Star Road

I decided to rent a Sony RX100 V. It was just on a whim; I wanted to try out a reasonably priced point-and-shoot camera.

To really put it to the test, I decided to bring it to one of my most cherished and enjoyable photo experiences: the Driving While Awesome “Cars and Coffee” meet right next to the Pacific Ocean.

I checked out the HDR mode, which actually takes 3 exposures and combines them. It works surprisingly well and as a result most of the photos I’ll post are the HDR versions. My only real grip is how it seems to dull bright whites, because it doesn’t know it’s supposed to be white-as-white-gets. But luckily it can be brought back in post-processing.

This parking lot is a bit of a night-time campground, so we always run into free spirits and vagrants.

Variety: it’s what makes DWA meets great.

Michelin TB5R’s…awesome.

Lots of different Porsches were in attendance, of course.

I got to see Ryan’s new Carrera T, which seem to be pretty rare in the wild.

How about the Urus? It’s not exactly tuned to my liking, and the horrible matte grey finish wasn’t doing it any favors, but it’s still interesting to look at. Especially up close where you can examine all the creases.

Away from Porsche town, the northern corner was filled with variety.

American, Sweden, German from the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s.

Another refreshing sight is this E36 M3 Lightweight out in the wild.

I’m just gonna take a wild guess and say this thing has traction problems on the street.

Amazingly rare in red, this is just a cool car. CLK63’s are rare, but the beefy wide Black Edition is something you never see.

The supercar guys were frightened of the dirt lot–and probably us DWA ruffians too–so they kept their distance.

Maybe this thing scared ’em away.

I was actually pretty impressed by the panning abilities of this little camera. My photography benchmark is the iPhone–if it can’t take better photos than your phone, why bother with it? And one aspect phone cameras struggle with is pan shots. This Sony combined accurate tracking autofocus with good stabilization. They’ll have to solve the viewfinder lag if I’ll take “mirrorless” cameras seriously for motorsport photography, though.

Now that’s some beefy rubber.

Hakosuka on Watanabes…what a classic look.

Good ol’ 90’s econobox interior in the Escort Cosworth, but there are some choice mods to spice it up.

Another thing that impressed me about the little camera was with regard to the sensor and HDR mode, and how well it reproduced deep reds like Lane’s Guards Red 944 or Rick’s red ZR-1. I was very disappointed to find that literally all of the JPEGs came out with a green cast on them (which I had to edit), but other than that I thought the colors came out great for what it is.

So tiny. The steering wheel is as wide as the seat!

Definitely not one of the bums who lives right off the highway, this was a pretty cool camper conversion. It even had a V6 swap from a later model Tacoma.

Oh no, the SS! At least he had the decency to park it out on the street. #lanehate

Green grass and blue sky, name a better duo. I’ll wait!