Formula One in 1970 was not the high-pressure, multi-million dollar business that it is today. Even a college student clutching his first 35mm camera could get close enough to the stars to fill his autograph book and capture mementos of the occasion. It was even possible to get near enough to the track to get recognisable pictures of the cars, although a 1/60s shutter speed wasn't really fast enough to freeze the action.
These photographs are from two events held at Brands Hatch in 1970: the Race of Champions, and the British Grand Prix. Many thanks to the readers of the rec.autos.sport newsgroups who helped me to identify the drivers and cars. Particular thanks to Dr. Fredrik Knutsen for driver identification, and to Vincent Ho for identifying the event and supplying me with a list of cars and drivers.
My first 35mm camera, bought used in the latter half of the 1960s for
the princely sum of six pounds. I believe it was a Hanimex - the first
letter of the name was definitely an "H" (and it wasn't a Hasselblad).
The shutter speed was fixed at 1/60s, but the aperture was adjustable
from a maximum of f2.8 down to f16. The camera body incorporated an
exposure meter at the top right, but it was not electrically coupled
to the camera in any way. It just gave an exposure value - it was up
to the user to set the right aperture setting, based on the film speed.
The film is mostly Kodak (unidentified - probably Tri-X), although at
least one roll is Ilford FP4. I developed some rolls myself in a
college darkroom: others were developed at Fencolor labs in Cambridge
(where I had a summer vacation job).
The images have been scanned directly from the negatives using an HP
PhotoSmart scanner.
The quality of the images suffers from the fact that the negatives are nearly thirty years old, they spent quite some time in a flooded basement, and they weren't that sharp to begin with!