Seb Rogers: mountain bike photography

Nikon v Canon: the rap

It had to happen. Nikon v Canon nerd wars taken to its logical conclusion. Enjoy...

Lyrics:

"This is a story from not long ago
about a boy and a girl who fell in love like whoa
but there was a problem I didn't count on
the fact I was a Canon and she was a Nikon

The photo community was too far gone
they couldnt appreciate what we had goin' on
we had similar features, made similar pictures
we really weren't that different but they still couldn't see

I auto focused on her sexy body
buttons to push didn't know where to get started
I never thought I'd fall for a D200
but she was so hot, she was all that I wanted

[Chorus]
My 1DS mark III
felt more complete
when we were together she said my shots were so unique

But soon you'll see
we could never be
like Romeo and Juliette
our families disagreed

Ohh Ahh Polish my lens girl
oooahh polish my lens girl
ohh-ahh polish my lens girl
dont leave a thumb print on that lense girl

The two sides always at war
all across the message boards
Dpchallenge what the fuck yo
they could never let go
of the hate no thats for 'sho
the Nikon gang whooped my ass and made me go

The 70-200 in my pants wouldnt fit inside her Nikon body
made me wear a UV-filter, which I'm against, but shes my shawtay
Mount her on my tripod and screw her on and off and on again
make her take my picture and say I'm the best thats ever been

[Chorus]

Cause I'm a Canon gangsta and your a Nikon shawtay
I wanna take a picture of that rockin bootay

We couldnt keep the act up we just had to face the facts
but hey look on the bright side at least we're not a Pentax"

More here...

A tale of eight covers

Well, I said I'd been busy...

Somerset Life April 2009

I don't often get to sell images like this for use on mag covers. The UK magazine market is so competitive and so heavily biased towards newsstand sales that subtlety simply won't cut it, except perhaps with a few extremely well recognised brands. So it's nice to see a big landscape, small rider shot on a cover - and even better to see a general interest mag use real mountain bikers on the cover rather than the usual entirely unconvincing general purpose models plonked on a bike with the brake levers set too high and the saddle too low...

What Mountain Bike August '09

'We'd like a really summery cover', they said at What Mountain Bike. Happy, dusty trails and bright blue skies and all that. No problem, I said. In fact, this is one of very few covers I've shot in the past couple of years that hasn't needed any Photoshop work on the sky.

What you can't see - literally - is the rather fetching clump of purple flowers I deliberately left in the shot to the rider's left. That's because, by the time the cover was festooned with its browsing reader-snaring 'furniture', they'd been usurped by that big yellow rectangle. Such is the way of UK mag cover design.

What Mountain Bike September '09

The shoot for this cover was, by any reasonable standards, epic. Biblical quantities of rain, uncooperative equipment and map-reading cockups conspired to make this the most challenging cover shoot I've had for a while. In the end - and after a wholly unreasonable period of time spent cowering under bracken in driving rain - the location we'd chosen turned out to be a peach. Throw in half an hour of intermittent sun, and the 500 mile round trip even began to look worthwhile. Word is, this was one of WMB's best selling issues this year.

It's fair to say, though, that the image as it appears on the cover has had its fair share of Photoshop wizardry applied. I can't resist sharing the original, because it gives some idea of the conditions in which Ben and I were working. This is what it really looked like:

 

See that black cloud on the far horizon? Twenty minutes later that was depositing its contents all over us...

What Mountain Bike October '09

 

There's some stunning scenery lurking beyond those big black and red blobs, courtesy of the Long Mynd - officially Britain's Oldest Hills (TM). Honest.

Cycle Oct-Nov '09

Cass doesn't normally look that, erm, mad. It's just that, what with my constant berating to not screw up his eyes against the water splash and having to ride the same corner a few times, it looks like he's partway through a particularly rough day on the bike. Still, I like this spot - Mendip spring water to ride through, a curvy, rocky trail and warm sunshine.

What Mountain Bike November '09

it's a fact of life that the weather forecast isn't always right. So what should've been the week's only bright, sunny and clear day actually ended up rather dull and murky. In situations like this there's no choice but to think on your feet, so I ditched the view-heavy location i'd had in mind (on the grounds that the view was barely visible through the mist) and found a water splash instead. 

Once again, there's a great trail winding away into the distance behind that splurge about locks. Ho hum.

Mountain Biking UK December '09

MBUK normally commission their covers as a separate shoot, but they liked this pic of mine so much they ran it as-is. And the odd thing is, it's a close crop from a landscape format shot:

 

All hail the mighty D3, which allows me to shoot stuff like this at ISO800 and still bag a sharp cover.

What Mountain Bike December '09

Sometimes you can't find a cover image for looking. I knew the views from here were stunning. I knew the light would be good. I even knew roughly where to go. But could we find a suitable trail with the view in the right position behind Matt? Could we b******y.

In this situation necessity is the mother of bankable pictures, and sheep are a mountain bike photographer's best friend. After a fruitless hour or so traipsing around on foot, searching in vain for the holy grail of a bridleway traverse, we happened to find a few yards of rideable singletrack thanks to our cloven-hooved friends. Not that riding trails blazed by sheep isn't without its pitfalls - literally...

 

It's all glamour, this mountain bike cover star business 

So that, by my reckoning, rounds off my 2009 cover year: twelve all-in. One a month... that'll do nicely, thanks. Here's to a cover a month in 2010...

Battery charging

It's fair to say that, on a personal level, I've had a rough few months. I've been shooting plenty (and yes, more of that really will be appearing on the blog as I get back into the swing of things), but a few weeks back I realised I needed some proper time out to relax and recharge my batteries.

So I packed my camera gear, my trusty old tripod (which spends most of its time propping up the corner of the office), a stove-top coffee maker and my duvet in my new toy...

Westy Atlantic. In front of the Atlantic

...and headed west. Well, southwest. To revisit some childhood haunts and a couple of places that have particular personal resonance for me. With no clients to please, no timetable to stick to and no particular goal in mind, except to come back with a couple of pictures that I'd be happy to put on the wall.

It was ace. Whilst the pictures I took won't ever win any prizes (or earn me any money) they were fun to take and I've enjoyed coming back to them. And a couple of them will be taking pride of place in my new place, sometime next year.

If you ever get stuck in a creative rut, I recommend spending a little time doing something different. Cheaper than therapy, and more fun too!

Nikon D300, 80-200mm f/2.8, 15sec f/8 @ ISO200, tinted and toned in Bibble

Nikon D300, 80-200mm f/2.8, 1/2 sec f/22 @ ISO200

Nikon D300, 14-24mm f/2.8, 1/5sec f/22 @ ISO100

Oh, a few things I learnt:

- When it's blowing a force 7 you need a very heavy tripod to keep things stable. Heavier than mine, anyway...

- An onshore force 7 makes great waves but also chucks a lot of very fine salt spray in the air. And guess what? It's heading your way. I quickly discovered I could shoot with the 14-24mm's huge, exposed front element for about 5 minutes before the spray made it unusable.

- High-top campers and crosswinds don't mix. Not just on the road, but if you want to get a good night's sleep, too...

- T25 owners are almost certainly the friendliest, happiest people on the road. To other T25 owners, at least...

Nikon gets it right

On a shoot a little while back I realised I couldn't put off returning my D3 for a new rear LCD cover any more. It was a blustery, sunny day, but there was enough warmth in the sunshine to turn the moisture under the glass into a very effective fog. Put simply, I could see very little of what I'd just shot. Old skool - just like shooting film! But annoying.

Having been rather rude about Nikon's response to my query about how much the job might cost (see link above), I was tempted not to send it there. But old habits die hard. Nikon's online repair tracking service is very convenient, and before I quite realised what had happened there was a Nikon Professional Services pre-printed address label on the box and my D3 was on its way to Kingston upon Thames.

I'd accepted by this stage that the repair would cost me a bit. After all, although the camera's protected to some extent against moisture ingress, I'd obviously overstepped the mark. It didn't even occur to me to ask for a warranty repair. What goes around comes around, and all that. So I was quite happy to pay, and authorised an immediate repair up to £200.

Fast forward a week or so, and I receive an email from Nikon telling me the work's been completed, with an attached invoice. And this is what it said:

Goodwill, eh? Now that's interesting.

The question is, why? A friend suggested that following my 'leak' of the D3X specs a year or so back my blog might have a follower or followers at Nikon UK, and that this was their way of putting right my grumble about the apparent inability of their service staff to give a simple answer to a simple question. In which case, I suppose this post is a kind of quid pro quo. Thank you, Nikon. The gesture is appreciated.

Or - and rather more likely, I think - it's just coincidence. Either way, I'm enjoying being able to chimp without peering through a fog of condensation.

Own a piece of Olympic history

One of the perks of my job is getting to meet and, occasionally, ride with the stars of mountain biking. Entirely unsurprisingly, these men and women are just like you or I... but faster on a bike. A lot faster.

Oli Beckingsale lives just down the road from me, has helped me out on more photoshoots than I care to remember, rides a bike faster cross-country than most people and has represented Great Britain twice at the Olympics. He's also a great guy. Which probably explains why he's auctioning several bits of kit from his racing career in aid of a children's charity. The Beijing SIDs are particularly cool - a genuine one-off and a piece of Olympic history.

Have a rummage down the back of the sofa and put in a bid. It's in a good cause... 

How much do you love your camera?

A camera is just an inanimate object - a collection of metal, plastic and glass designed to do a particular job. And for most people, most of the time, it's actually the end result that's more important than the tool used to get there. But that doesn't prevent people from developing certain attachments to their image-recording devices. F'rinstance, I've got a soft spot for my Olympus OM1, which has a beautifully engineered feel to it. 

But immortalising a team of Japanese engineers' efforts as a piece of body art? Not sure about that (and it would've been a whole lot cooler in manual mode rather than the default Program...)

ISO 102,400 - the new standard?

When Nikon launched the D3 a couple of years ago, the combination of enough-but-not-too-many pixels, high speed, great dynamic range and frankly astonishing high ISO performance won it many fans. It's continued to set the standard for clean high ISO files ever since, but things have moved on and some of the (indirect) competition offers similar high ISO specs with higher pixel counts. Oh, and video. Ya gotta have video these days (apparently).

Enter the imaginatively named D3S. Yes, it's got video (but, disappointingly, only 720p). It also has a completely redesigned sensor with the ability to shoot at up to ISO 102,400. Eek.

Over the past year-and-a-bit that I've been shooting with the D3 I've become a huge fan of its ability to deliver clean files full of detail in lighting conditions that would've been near impossible to shoot in just a few years ago. Although I was sceptical at first that it would make any real difference to my photography, I just take this low light performance for granted now. I routinely find myself in some shaded, wooded corner, shooting happily away at ISO 1600 - or even higher - happy in the knowledge that no-one but me will know. It's that good. 

The less-publicised side benefit of the D3's extraordinarily well-behaved sensor is its incredible dynamic range, which has also changed the way I shoot. It's straightforward to recover at least 2/3 stop of 'lost' highlight detail from the D3's files, which makes it possible for me to deliver shots with detail-rich skies to an extent that simply wasn't possible before. A subtle improvement? Sure, but it's the small details like these that count.

Although I won't be rushing out to buy a D3S (particularly at the suggested retail price of over £4000), it's clear that Nikon intend to maintain the camera's reputation for ultimate high ISO performance. All I can say is that the hype about the D3 is all true, which gives the D3S a high bar to climb over. By my reckoning ISO 102,400 should allow pictures in conditions that it's hard to even see (or focus) in. If the resulting images are in any way usable, that's a remarkable achievement.

Business as usual. Well, almost

It's been a quiet couple of months on the blog. I've had my reasons, but just because i haven't been posting here it doesn't mean I've been slacking off. Quite the opposite, in fact. I've been shooting plenty, have notched up five or so covers (of which, more another time) and have plenty more still to come.

By way of proof, here's a few of my recently published pics. Think of them as visual hold music while I attempt to shuffle things back into an order that vaguely resembles normality...

Chris Smith samples the spring air. Client: Mountain Biking UK

Nikon D3, 80-200mm f/2.8, 1/320sec f/10 @ ISO200, two radio slaves

 

Yep, it's as wet as it looks. My D3 still needs some attention as a result of this shoot... and I discovered the limits of Goretex trousers by lying in a succession of ditches. Client: Tri Plus

Nikon D3, 17-35mm f/2.8, 1/320sec f/9 @ ISO400, two radio slaves

Alpine singletrack. Can't beat it. Thirty minutes after shooting this the fog rolled in and we beat a hasty retreat down the mountain. Client: personal work, but published in What Mountain Bike

Nikon D300, 50-150mm f/2.8, 1/800sec f/6.3 @ ISO200

The glamorous life of the pro photographer

It's all bagfulls of L series lenses, fast cars and queues of clients desperately trying to swell your bank account. Oh yes. (Warning: contains a lot of swearing). 

Original clip here (this isn't my creation, by the way... I just spent so long laughing when I saw it I thought it worth sharing...)

I know nothing...

My D3 suffered a bit in the wet shoots I've done in the past couple of months. The first I knew of it was when the rear monitor fogged over in warm sunshine. I let it dry out, but there's a discoloured patch which makes viewing in bright light a bit of a pain. I can probably live with it, but it'd be nice to get it fixed. Provided, of course, the price is reasonable.

So what do I do? I phone Nikon's technical support line and ask how much a new rear screen is likely to be. 

'I don't know' is the helpful reply. 

OK, I say, just give me a ballpark. 

'It could be anywhere between £5 and £1000'.

I'm speechless for a second. Obviously, I point out, it's not going to be £5. Can't you just give me an idea of the cost of the parts so that I can work out whether it's worth my while sending it in?

'I'm sorry, no'.

And so on, round and round a few more times until I give up and phone independent repairers Fixation instead. In complete contrast to Nikon's total intransigence, the friendly person who answers the phone trundles off to find a technician and comes back with a straightforward answer. Job done.

This isn't the first time I've been on the receiving end of Nikon indifference. It's infuriating, and it's inexcusable. Nikon, sort it out. How hard is it to have a parts price list available to the support line staff? It ain't rocket science, it's basic customer service.

In the meantime, it looks like Nikon UK has lost a repair job. Fixation, my D3 will be in the post shortly...