Behind the Scenes: A Day with Motor Photojournalist Dino Dalle Carbonare

In a departure (well not fully) from my usual posts about me and my car, this post is about a full day I recently spent with a good friend of mine, Japan-based automotive photo journalist Dino Dalle Carbonare (also known by his initials “DCD”), as he covered the last day (May 2) of the Spring Drift Matsuri at Ebisu Circuit in Fukushima Prefecture in northern Japan.

He does a lot of work for Speedhunters.com, but some of you may know that Dino used to have a blog - coincidentally his last post was on July 7, 2007 - which turns out to be the first day of THIS blog...
http://blog.gtroc.com/dino/

As a motor photographer and journalist, Dino has what to many might seem to be one of the best jobs in the world – driving, reporting on, and photographing some of the most interesting, beautiful, and noteworthy cars in the world. Both here in Japan as well as around the world, on some of the best driving roads!

Check out this beauty, one of his masterpieces both in photography and vehicle selection!!! LOL!

(photo used with permission of Dino Dalle Carbonare)

The job description, as well as his increasing fame, has probably led many people to want to emulate him, and embark on a career as an automotive photojournalist. (Men want to be like him, women want to be with him??... maybe not the latter, but the former certainly…)

Unfortunately I neither have the drive nor the talent to do what he does, but in spending the day with him, I realized that his job, while certainly glamorous, is not as easy as it seems. There are other necessary and required skills, including physical stamina, a critical yet appreciative eye for anything with an engine, extreme amounts of patience, an ability to meet crazy deadlines, and the creativity needed to “set up” what later becomes a memorable, “desktop” worthy photo.
All of this takes years to develop to the level Dino has taken it to, and in the process, he’s made friends and contacts in the industry, giving him an unquantifiable and insurmountable edge that solidly cements him as one of the premier non-Japanese auto journalists in Japan.

Anyway, enough buttering up. His ego needs no (additional) inflating. Here’s how the day began for me at 0600 Sunday morning, Tokyo station - an amazing ride, yes, but nothing close to what I would later experience that day!


3 hours later, Dino was waiting for me beside his workhorse Subaru Legacy wagon at Nihonmatsu station, the closest station to Ebisu Circuit.


Once at the circuit, Dino proceeded to immediately hunt out the best possible shots. This is much harder than it sounds.

It isn’t about walking around looking for interesting/interesting looking cars – although he does that too. In order to get interesting shots, he has to be creative, even risking injury to himself for that perfect shot:



Note: I was right behind him, and when the cars passed by us, we both swung around, backs to the track, to protect ourselves from the gust of wind generated by the passing car and the brake and tire dust that comes flying at you! It was THAT close...

Getting the best angle is very important – sometimes it’s interesting what cars look like from above I guess. And as the photos later show, it’s not just about the angles – he’s simultaneously playing with different lenses, ISO speed, aperture, etc. and all those other technical camera settings.

Here he is inviting me to check out the view:


Behind him, I can see that not only is this position safer, but...


...it also allows a rapid series of photos to be taken as the cars come flying down and then take the corner at full speed.


He also has to risk getting his clothes dirty – here he is in the “sniper” position, focusing on a very interesting (to him) wheel on a red Nissan.

Note how he strategically parked his Subaru in front of this red car to make sure it didn't drive away!!

This allowed him to produce the shot found here:
http://speedhunters.com/archive/2010/05/05/event-gt-gt-spring-drift-matsuri-pt3.aspx">

(photo used with permission of Dino Dalle Carbonare)

Getting the “right shot” often also requires him to place himself into awkward positions, or even worse, potentially embarrassing situations:


But, most of the time it’s about patience – standing for minutes, or hours in one location, waiting for the right moment. Believe it or not, these photos were taken about several minutes apart. Notice it's the same car he's trying to get in a perfect shot:



Minutes later, the guy next to him is getting bored and I am getting tired... yet Dino keeps trying to get The Shot.


In the end, while he continued his work, I lost interest in taking photos of him and watching him work. (I suppose he has to take hundreds of photos just to get a few publishable ones...)

So I decided to enjoy the Drift Matsuri – here I am with Allen from Tomei Powered, getting ready to experience the thrill of a lifetime in Allen's very special AE86!




I then was offered a ride with Andy Gray of Powervehicles – I took the following in-car video.

Words can’t adequately describe how this all felt, and the video does not do it justice either. Simply awesome! Thanks again Andy.

Meanwhile, Dino continued to do his job, taking photos all day long, until well after the event ended (I was off taking to people, taking naps, etc.).

We drove back to Tokyo together, getting back into the city about 1100pm. After which, Dino rushed to make his deadlines. The results can be seen here:
http://speedhunters.com/archive/tags/Spring+Drift+Festival+10/default.aspx
and
http://speedhunters.com/archive/2010/05/10/event-gt-g1-gp-round1-pt1.aspx
http://speedhunters.com/archive/2010/05/12/event-g1-gp-round1-pt2.aspx

http://speedhunters.com/archive/2010/05/11/car-spotlight-gt-gt-motorfix-corollas.aspx
http://speedhunters.com/archive/2010/05/11/car-feature-gt-gt-goto-san-s-ae86-levin.aspx

That's a LOT of HARD WORK!

I for one could not do this kind of work. While we do share a passion for cars, Dino certainly has a way of staying focused and energetic while working. I think the conclusion is, like any profession, the guys who have invested time, energy and resources are the ones who make it look easy, and rise to the top. Shortcuts don’t work here, either.

Final word – thanks Dino for the invite to tag along at Ebisu, and for letting me write this up. My hope is that with this post, readers can have a better understanding and appreciation of your work!

PS - Dino, you really need to change your taste in music...

Front Spoiler Modification

So I recently had a close call with scraping my newly protected front lip spoiler, and my friend Miguel had suggested using some aluminum sheets to protect the spoiler - his idea was to rivet aluminum sheet(s) onto the bottom side of the spoiler, making the aluminum piece sacrificial. Compared to the rubber add-on lip spoiler I had on before, it was bound to be sturdier, and further, the noise it would make on bottoming out would give me early warning, more so than the rubber piece.

Anyway - so today I had some time, so I jacked up the front of the car, and using a 0.8mm aluminum 200cm long "L" shaped piece, decided to give the idea a try.

First, I used some red tape and centered the aluminum piece.

I then used my Dremel and proceeded to make cuts every 10cm so I could bend the aluminum to fit the curve of the spoiler.

After test fitting, I sprayed with heat resistant flat black primer paint:

Then carefully riveted the aluminum piece to the plastic lip spoiler, so that the alum was about 5mm back from the edge of the lip spoiler:

Removing the red tape and cutting off the rivet leads, got me a clean look - you can barely even tell!

Spring Cleaning - and Some Painting!

Ok as this week was "Golden Week" here in Japan - a bunch of single day national holidays conveniently strung out over a week, thus making for, in conjunction with the weekend, a 5 day holiday, so of course I was able to do some cleaning of the car.

Yes, I washed and then used my porter cable to apply some zaino... but also took the opportunity to try to figure out where a squeak was coming from in the rear parcel shelf - I took off the shelf and hunted down each item that might possibly be loose, and either glued, foamed or tie wrapped it down. At the same time, I noticed that the stock paper speakers had met their demise, and so went ahead and purchased some mid grade universal fit Pioneers (16cm) as my friend Alex has promised to upgrade my entire system with me - these speakers are only to tide me over until then. (and then, will be used for "rear fill"). I will go into depth in another post soon.

Meanwhile, a while ago I had also noticed that the washer tank had gotten old, and was possibly leaking. I noticed some rust below the plastic.

(PS not sure why this photo and some others below are showing sideways - will try to fiddle with them over the weekend).


Anyway, I had a while ago ordered a new piece, that looks like this.

 So I proceeded to remove the old tank, and this is what I found:

So, inspired by an idea from my friend Dino (DCD), I took out the bracket, removed the rust, and then resprayed in anti-rust black paint.

I used my Dremel and some elbow grease and sandpaper to get this:

After this, it was pretty easy to simply paint with a spray can.

While I was waiting for it to dry, turned my attention to the base, which was rusted. I used sandpaper and the Dremel again, and got rid of the rust (down to the bare metal!). Found some automotive primer at the local hardware store, and began to paint:

As you can see I had no newspaper, so used towels and this wrapping paper to mask off the rest of the engine bay.  End result is:

Nice and clean. Then it was only a matter of bolting up the bracket (this time using stainless steel bolts)

And then it was simply a matter of installing the new washer tank and adding some washer fluid.

Done!

Track Day at Fuji Speedway with SSCT/ Ohlins DFV Report, Part 2

This past Sunday, was joined by my friends Miguel and Alex at the Skyline Sports Club Tokyo (“SSCT”) trackday at Fuji Speedway, on the Racing Course. Miguel in his RX-7, and Alex in his R32 GT-R.

Weather was absolutely gorgeous! Quite a welcome reprieve from the usual rainy weather we’ve been having lately. There were about 50 cars (mostly RB26 GT-Rs!) in total, making for a very crowded track at times!

We checked in at 0830, then began to get our cars ready for the one hour run beginning at 1100. For Alex, we decided to try something different – so we fitted some BF Goodrich slicks on 17 inch black rims (remember my project wheels – that’s who I sold them too…) to see if it would make a difference. Although last time, Alex drove the racing course in an amazing 2’13, not bad at all for a first timer!

During the prep, I got a call from my friend Sumi-san, who offered to stop by and “study” – what exactly, I had no idea.

Here is his blog – he’s a Nissan fan and S15 driver who really knows his stuff!
(http://minkara.carview.co.jp/userid/242248/blog/)

He surprised us by bringing along a datalogger (which he put in Miguel’s FD – fair to compare after all as it’s FR just like his Silvia). He also agreed to take photos with my Nikon (thank you again, Sumi-san! Arigato!) So all photos here are his work!

Once we got the prep work finished (just barely in time), we lined up and entered the pit lane.


Miguel


Alex


Here we are, lined up ready to go!


And we're off!!


I decided to run the DFVs on the medium (10 of 20 clicks – the “windy road”) setting, hoping that this would work well with the 18 inch S-tires on the RE30s. On the drive to Fuji Speedway on the same S-tires, the ride had been fairly stiff, so given Fuji’s high speeds, I though the setting might work.

Once we started the run, the car was much better controlled than before on the S-tunes, but I could tell that the springs were a bit soft and the compression needed to be upped. However, the change in the car’s general behavior was dramatic. For one, I could no longer do the “left foot brake tap” at Netz corner (causing the car’s nose to dive to the front, shifting the weight of the car on the front steering wheels very quickly), forcing me to try a quick trail-braking and downshifting in midcorner instead. But, on the long smooth sweepers, the car was amazingly stable, and I could feel what the car was doing so much better than before. It’s not as direct/hard as a race car, of course, but this time around I could really sense how the S-tires were heating up and getting loose, progressively, lap after lap. With the S-tunes, I’d really only notice the tires getting too heated up and inflated only when I started losing the back end in sharper corners. In retrospect, that’s how vague the feedback was I guess.

In terms of setting my best time ever at Fuji, unfortunately there was probably too much traffic, (50 cars) and I don't think I ever had one lap where I could go full out. Same with Miguel and Alex. So, I pitted twice – once because I had told the guys I would do so, the second time to adjust the DFVs and reduce air pressure in the tires. I reset the DFVs for a much harder setting, 2 clicks from max up front, and 3 clicks from max in the rear. In retrospect, maybe no clicks or 1 click back might have been ideal.

Back on the track, the car immediately felt even more stable and more communicative. However, now I was dealing with another problem – the brakes. The PFCs rotors are very good, and the pads too, but for some reason felt like they had begun to fade halfway through the session - usually they last me until the last 5 minutes. I later discovered that the air cooling hose had been torn in two…again! So it wasn't the rotors, it was most likely the fluid! I need to figure something out here. So my driving for the rest of the session was tempered, in that I was not about to exceed the remaining capacity of the brakes. Credit to PFC, the brakes FELT mushy, not as immediate as before, but still worked to haul me down from 260kph plus!

No way I am passing the Jun car - he's pitting.


It can be lonely on the straight...


In the end, Miguel had a 2'03, I did a 2'04, and Alex came in with a best of 2'07. Amazing for Alex, as he's only been on Fuji twice! Miguel was the only FD, but Alex was the 4th fastest R32 (out of dozen or so), and I was the second fastest R33 (out of 5 - the 700hp Jun Lemon thing was faster than me by 3 seconds...)

Afterwards – Miguel reported something wrong with his LSD, and Alex claimed he needed new brakes. Apparently he cooked his brakes and ran off course a few times. Can’t wait for THAT video to make the YouTube rounds!

On the way home – I had forgotten to set the DFVs on their “windy” setting – which made for a really punishing ride, even on Japan’s super smooth expressways. Amazing what 8 clicks does!

So in summary – on the race track, the Ohlins DFVs performed without issue, the suspension was stable at all times, even though I now think the springs are slightly soft after all. Well, that will be taken care of at the first rebuild. Amazing when the engine and suspension are working well, really highlights the weaknesses of my car - lack of a proper LSD (both front and rear) and bigger brakes. or perhaps a brake cooling issue. Water temp did not get beyond the halfway point, and on the cool down lap came down to 1/3! Oil never exceeded 100C, so the oil cooler is working well too...

It amazes me time and time again – no matter how well you think you have your car set up, at the track there is ALWAYS something that happens and becomes a take home lesson…

Some fun photos:
Check out Tobe-san in his UNISIA JECS replica R32 DRIFTING in this corner!


The 1000HP JUN tuned R33


We started the session like this:


But I found myself easily passed by Miguel right after the above photo was taken. Took a while, but eventually caught up to him, here I am attacking the first corner, with Miguel right in front of me:


It's not a race, but slower traffic DID slow him down:




Coming out of the 100R, into the left turn:


Passing Montage:
















Whoever said that R32s were faster on the track?? It's all driver skill, baby!!! :)