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Welcome to the beta version of the new www.2010.cannell.co.uk website. This will eventually replace the existing www.cannell.co.uk website.
Between the initial release of the website in 2001 and the end of 2007, the site had grown and changed to such a degree that a major upgrade has become necessary. The site started originally just to show the development of my own cars and host pictures of the cars through their development and events attended. By the end of 2007 the number of pictures was close to 200,000 & the site had grown to a size of over 15 GBytes !!
When the original site was developed it was in a product called Microsoft Frontpage. This was a quick and easy way to get the site 'on-air' and offered a lot of features to allow easy modification and updates. Because of this other features were added to the website that have become separate entities in their own right - things like hosting videos, the 944 UK Power league tables and dyno graphs, reference materials, guest book, links to other sites (including HighgateHouse) etc.
The original picture library was very small as it was only originally envisaged to provide illustration of cars as they were developed. A format of 9 pictures per page fitted in very easily with the features of Frontpage and the most popular internet browsers and screen resolutions at the time. Each picture was a thumbnail of 320 pixels wide that when clicked on would reveal 1 1024x768 version created from the original full resolution scans of film prints and latterly digital camera produced JPG files. The use of these smaller file size allowed the site to easily stay within the 20 MByte hosting package limits.
Some of the early pictures were from a Kodak DC20 digital camera, or scans directly from colour photographs. As the site became more popular better digital cameras were used which allowed better quality images to be recorded and a much larger number of pictures to be taken at a relatively low cost compared with film development, print and electronic scanning to produce files ready for the website. The time between taking the picture and hosting it on the website also decreased rapidly.
The Kodak DC20 camera was first replaced by the then new digital SLR, Canon EOS D30 digital camera with 2,160 x 1,440 resolution from a true 3.12 Mega-pixels. Then in June 2003 a Canon EOS-D10, first used at the Cassington event. Resolution was increased to 3072 x 2048 (true pixels) from the 6.3 Megapixel sensor. JPEG sizes were approximately 3 MBytes in size. The camera had the optional hand grip with dual batteries, two 1GByte IBM microdrive's that can store over 300 pictures each at full resolution and a 2.2 GByte as spare ! This enables filming at track days where the 3 FPS motordrive came in to play, and the complete setup was good for well over 600 high quality pictures per session !
During June 2003, the site was migrated to a new web host and upgraded. The original ISP had a maximum allocation of 20 MBytes for the site. The site was re-hosted on servers with 2 GIGABYTE capacity. At the time I also had access to a T1 2mb/2mb data link to maintain the site, making higher quality pictures available and site uploads much quicker. With the increased capacity and speed available the process of making higher quality images available on the site by reducing the JPEG compression from 60 to 10 was adopted.
Because of these benefits in time and cost the website took on an additional feature - hosting pictures of many car events attended, particularly Porsche club (and 944 gatherings in particular) and Jaguar club events. This expanded rapidly over the last five years and now features extended coverage of major Porsche related events in the UK including national days, club outings and region / register events. Some of these events have seen the site host well over 1,000 pictures per day !
During 2005 the camera was again updated to a Canon EOS-20D with the EOS-10D remaining as backup. The 20D had a 8.2 million pixel sensor and produced images at 3504x2336 resolution. The motor drive could shoot a continuous 23 frames at 5 frames per second (D10 was 9 frames at 3.3 fps) Focusing points also increase from 7 to 9 and maximum shutter speed goes up to 1/8000 (D10 1/4000). At the same time the Sigma EX series lenses were replaced by Canon's professional 'L' series lenses. These included wide angle lenses and two image stabiliser zoom telephoto lenses to allow coverage of motorsport.
Latterly motorsport events have featured prominently, both track days and competitive motorsport where our sister website provide race livery for vehicles running in current race series.
During 2007, shortcomings in the capabilities of the original website were becoming a strain. The Frontpage based servers were unable to cope with the vast amount of data (mainly pictures) on the website. The site navigation started to fall apart with some pages not updating correctly, but worst of all the navigation bars and icons were ineffective, preventing easy (or latterly in some cases NO) access to pages within the web.
By the end of 2007 it was imperative that a new structure of the website was required that would allow the almost logarithmic increase in the size of the website and allow the addition of many more features that have had to be shelved because of the failings if Frontpage because of the load on the servers.
The landmark 1,000,000th website hit occurred during the summer of 2007 testifying to the popularity that the site had gained.
This is now effectively the third generation of the website and a host of new features will be announced and introduced during 2009.
The site is now hosted on even more powerful servers and we have over 1 TByte capacity available. We have also finally re-written the site and it is no longer reliant on the now obsolete Microsoft Frontpage extensions.
Initially the site will host all new events from January 2009 onwards. Throughout the summer all the old material and galleries from the original site will be re-sampled from the original files and added back in to the new (this) website so that once again all the picture galleries, reference materials etc will all become available again in a better and faster format.
As of 2008 the cameras have again been upgraded to a pair of Canon 40D cameras offering 10.1 Megapixels (3888x2592 pixels) and a fast 6.5FPS burst rate. 2009 saw the addition of Canon 1D mk IIn and for 2010 the addition of the latest Canon 7D. Pictures are now taken with exclusively Canon L series professional lenses.
Memory cards are immediately backed on to a Vosonic data store & viewer before leaving the event. We also have the ability to upload directly to the website from events via laptops with 3G connectivity and provide local printed proofs using an HP photo quality printer.
Rick is a member of the Canon Professional Network has £5,000,000 public liability insurance specifically for track-side photography. Our accreditation has seen trackside access and photography for such events as the A1GP, Formula Two and TOCA BTCC rounds as well as the five series in which we have customers Porsche race cars running and numerous track days, national events etc.
Primary photographic equipment used currently includes;
Cameras
- Canon EOS 40D + BP-E2N (battery Grip) + EF-D (focus screen) - two cameras
- Canon 7D
- Canon EOS 1D Mk IIN
Lenses
- Canon 300mm f/2.8 L USM IS
- Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L USM IS
- Canon 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6 L USM IS
- Canon 70-200 f/2.8 L USM IS
- Canon 24-70mm f/2.8 L USM
- Canon 16-35mm f/2.8 L USM
- Canon 10-22mm f/3.5/4.5 USM
- Canon 50mm f/1.4
- Canon Extender EF 1.4x II
- Canon Extender EF 2x II
Video
- Sony CCD-V900E DV Camera
- Sony DCR-HC42E DV Camera
Misc
- Canon 550EX & 580EX Flash Guns with STL-2 Infra-red remote
- Manfrotto 055XPROB Tripod with 22RC head
- Manfrotto 679B Monopod
- Vosonic 8360 with 80Gb drive
- HP A620 Photoprinter
- Jessops Extenders 2x
- Wireless remote 100M for Canon Cameras
 
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