British Cycling

MILTON KEYNES BOWL (20TH JUNE 2002)
PICTURES BY LARRY HICKMOTT (larryhickmott@btopenworld.com);

What better way to test a new camera, the Olympus Camedia E-20P for the camera buffs, than by going to an evening event -- in this case the Milton Keynes Bowl Midweek races. The event was won by Simon Gaywood (Luton CC) from Aarron McCaffrey (Sigma Sport). Martin Quill (Team Keyne-Trek was 3rd (I think-see pic below)). I have no other details of the results at this time.

THE GALLERY -- Following are a series of thumbnail examples of pictures from the above event. Click a thumbnail below and a larger example will be displayed on-screen for you. Pictures are © Larry Hickmott. Anyone wanting to use them on their club website or sponsor's website, please email me so I know where they are being used and for what.Credit www.britishcycling.org.uk when used.

GALLERY

CAMERA BUFFS NOTES: For those interested in the details of how they were shot, the camera (Olympus E-20P) is equipped with both an internal and external flash gun (not a dedicted one I might add), the latter not working properly on the night but when it did, the results were better. Most images were done using the camera's autofocus which was no better or worse than the much cheaper Nikon 990 Coolpix's system.

The Olympus e-20P though does allow for manual focus which seemed to work simliar but not the same as a normal SLR, and the unlike the Nikon, there does not seem to be any noticable time lag in the picture being taken when the shutter is released. Images were captured at 250th of a second with the aperture chosen by the camera automatically. You get the choice of choosing between taking one image at a time and a burst of images (2 to 3 per second on the normal card and setting).

The sprint pic shown here is actually not as good as the final one which captured Simon only but as he didn't celebrate the victory the way I expected (I did see someone in the background doing all the celebrating for him though!), I've included the one showing the result. As the sprint was shot into the cloud obscured sun about 8.20pm, at 250th on burst mode, I was impressed it could handle that considering its low light ability is not as good as some of the more expensive cameras.

These images are the lowest quality setting to enable me to get the most images on the memory card. With a 128Mb card, I can get 600 images and as the camera takes two types of cards, that means 900 images in all. That means no need to change card during a days shooting with luck. In all, a better camera -- although a long way to go before I know whether it will deliver what I am looking for. It's also worth adding the camera can accept lens of long focal lengths, the standard is 140mm max but there is an attachment to take it to 190mm for those compressed looking action images.

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