Seb Rogers: mountain bike photography

The revenge of the gremlins

I picked up my new D300 about a week ago, and I've been slowly adapting to it. I can't actually use it in anger until Bibble releases an update so that I can batch large numbers of raw files, but I've been using the latest version of Nikon's own Capture NX to get a handle on what the camera can do. Of which, more some other time.

It was while I was playing around that I stumbled on an odd thing: apparently random raw files would cause NX to fall over. I was about to put this down to an early software update bug when I noticed something else about the problem files that made me sit up and take notice: they weren't random. Or, at least, they had something in common - they were all taken in portrait format. And all of them were also missing some elements of the embedded EXIF data.

Which was, to put it mildly, odd.

To test whether it was the portrait-ness that was causing the problem, I tried a few test shots of the same subject in portrait and landscape format. Sure enough, the landscape shots were fine and the portrait ones appeared to be corrupt. Weirder still, jpegs recorded alongside the problematic raw files were fine.

After some more head-scratching and testing, I'd narrowed the problem down to a set of 100% repeatable circumstances: portrait format shots in lossless compressed raw mode. Jpegs, lossy compressed raw and uncompressed raw were all fine, as was anything shot in landscape format.

Very odd. So odd, in fact, that I rang Nikon. Who said, 'that's odd' (or words to that effect) and offered to look into it.

I was about to put the whole thing down to some weird early production glitch when, thanks to a turn of events that I won't bore you with, I discovered that the problem may not lie with the camera at all. After downloading some of the same test images to my laptop to check that the new version of NX I'd just installed was running properly, I noticed that the problem files weren't problem files any more. They were just fine.

Huh?

Now the only thing that's different about my laptop and desktop setups is that I use different software to transfer images from my Firewire card reader: Nikon's Picture Project Transfer on the desktop and Apple's own image transfer app on the laptop. So, acting on a hunch, I tried using Nikon's new Transfer app on the desktop to download the test images... and the problem appears to have gone away.

The moral to which long, rambling and rather tedious story is that software really can **** you up in ways you never imagined. Nikon's own transfer app - albeit an older one, but one which has never caused any problems before - was corrupting portrait format, lossless compressed raw files (and only portrait format, lossless compressed raw files) as they were being transferred to my desktop. You just couldn't make it up.

Hip to wall ride 8fps 12mp sequence. Didn't think I'd ever be able to do that. And in fact, there are three pics missing from the sequence for clarity.
Nikon D300, 12-24mm f/4, 1/1000 sec f/5 @ ISO400

Update: someone far cleverer than me has told me that this isn't a new problem. Apparently Nikon's Transfer software alters files as they're moved from card to camera, and this has caused difficulties before (in a previous incarnation it was apparently D2X files shot with flash that were buggy). Why should this be? I can't see any reason for it, and it's made me re-think how I go about transferring files. What I like about Nikon's Transfer app is that I can re-name files as they're moved, but maybe I should go through a two-stage process to avoid the files being altered in any other way...

Go large

The current issues of What Mountain Bike and Mountain Biking UK contain features from two of my favourite shoots of the year. And, although they've very different, there's a theme that they share in common: big rides in big country.

MBUK's 'Dire Straights' feature follows semi-pro rider and part-time stuntman Rob Jarman as he attempts to take himself and his bike in a straight line from A to B across some particularly unforgiving terrain. In the process he makes full use of all the gear he's brought along in a 'just in case' kind of a way, including climbing ropes and harness and a pair of waterproof bags to use as impromptu buoyancy for fording deep water:

Nikon D200, 200mm f/2, 1/640sec f/2.8 @ ISO100

For What Mountain Bike's 'Everest in a Day' challenge, on the other hand, I had to both shoot and complete one of the biggest rides I've ever attempted. Given that the riding involved nearly 100km and 9317 vertical metres of singletrack in a single day, getting the shots was a challenge in itself that required some creative lateral thinking. But, with help from hosts trailAddiction we covered the distance and got the pictures we needed:

Nikon D200, 10.5mm f/2.8, 1/400sec f/6.3 @ ISO100, two radio slaves

I'm not sure which I'm more pleased about: getting the shots, or being amongst the first riders (as far as I'm aware) to notch up an Everest's worth of off-road descending on a single day.* My forearms have just about recovered by now...

* That statement deserves some qualification. It'd be straightforward enough to shuttle up and down on the same descent, so we deliberately made life harder for ourselves by riding every descent on a different trail.

Just show me the money

I've previously alluded on this blog (and fairly grumpily, even by my standards) to the problems that can be caused by the tendency for many people to give away pictures for free. The explosion of cheap dSLRs and photo sharing sites has generated an unprecedented boom in the quantity (sadly not always matched in quality - but that's a whole different subject) of images available for viewing. And it's a fact that hasn't gone unnoticed by image buyers, who have become ruthlessly adept* at exploiting the average amateur's vanity and blissful ignorance of intellectual property rights in order to take what they want, usually for commercial gain in some form or other, and to give in return... absolutely nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

'So what?' you may be thinking. 'If amateur photographers want to give away their work for free, where's the harm?'

Well... as I've hinted in the past, this behaviour contributes to the devaluing of all photography. So, whilst arguably no harm is done to the legions of genuine amateurs who demand nothing more than the fuzzy glow of satisfaction of seeing their work in print, every freebie is another nail in the coffin of photography as a viable profession. And the ultimate irony is that the dream of a full-time career is often dangled as a carrot in front of the wavering would-be photographer: 'if you give us this picture we'll make sure you're credited, and the publicity will be really good for you...'.

It's nothing more than a confidence trick. Don't fall for it.

And it's not just photographers who are affected in this way. Here's a fantastically entertaining Hollywood rant (warning: contains some strong language):

I've lost count of the number of times I've politely declined to supply images in exchange for a byline or a link to my website. I frequently have to bite my tongue and resist the temptation to descend into the kind of sarcastic rant that Harlan Ellison does so well... but it's getting harder.

So, please - whether you earn your living from photography or not - don't give stuff away for free. If you do, you'll be contributing in a small way to the destruction of photography (and, in a roundabout way, other creative arts) as a viable living. And a world that doesn't reward creative individuals for the sculpture, poetry, music, painting, plays and photography that they provide is one that will, I think, be greatly impoverished.

* It's not always blatant. One of the most common current tactics is to run a photo 'competition' in which the conditions of entry will stipulate that entrants will give up some or all of their intellectual property rights. Result? A free photo library for the cost of a bit of publicity and a couple of prizes. Big household names are amongst the worst offenders, and the rights grab is always buried in the small print. You have been warned!

Bah humbug

If, like me, the prospect of Christmas shopping makes clearing out the garage seem like a far more tempting proposition in comparison, here's something to add to your wish-list. Aaron Johnson's What the Duck character appeals to the camera geek in me. But more importantly, it makes me laugh. And that tongue-in-cheek, nerdy humour is available in T-shirt, mouse mat or wall-mounted form... and just a click of a mouse away. Who needs to go shopping?

Time to clear out the garage?

I arrived in Laguna Beach (after a litany of transport-related woes including a 60 mile traffic jam and a missed flight) just in time to hook up with trials, freeride and adventure riding legend Hans Rey for some pictures. Ironically, Hans is getting on a plane this afternoon... to the UK. But I digress...

Aside from the fact that Hans lives a stone's throw from the beach in one direction and the (apparently - I haven't had time to check them out for myself yet) awesome Laguna trails in the other, the first thing that strikes you about his house is the garage. Or rather, what's in it.

Nikon D2X, 10.5mm f/2.8, 1/40 sec f/4 @ ISO400, single radio slave

Hans did a quick tally and counted around 30 frames, around 2/3 of which are still complete bikes. Given that Hans is probably the longest-established pro rider in the world, it's perhaps not surprising that his garage is effectively a snapshot of the mountain bike industry over the past 20 years. It's surprisingly tidy, too, under the circumstances.

Purple anodising? Check. 'V' brakes? Check. Composite wheels? Check. Hans has ridden every bike industry innovation / fad (delete whichever doesn't apply in the circumstances) over the past two decades - and a representative sample of most of those products is still here, safely stored for posterity.

She'll no' take it, cap'n

If you've emailed me in the past few days and haven't received a reply... apologies. I can receive email while I'm in the US but, an error message helpfully informs me, I can't access my SMTP server from here. Which means I can't send mail.

If you're emailing about the 2008 photo course reserve list, consider yourself added. If you're emailing about anything else, I'll be in touch next week.

In the US and A*

It's impossible to mistake the United States for any other country. For one thing, everyone addresses you as 'sir' (or 'ma'am', if you happen to be of the apposite gender). And for another, the flag is everywhere. This is the view from my hotel bedroom window. Well, OK, a small part of the view from my hotel bedroom window:

Nikon D200, 200mm f/2, 1/15sec f/22 @ ISO100

For an interminable 10 minutes at San Francisco airport it seemed as though the immigration officer wasn't going to let me into the country. She seemed distinctly unimpressed with my shiny new 'I' (it stands for 'information gathering media', doncha know) visa, which replaces the slightly less shiny (and, more to the point, expired) 'I' visa in my old passport. And even less impressed that I didn't have any kind of press card or 'official accreditation'. In the end I managed to magic a letter on headed paper from the deeper recesses of my bag, smiled a lot and tried very hard not to say, 'I don't have this problem in any other country'. I've learnt from bitter experience that US border officials don't like that. 'You're in the United States now. Sir.'

And so I am. Er, so there might even be the odd sporadic update, if I get time. Off to Specialized tomorrow...

*with apologies to Borat

We're all full up...

Thanks to everyone who contacted me about the 2008 photo courses... they're now both fully booked up (pending arrival of the last few deposits). I'm looking forward to it already!

If you'd like me to add you to my reserve list (there are still a couple of places), please let me know. People on the list will be offered spare places - if they become available - on a first come, first served basis.

If you've recently booked and sent me a deposit, I'll be in touch in the next two weeks to confirm...

It's not about the camera

Earlier this week I finally put my gear where my mouth is, and used my D40X for a proper paying shoot.

To understand where I'm coming from on this, take a step back for a moment. Pros use expensive, heavy cameras for a reason: they're reliable, they're more likely to keep working in extremes of cold / heat / dust / moisture and they're built to higher standards with better quality components, so they're also faster to use. When you earn your living taking pictures, you want to minimise the chances of not getting the shot by using the best, fastest, most reliable gear available.

Cameras like the D40X are built with none of these needs in mind, because Nikon doesn't intend them to be used professionally. And, for that reason alone, I was just a tiny bit nervous about committing to a job with a camera that's been designed from the ground up for happy snapping. Don't get me wrong - the D40X is a fine camera, and one that I've enjoyed using for family snaps over the summer. But I was putting my reputation on the line here.

On the flip side, it wasn't a completely insane decision either. The D40X uses essentially the same sensor as my trusty D200, so I was confident that image quality shouldn't be a problem. And I'm reasonably careful with my gear, so durability and strength weren't going to be an issue. My main concerns centred around the fiddly, menu-driven controls and overall speed of operation.

I'll take extra cheese with my mountain bike pictures, please
Nikon D40X, 50-150mm f/2.8, 1/250sec f/5.6 @ ISO200

How did I get on? Well, hopefully you'll see the results on a magazine cover in the next few months. So, in terms of image quality at least, the camera delivered - and that wasn't really a surprise.

On the handling and speed front, it was a mixed bag. I occasionally stumbled with the menu system. That's something that should get easier with practice, but the lack of dedicated controls for shutter speed, aperture, white balance and so on is bound to slow things down. I got caught out a couple of times vainly stabbing at the aperture button whilst turning the main control dial and wondering why I couldn't adjust the aperture, only to realise - eventually - that I needed to turn the image preview display off first. Which meant pressing yet another button. An operation that's a turn of a dial on my other cameras turns into a press, press-and-hold, turn a dial operation here: the definition of fiddly.

I also missed having separate R,G,B histograms. They'd be ludicrous overkill on a camera like the D40X, but in this case it meant I had to guess how much to dial down the exposure to avoid blowing the blue channel on a bright sky. I got it wrong a couple of times, and had to pull back the lost detail during raw processing.

On the plus side, the D40X's shutter lag and mirror blackout times are surprisingly snappy for such a cheap camera. It's a tad slower off the mark than the D200 and it took me a few shots to get my timing down, but it wasn't nearly as bad as I'd been expecting. Remember, I'm shooting a moving target (in this case mostly with a wide lens) and squeezing off a single, carefully-timed shot. I have to get the timing right, and the D40X delivered on nearly every shot. Kudos to Nikon. It's not all good news on the speed front, though, and on the rare occasions when I squeezed off a small sequence of raw shots (it'll only hold a handful in the buffer), things slowed down noticeably while the files were written to the card. Still, at 3fps it's not exactly a fast action-stopping machine anyway.

Will I be repeating the experience? Not unless I have to. Whilst I've demonstrated (to my own satisfaction, at least) that a relatively cheap camera is perfectly capable of turning out pro-quality images, the practical limitations imposed by its build and design mean the D40X is only ever going to be a lightweight backup to my main cameras.

If push came to shove, I reckon I could shoot 90% of my work on it. But that 10% is the reason I spent so much on my other gear.

Photo courses 2008: dates for your diary

Update, Friday 9th November: both courses are fully booked, although there are a couple of places left on the October reserve list.

After a great deal of juggling of dates and logistics, I've finally settled on two sets of dates for my 2008 photo courses in conjunction with Bikemagic.

The bad news is that the first course in May is already fully booked. I thought it only fair to give people on my mailing list who missed out this year first refusal on the first available date next year... and the result was that all the places have been snapped up. The good news is that there are still places available on the second course in October.

I'll also be running a reserve list (up to a maximum of two places) for both courses. If you've missed out on a place but would like to know if one becomes available, just tell me and I'll let you know on a first come, first served basis.

COURSE DETAILS

This year's course was a huge success*, so I'll be using the same formula (with some minor tweaks) for next year. The location proved particularly popular:

- fantastic, bike-friendly b&b with secure overnight bike storage, a communal lounge for post-ride slideshows and tea and cake in quantities large enough to satisfy mountain bikers' appetites
- ride from the front door onto the trails
- superb Quantock singletrack
- 10 minute walk to the village pub, which serves excellent food

- price: £350 p/p
- each course limited to 6 places
- price includes: photo instruction, guided riding, b&b accommodation on Friday and Saturday nights, packed lunch on Saturday and Sunday, afternoon tea and cake on Friday, Saturday and Sunday
- price excludes: lunch on Friday; evening meal on Saturday and Sunday

* you can read some first-hand experiences of the 2007 course here.

2008 COURSE DATES

Friday May 16th 12pm - Sunday May 18th 4pm: fully booked; reserve list closed

Friday October 3rd 12pm - Sunday October 5th 4pm: fully booked; reserve list open

BOOKING

- a deposit of £100 secures a place
- (for October 2008 bookings) places paid for in full by the end of December 2007 qualify for a 10% early booking discount, bringing the total price down to £315
- (for May 2008 bookings) balances are due by March 21st 2008
- (for October 2008 bookings) balances are due by August 8th 2008
- payment can be made by cheque, Paypal or bank transfer - please let me know which method you'd prefer

It's grumpy oop north

There are two rules in journalism: check your facts, and don't upset a Yorkshireman. Oh, okay, I made that last one up. But bear with me and all will become clear.

Although I write much less than I used to, I still put together bike tests for UK-based mags MBUK and What Mountain Bike. And in my latest MBUK bike test, I made the fatal error of assuming that cult bike brand On-One is based in Lancashire... when it is, in fact, in Yorkshire.

This seemingly trivial error has upset On-One founder and owner Brant Richards for two reasons. First, he's a Yorkshireman born and bred, and proud of it. And second, On-One's home town of Todmorden has a long history of battling to preserve its Yorkshire identity. Apparently in ye olden days the county boundary ran down the length of the High Street, but now neighbouring Lancashire is a good four miles away. Brant won't even cross the border on his training runs, he's that proud of his Yorkshire heritage.

My bad (or mea culpa, as the saying used to go). In typically forthright fashion, Brant's having a good deal of fun at my expense. But hey, I deserve it - I should've checked.

The bike, by the way, in case you're wondering, is great...

All-seeing eyes

Magazine editorial work is my bread-and-butter. Although I enjoy it, the opportunity to shoot to a slightly different brief is always welcome. So when I was offered the chance - for the second year running - to work on the new Genesis and Ridgeback catalogues, I jumped at it.

Commercial shoots are different for a number of reasons, but funnily enough the most obvious - (slightly) bigger budgets - doesn't make as much difference as you'd expect. There's still a long list of shots to get, a lot of products to shoot in a variety of locations, and a limited time in which to get the job done. The degree to which the job is scripted in advance varies, but even when it's planned down to the last shot it's important to be flexible and think on your feet. Here's the story behind a small selection of shots from next year's catalogues:

Part of the brief for Genesis this year was to get some slightly more 'radical' images that reflect the changing nature of trail riding. This was an obvious launch pad and I wanted to get a head-on shot, but the background from behind was far more attractive. Focussing on a point in mid-air was tricky; in the end only one of the half dozen or so shots I took was sharp.
Nikon D2X, 200mm f/2, 1/250sec f/2.5 @ ISO200, two radio slaves

I was running out of time at the end of the day to shoot the Genesis road range, but noticed an attractive mackerel sky in the fading light. I knew there was a good fast corner just down the road, so I squatted on the inside of the bend and asked the riders to ride it as fast as they could a few times. To get a low enough angle I had to hold the camera just above the road and pan as best I could with my fisheye lens. The lead bike is only a few inches away in this shot...
Nikon D2X, 10.5mm f/2.8, 1/200 sec f/5.6 @ ISO400

Clued-up manufacturers are realising that tired, side-on views of their bikes in action aren't enough to grab attention. The challenge is to come up with fresh angles and images that tell a story but can also be used in a wide variety of contexts. I liked the play of light on this staircase at London Bridge station and thought we could make a picture that hinted at commuting, so I asked Toby to carry his bike up and down a few times. People kept getting in the way, but that's just the reality of shooting in an environment that's open to the public.
Nikon D200, 50-150mm f/2.8, 1/250sec f/5.6 @ ISO200

This location near London Bridge was ideal for our needs, with a large pedestrianised area and a wide variety of backdrops. Trouble is, it's also privately owned. I suspected that we wouldn't have long before someone asked us to move on, so we worked as quickly and unobtrusively as possible. But sure enough, after an hour or so it must have become obvious what we were up to and we were invited (very politely) to take our bikes and cameras elsewhere. In theory we could have continued with the landowner's permission and payment of a fee. In practice property owners tend to charge a flat rate that's more in line with Hollywood budgets than small bike manufacturers'...
Nikon D200, 12-24mm f/4, 1/320sec f/7.1 @ ISO100