The images on display at classicmotocrossimages.com first began as a project when I discovered all of my original negatives tucked away in a shoebox in a closet in 2004. I started scanning the negatives beginning in the Fall of that year and it took a few months to complete the raw scans. There were 900+ negatives covering racing action from the early 1970's and on into the early '80's. The photos are mainly B&W with a few color rolls mixed in and represent local racing action around Kansas City as well as various National races I attended. The images on the site with few exceptons were digitized direct from the original negatives using Fujifilm Professional Digital Photo Lab equipment. The quality of the original scans is extremely high with the final raw scan file in the 5 MB range at 3600x2400 pixels. The end result is an actual uncompressed full size digital image of roughly 36"x24". This means the digital image if displayed so you can see the entire image on a PC screen is at best shown at 35% of the orginal. Often times I am amazed at the detail in the full original image. As stated before the images shown on the web site were purposely reduced in size and resolution in order to protect the content. To give you an idea of the original quality here is a snippet of one section of the original compared to the reduced image on the web site. Again this is not a blow up it is a small section and original size of the digital image. I have this very photo full size on display in my office and you can clearly see Hannah's foot peg folding backward from contact with the soil. You can also see the stitching on the glove padding and small bits of mud on his jersey.
For the photography buffs out there the press photos were taken using a Konica T3 with a Sigma compact zoom lens with a focal length of roughly 39mm to 90mm. This lens gave me the option to get close to the action or I could zoom out for mid range shots. The actual camera and lens I used was worn out by the early '80's after all the dust and banging around it took from the racing photo days. My old Konica has been gone years ago when I moved over to Canon equipment. I borrowed this picture from a listing on ebay so you can see what the camera looked like. During the time of the National photos I worked at a security camera company so I used speciality Ilford film designed for surveillance cameras for the race photos. If I remember correctly the slower film was an unusual speed of 120ASA. I also used Ilford 400ASA from time to time but I quickly learned the grain size was too noticeable for my taste. I am sure the 250 National pictures from Herman in 1977 were examples of the 400ASA film. Film photography may be a dying art but the ability to survive 30+ years and still be usable in a digital world makes you wonder how many digital images may be lost over the next 30 years from crashed hard drives, hardware and software upgrades, corrupt files and just losing track of the images. In case you are wondering I have my images backed up in about 5 different places. Unfortunately I doubt most people would be so diligent.
