We present 53 simultaneous photometric ( I band ) and spectroscopic ( 6900-9500Å ) observations of J0422+32 , taken during December 1997 .
From these we determine that J0422+32 was in its lowest state yet observed , at I=20.44 \pm 0.08 .
Using relative spectrophotometry , we show that it is possible to correct very accurately for telluric absorption .
Following this , we use the TiO bands at 7055Å and 7589Å for a radial velocity study and thereby obtain a semi-amplitude of 378 \pm 16 km s ^ { -1 } , which yields f ( M ) =1.191 \pm 0.021M _ { \odot } and q =9.0 ^ { \scriptscriptstyle + 2.2 } _ { \scriptscriptstyle - 2.7 } , consistent with previous observations .
We further demonstrate that this little explored method is very powerful for such systems .
We also determine a new orbital ephemeris of HJD=2450274.4156 \pm 0.0009 + 0.2121600 \pm 0.0000002 \times E .

We see some evidence for an ellipsoidal modulation , from which we determine the orbital inclination of J0422+32 to be less than 45 { { } ^ { \circ } } .
We therefore calculate a minimum mass for the primary of 2.22M _ { \odot } , consistent with a black hole , but not necessarily the super-massive one proposed by Beekman et al ( 1997 ) .
We obtain an M4-5 spectral type for the secondary star and determine that the secondary contributes 38 \pm 2 % of the flux that we observe from J0422+32 over the range 6950-8400Å .
From this we calculate the distance to the system to be 1.39 \pm 0.15kpc .