Pinewood Derby

Before I go into today’s photo, I would like to give a big shout-out to the fathers and mothers who work with the cub-scout troop of St. Vincent de Paul school.  They do a great job with the boys.

Now to the Pinewood Derby details. 

At the school, the troop has a shop where all the boys and their adult supporters can go to make the cars for the Pinewood Derby.  The shop has bandsaws, drum sanders and drill presses to help make the cars.  In short, everything that you might need to build a super Pinewood Derby car is there.

As to the track, it looks like something from NASA—polished aluminum with each line individual tested for speed.  The track is supported with a state-of-art computer system that electronically determines the exact time for each car and post it to a screen (car’s and scout’s name, time and equivalent miles per hour).  Pretty cool stuff!

Today’s photo is of the first and second place cars in the Bear den.  These two cars blew everyone else off the track.  Although the Orange Speed (which was built by none other than Cole James Patrick) beat the other car in this heat, the Orange Speed lost the gold medal by 0.002 of a second for the three heats.

In hindsight I probably should have used a higher ISO and shutter speed.  I think that a shutter speed of about 1/1,000^th of a second would have done a much better job of stopping the action.

Congratulations Cole—Great Job!

Enjoy 

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, ISO 1,600, Nikon 28-300mm f/5.6 at 70mm, f/5.6 and 1/350^th of a second with Nikon SB800 attached to camera

Post Processing:

Lightroom 3:  Set black point and added contrast with a mild curve.

Photoshop CS5: Dodged and burned image and sharpened cars using high pass method.