catch up with pple this way.

*3. Michelin Cups' Limit?*

Ah.. I wanted to see just how fast I can take Sunset with the Cups. And they gave up on this one lap. Dropped two wheels out of Sunset, visited Farmer John for while, see no traffic, went back on track. All captured on my newly acquired video cam. Going off with street tires being one thing. Going off with track tires is a *different * experience! Thanks to Serge who reminded me "Hey, when it breaks, it just breaks!". I felt so alive that I had to message Hack to share the excitement.

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I need to clean up the videos. Still new at using the functions so some frames are over-exposed.

But here's a small collage of the last session.


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## SergioK (Aug 14, 2002)

Glad your agricultural excursion was a short visit and not prolonged. 

Perhaps your new line was not as efficient as you thought??? Case being, the apex of Riverside (Talladega) has quite a bit of positive camber at that point. (I've setup apex cones there so I've walked that pavement - walking the line as opposed to driving by at 60++++mph makes a big difference when you are able to truly see the line and road) If you don't get the car at the apex, your car can't take advantage of that positive camber available. Maybe you were trying to maximize speed at a point where there was no camber in the road to allow the extra grip/speed? 

Or did I misinterpret the 'line' you were describing?

As for repaving the cotton corners... finally!


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## Mr Paddle.Shift (Dec 19, 2001)

hrm...efficiency of line can be measured by speed and time, which unfortunately I haven't quite logged these data. I think I know what you're talking about.

Anyway, here's the video I have yet to edit the overexposure-ness. I should have set the white balance to manual instead of auto. It's really messing up the video. You might have to strain your eyes a little.


One Lap from Session One.

See at the entry to Riverside, I took a left inner line (near to the new berm), then slowly drifted out, keeping steering wheel at an angle well into the Bus stop entry.

Also, the other thing I experienced from SV events is overtaking at corners. Well, not so much as in "someone teaching me" but experiencing what it is like to pass someone on a corner. The sensory input is so rich during that moment. You've got to gauge the speed of the car you're over taking. You've got to make sure you don't over-throttle. You've got to get back in line as soon as possible. All these and keeping the car on track.

I feel so ALIVE! :supdude:


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## doeboy (Sep 20, 2002)

Sweet.... looks like you stabilized your camera mount.... :thumbup:

Might I suggest a wide-angle lens?


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## Mr Paddle.Shift (Dec 19, 2001)

doeboy said:


> Sweet.... looks like you stabilized your camera mount.... :thumbup:
> 
> Might I suggest a wide-angle lens?


I still need to relocate the cam though. The current location is ok, not exactly ideal cos a few times, while waiting in the pits, the cam was under the scorching heat from the sun. Not too good!


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## doeboy (Sep 20, 2002)

Mr Paddle.Shift said:


> I still need to relocate the cam though. The current location is ok, not exactly ideal cos a few times, while waiting in the pits, the cam was under the scorching heat from the sun. Not too good!


Where are you considering moving it to? I attach mine to the front passenger seat headrest posts, which locates the camera in the center of the cabin. With my wide angle attachment, it gives a reasonably good view (roughly A-pillar to A-pillar) and the light exposure seems to be better than the time I tried mounting it on the rear deck which ended up "washing out" the stuff outside the car due to the dark interior (I think?).


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## Mr Paddle.Shift (Dec 19, 2001)

Planning on sticking it on a suction to the rear passenger's window. Remove the passenger's head rest too. The center position (as per your cam mount) isn't going to work for me cos of my, ahem, Boeing-like equipment. If I move the cam higher, then the rear view mirror is blocking.

The washing-out is bugging me now. Cos I have the footage of my beautiful excursion yet I can't see anything. 



doeboy said:


> Where are you considering moving it to? I attach mine to the front passenger seat headrest posts, which locates the camera in the center of the cabin. With my wide angle attachment, it gives a reasonably good view (roughly A-pillar to A-pillar) and the light exposure seems to be better than the time I tried mounting it on the rear deck which ended up "washing out" the stuff outside the car due to the dark interior (I think?).


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## doeboy (Sep 20, 2002)

Mr Paddle.Shift said:


> Planning on sticking it on a suction to the rear passenger's window. Remove the passenger's head rest too. The center position (as per your cam mount) isn't going to work for me cos of my, ahem, Boeing-like equipment. If I move the cam higher, then the rear view mirror is blocking.
> 
> The washing-out is bugging me now. Cos I have the footage of my beautiful excursion yet I can't see anything.


Ah I see.... Hmm... what kind of camera are you using? My camera has some kind of setting where you can lock the exposure for a particular section of the picture so it will "ignore" the light levels of the car's interior. Maybe yours does something similar.

Also, I have an ND filter on mine (sort of like sunglasses for the camera). Maybe some filters, like a UV or Polarized might help a bit? I'm still not 100% clear on which filters to use for what situation but my wide-angle and ND filter seems to work fairly well for me so I've just stuck with that.


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## The HACK (Dec 19, 2001)

ND filters are exactly that, it's a darker glass filter that prevents the "wash-out" effect. They'll range from a 0.4 to like a 6X darkness for situations when there's too much light and your camera can't adjust its iris down to prevent the wash-out.


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## doeboy (Sep 20, 2002)

The HACK said:


> ND filters are exactly that, it's a darker glass filter that prevents the "wash-out" effect. They'll range from a 0.4 to like a 6X darkness for situations when there's too much light and your camera can't adjust its iris down to prevent the wash-out.


Cool... thanks for the explanation... so based on that it sounds like I'm using the right filter?


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## The HACK (Dec 19, 2001)

doeboy said:


> Cool... thanks for the explanation... so based on that it sounds like I'm using the right filter?


Yep. You may want to throw a polarizer on there to prevent GLARE from reflections off of the cars in front of you, like, oh, Ricemus, when it's all nice and clean and polished up, right before it disappears from your view. 

A UV filter will help prevent scratches to the lense and is one of the most basic filter to get, it'll make the blues in the sky appear more intense...Not sure if you'd ever want to catch too much blue when you're taping on track though, unless the track has a lot of elevation changes.


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## SergioK (Aug 14, 2002)

Talking smack already huh Hack? We need to bust you back down to DFL status to get things in perspective for you.  :angel:


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## The HACK (Dec 19, 2001)

SergioK said:


> Talking smack already huh Hack? We need to bust you back down to DFL status to get things in perspective for you.  :angel:


What? I meant disappear from his view as in he's so much faster than I am that I need to give him a point by.  :angel:

In the last three schools, including: Las Vegas, Buttwillow 1 day, and the California Speedway schools, it's been me staring at DB's wide-load instead of the other way around. Although, I must say, it *was the brakes!* for Fontucky.


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## SergioK (Aug 14, 2002)

Riiiiiiight!


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## doeboy (Sep 20, 2002)

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:


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## doeboy (Sep 20, 2002)

The HACK said:


> Yep. You may want to throw a polarizer on there to prevent GLARE from reflections off of the cars in front of you, like, oh, Ricemus, when it's all nice and clean and polished up, right before it disappears from your view.
> 
> A UV filter will help prevent scratches to the lense and is one of the most basic filter to get, it'll make the blues in the sky appear more intense...Not sure if you'd ever want to catch too much blue when you're taping on track though, unless the track has a lot of elevation changes.


Hmm.... so is it ok to stack filters multiple layers deep? I have the ND filter attached to the camera and the wide angle conversion attached to that... is it ok to sandwich more filters between the camera and wide angle adapter? :dunno:


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## cchan (Sep 19, 2002)

I wouldn't go overboard on the filter sandwich, just thinking about weight/support of the wide angle lense by additional rings. Also, polarizing filters often are made to allow the glass to rotate (to vary the polarization angle) on a fixed base, so they are usually the last filter to go on and may not be threaded anyway. So you might need to buy a bigger one to go on the wide angle rather than in between. I've got a UV filter on mine, mostly for protecting the main lens.

I'm not sure what the benefit of the ND filter is, doesn't it just cut down the light across the spectrum? Taking Doe's sunglasses analogy, you're just feeding a darker image to the camera - but then the camera's auto-exposure is just brightening the darker image anyway. This is why cheap sunglasses are actually bad for you if they don't filter out UV light - your pupils dilate more to compensate for the darkness, and more invisible UV gets in... maybe MKD can help verify this. 

If you're trying to compensate for washout, I'd think it's because of the darkness of the interior causing the weighted average brightness to be lower, and the camera increases brightness to compensate. I think the only time an ND filter would help would be if the image is brighter than the camera could handle (ie pointed at the sun perhaps, but you'd need a pretty dark filter for that!). Since the camera CAN get the right exposure if you were filming completely outside of the car, I'd argue that the ND isn't needed. This is a balance (relative brightness) issue, not a too bright issue. I might even guess that the ND could be worsening the washout, I think digital imaging devices might actually pick up more contrast with lower light levels, don't they?

Most videocams should have a manual exposure adjustment that will let you brighten/darken the image if needed. This way, you can darken the image to compensate for the right outside brightness - but of course the interior will probably be too dark. The other risk is that outside brightness levels can change throughout the day, and depending on which direction you are going in... so the exposure level you set in the paddock facing one direction may not be good on the track when you're going another direction.

I've had pretty good luck leaving my camera on auto exposure so far, it seems to have a pretty good algorithm for dealing with the dark interior and bright exterior.


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## doeboy (Sep 20, 2002)

I think you hit a key point with the weight average of light reference... when I tried using the camera on the rear deck of my car, the interior and two helmets were nice and clear but everything in front of the car was pretty washed out.

Since then I've moved the camera further up towards the front so there is more daylight in the picture... maybe that in itself changes things. I haven't tried yet but maybe I'll try taking video one day without the ND filter and the next day with and see if I can see any difference...


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## cchan (Sep 19, 2002)

If my theory is correct, you should get better detail in the dark sections without the ND filter since with the ND filter, the dark areas are darker in absolute and thus harder for the camera to capture detail.

Maybe try the experiment at home, just point it towards a window with some inside and outside showing, and tape some with and without the filter - then you have controlled conditions and we can easily compare.

Some cameras may also "recognize" that the sky in most scenes should be at the top of the screen, and place different brightness weightings in upper vs. lower areas of the picture, or center vs. edges. So, it might be worth experimenting not only how much of the picture the outside view is, but also where it is vertically (maybe tilt up/down to include more/less dark roof liner, it might help trick the camera into the right exposure.

Paddle.Shift, I'd actually recommend trying to move your camera further forward, with a wider angle lens - then the view out the front should be a larger portion of the picture and thus gets more weighting in setting the right brightness. If you move backwards, you'll get even more dark areas from the seat backs and your helmet and have to zoom in more to close in on the view out front. Like kicking a field goal, if you're closer, you've got a wider angle, but further back your angle shrinks. Sounds like you might not be able to go forward much though... or else sacrifice some in-car view and zoom in so there is more outside view.

My mount is like Doe's - on the headrests, with a wide angle lens. I think I get pretty good brightness balance and a decent view of the inside dash, not blocked by the seats or my head other than when I lean to the right a good bit.


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## The HACK (Dec 19, 2001)

Just put the camera mount in the car in the morning, drive to work and tape it, then in the afternoon when you're driving out to lunch, take the ND filter off and see what the effects of the filter are.

That way if any f**kin' idiot trys to cut you off, you have it on camera that you can share with the rest of the clan.

I wish I have my camera mount now, so I can show you all how many idiots tries to race the car that will BEAT last year's BMWCCA H-Stock champ.


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