Seb Rogers: mountain bike photography

Radio gaga

Just about my only disappointment with Nikon's recent announcements of the D3 and D300 is that they clearly didn't feel the need (or, possibly, didn't have the time or the resources) to update the otherwise excellent iTTL flash system from clunky line-of-sight infrared to useable radio.

Clearly I'm not the only one who'd like to be able to control remote flashes from the on-camera master unit. This new product, currently in development, sounds as though it should solve the problem. I'm intrigued to find out exactly how it attaches to the flash ('lick 'n stick' doesn't sound terribly appealing, to be honest), and of course it won't solve the problem of the built-in extra shutter lag that iTTL introduces. But it's an interesting idea, and I really hope it works.

Oh, and apparently it works with Canon's flash system too.

Thanks to Gerhard Engelbrecht for bringing it to my attention.

Cover: What Mountain Bike October '07

Nikon D2X, 50-150mm f/2.8, 1/250sec f/3.5 @ ISO400, two radio slaves

Over the years I've had to deal with plenty of weather-related difficulties on cover shoots, from freezing temperatures to driving rain. But this shoot in south Wales was the first occasion I've had to deal with fog.

Now, I actually rather like the effect of fog in a forest. Stick a telephoto lens on to compress the perspective, stack the trees up and watch the soft light create a sense of distance. Lovely - if you're a landscape photographer. But the fog's diffuse light, reduced contrast and halo effects around external light sources (in other words, my remote flashes) aren't conducive to getting an action shot that'll work well on a cover.

Luckily for us, there were intermittent clear patches in the fog. Unluckily for us, these clear patches were small and fast-moving. On several occasions, by the time Rowan had clipped in and ridden the 50 metres or so to the spot where I was shooting, the fog would roll in out of nowhere and obscure my view.

Some of the slightly more foggy pics - like this one - work reasonably well in their own right, but murk and magazine covers don't generally go too well together. In magazine world the weather's only ever bright and crisp. It never rains, it's never too cold to wear shorts and fog is caused by the photographer not cleaning his lens properly. Compare and contrast with the reality of the UK's climate...

Everyone's a critic

I can't take the credit for digging this one up, but it made me laugh so I thought I'd share it. Beware the photographic technique-literate, marker-pen wielding vandal...

This week I've mostly been...

...busy.

Busy hanging out of the back of the car, shooting the 2008 Genesis range:

Nikon D2X, 12-24mm f/4, 1/30 sec f/14 @ ISO400
(NB There's a bug which means this image doesn't size properly if you launch it in a separate window. I'm not sure why this is, but I don't have time to sort it out right now...)

Busy shooting my first black and white images for, oooh, over 20 years:

Nikon D2X, 50mm f/1.8, 1/100 sec f/2.8 @ ISO800

Busy rediscovering why I like riding the South Downs so much:

Nikon D2X, 12-24mm f/4, 1/250sec f/6.3 @ ISO200

Oh, and busy being thrown off private land (twice) while shooting the 2008 Ridgeback range. Oops.

Result? A large backlog of raw files to process, sore shoulders, and a new-found respect for ever-so-polite Polish security guards...

What the duck

Comic strips built around photography have a long and fairly inglorious history. I'm old enough to remember Camera Weekly's one-liner cartoons, most of which revolved around a variation of the 'incompetent photographer husband / long-suffering domesticated wife' routine. Occasionally they raised a chuckle; mostly they were pretty lame.

'Lame' isn't a criticism that can be levelled at whattheduck. Aaron Johnson's unlikely camera-wielding creation is a knowing and affectionate sideways glance at the obsessive-compulsive in every photographer. Like all great cartoons it has its ups and downs, but raising a chuckle - let alone a belly laugh - out of apertures and big lenses is a feat in itself.

I like it. A lot.

© Aaron Johnson. All rights reserved

No skill required

The convergence of video and stills was inevitable, and this new camera from Casio gives a hint of what's just around the corner. 60 frames per second for 6 megapixel images is fairly astonishing, but I'm particularly taken by the 'pre-shot burst mode', which starts filling the camera's buffer at a half-press of the shutter release.

Casio boast that this means you'll never miss the shot; to my cynical eyes it just means absolutely minimal involvement on the part of the photographer is required. Waft the camera in the general direction of the scene you're recording, half-fill a memory card with images and debate at your leisure which of the resulting dozens of near-identical shots you want to keep.

It's either genius, or the ultimate in lazy 'spray and pray' photography. I'll leave you to make up your own mind...

Car park shooting

Every rider knows that the density of walkers / dogs / small children is inversely proportional to the distance from the car park. Ride more than 400 yards from the average tourist honeypot, and you'll likely be rewarded with empty trails and people-free views.

Sometimes, though, it pays to keep your eyes - and your options - open. Last week in the French Alps we pitched up in this popular spot near Tignes to find it full to bursting:

Look to the right of the picture, though, and you'll see a perfect vignette of Alpine riding: tight singletrack curving round some rocks with a distant, snow-capped peak behind. Switch the lens, shuffle a few feet to one side, and there's a perfectly useable image there:

Nikon D200, 200mm f/2, 1/1000 sec f/4 @ ISO100

Would you have known there was a full car park within a stone's throw of this shot? Nope. Photographs are just rectangular, two-dimensional slices of reality (natch). Good photographs rely on careful positioning of the borders of that rectangle. What happens beyond those borders is, for the most part, irrelevant.

Most car parks don't have such great backdrops, of course. But less than ideal surroundings can still yield good pictures, if you keep your eyes open.

Oh yeah... the new watermark? I got a bit tired of the old, curly font. And I thought it was time I plugged my portfolio site, too...