Seb Rogers: mountain bike photography

So, that was 2008

Alright, it's a bit premature to round up the year. After all, there are some shopping days 'til Christmas (it says here) and then a few more days and change until the new year proper. But I'm winding up my work in time for the Christmas break this year, so this is my annual 'wot I did when I wasn't on holiday' story. Bear with me. I won't keep you long...

So. In 2008 it rained, quite a lot (much like 2007, in fact). But there were some nice sunny bits, too (mostly when I didn't expect them, or was busy doing something else. Grrr.) I shot a bunch of covers - more than one a month, by my reckoning. Oh, I scored a book cover and a couple of map covers, too. I got to ride some of my favourite trails. And between the rain and the muddy trails and the postponed shoots and the fruitless roadtrips, I got a few pictures I'm really rather proud of. 

I've always seen my job as a kind of visual interpreter, trying to cram the excitement of riding a high-tech piece of plumbing with a wheel at each end over chunks of largely unconcreted countryside into a small rectangle of colours, textures and shapes that, hopefully, will make someone somewhere say, 'I want to be there, riding that, right now.' 

Here are some of my favourite attempts towards this largely unachievable end from the past 12 months (in case you missed them the first time around):

Smith's Combe. You've got to ride it

Bwwaaaaaarp

© Seb's stunt double camera

Biiiiiig sky

Did I mention there was a lot of water about this year?

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

 

Chris Smith employs several stunt doubles to good effect

Young hooligans... should be kept behind bars, etc. etc.

Look...

... I like climbing trees, OK?

Thanks for reading. I hope you've enjoyed the blog, taken a few pictures that you're proud of this year... and that 2009 brings more of the same. Roll on the new year!

Triptychs: last chance for Christmas

My last pre-Christmas batch of triptych frames arrived today and I have just two left. Orders are sent out for next day delivery, so there's still time - just - to get your order in for Christmas. But I'll need your order - and payment - by Friday 19th December to be in time for Christmas delivery. Email me if you're interested.

No idea what I'm talking about? See here.

Afterglow

Winter shooting does have its downsides, not least of which is the fact that shorter days mean, erm, shorter days. At this time of year I often have to persuade both riders out of their beds before it's light and art editors that, no, it won't be possible to ride a 35 mile route, shoot a bike test and get a cover in a single day. Not that anyone's ever asked me to do that, but you get the idea. Limited daylight hours = shorter shooting time.

There is, however, a big upside. At least, there is when the UK isn't befogged under the usual procession of Atlantic lows. When the sun's out, the light's beautiful. ALL DAY. How cool is that? By mid-summer I may have 15 hours of usable daylight, but I probably only want to use about 5 of them. And they're at the awkward ends of the day, before I'm awake and at beer o'clock.

So here's a big thumbs-up to sunny winter days. Oh, and being able to grab the last few rays with plenty of time left to go home, grab a shower and head off down the pub...

Nikon D3, 16mm f/2.8, 1/500sec f/6.3 @ ISO400

Fridge suck...

... is one of life's little irritations. 

You know the scenario. You've cleared a space on the kitchen table (because it's big and clean and the light's good, and anyway it's cold out in the shed). You've got the flange wotsit off the thingumebob. Now all you need to do is prise the hoojamaflip off, and you're... oops. There it goes, describing a perfect arc into space before landing with a barely audible 'ting' on the floor and rolling off, never to be seen again, under the fridge.

Actually, I don't do much wrenching in the kitchen any more. But, as someone whose life seems to involve a perpetual round of packing and unpacking a lot of stuff in and out of my car, I do seem to have my fair share of irritatingly lost, well, things. Perhaps i should call it car suck.

Anyhoo, here's a random list of things that seem to spend most of their life in some kind of parallel universe. One that I usually can't find...

- one of my two pedal spanners. Where on earth does it go, and why is it not the same one that disappears every time?

- my LED head torch - the one that's really useful for sensor cleaning. When I've got some dust bunnies to clean off, can I find it? Can I heck...

- various Oakley lens cloths. Dead useful, these. I've got loads. Periodically I cast around, though, and find that I've mysteriously got none. They usually all turn up in the same jacket or bag pocket. It's as though they've got a herding instinct.

- 4, 5 and 6mm allen keys. I must have enough of these to make a modern art installation big enough to fill the main hall in the Tate Modern. Well, nearly. But at any one time... you guessed it...

Some tools, in the right place for a change, yesterday

Ah, well. Much as I try to keep the natural chaotic order of things under some kind of control, it seems that I'm destined always to be an allen key or three short of a full set...

Eight months with the D3

Back in March of this year I threw caution to the wind and a lot of money in the general direction of my friendly local camera shop and did something I honestly thought I'd never do. I bought a Nikon D3.

I was as surprised as anyone. After all, it's a big, heavy beast. Oh, and it's pretty expensive. And about the only thing I could think of that it did significantly better than my other recent purchase - the excellent, much cheaper, smaller and lighter D300 - was that I could squeeze the full benefit out of another extravagant purchase - my 14-24mm f/2.8. Oh yes. i got through a lot of cash in late '07 / early '08.

Perhaps it's the arrival of the D3X. Maybe it's the fact that my D3 is finally starting to feel less 'new' (I stepped backwards today and nearly trod on it, leaving a large smear of mud across various protruding bits in the process. My F5s survived much worse). Possibly it's the fact that, after an initial period of hesitation, I'm now reaching for the D3 more than the D300. 

Whatever the reason, I've been taking stock of the big hole in my bank balance caused by the D3 recently. And I've come to the conclusion that it is, without a doubt, the best piece of kit i've bought since my first F5, back in 1996.

There's lots to like, from the instant responses, accurate and usable autofocus and huge viewfinder screen. It really does feel like a slicker F5 with a posh screen on the back. But the thing that's absolutely revolutionised my photography this year is the clean high ISO performance.

If you drop by here regularly you may, just possibly, have picked up on how impressed I've been with the D3's ability to turn in clean high ISO files. In case you missed it, I eulogised about it here. And here. And quite possibly a couple of other places I've forgotten about.

The thing is, I come from a film background. I'd regularly push Provia a stop to ISO200. Provia 400 was just too soft and mushy at its nominal rating, so if I was really desparate I'd push it to ISO800. But if you're used to the output from any recent dSLR at that rating, you'd be horrified at the quality of Fuji's best high speed colour slide emulsion. Colours were muted and inaccurate, grain was noticeable and acuity wasn't great. Oh, and you needed to expose veeeery carefully.

So I was pretty happy with dSLRs that turned in results good enough for covers at ISO400. So much so that, when the D300 came along and moved the goalposts out towards ISO800 I was blown away. But nothing could have prepared me for the revolution that the D3 unleashed.

I'll now routinely set the ISO at whatever I need to get the shot, and stop worrying about it. Sure, I generally make it a rule to keep ISO as low as possible. But really, up to ISO800 there's absolutely no appreciable noise at all, and ISO1600 is as clean as ISO200 was on my D2X. It's that good.

Nikon D3, 17-35mm f/2.8, 1/125sec f/5.6 @ ISO1600, two radio slaves

Here's a recent shot where we had a great location but limited time and next to no light. No problem. I gelled one of my Speedlights to mimic low, warm sun, cranked the ISO up to 1600 and shot away. One of the resulting pics ended up being mocked up for a cover (it didn't run in the end, but it wasn't anything to do with the technical quality of the image).

And here's a 100% crop from this picture, just in case you're in any doubt:

It's hard to over-emphasise just how much this has changed my photography. Before I took the decision to pull the trigger on the D3, I hypothesised that it probably wasn't worth it because there were few situations I couldn't handle with ISO400. 

Quite simply, I was wrong. I wasn't seeing all the ISO1600 and above situations because I didn't have the equipment to capture them adequately. Now I do, and it's opened a new world of possibilities. Shooting later into the evening. Deeper in the woods. High speed, flash-lit sequences. Greater depth of field or higher shutter speeds in lower light. The option of shooting without flash. And so on.

I can't imagine going back. And it puts the price / megapixel conundrum of cameras like the D3X into perspective. Because, for me at least, more pixels won't open up more picture-taking opportunities. But superb high ISO performance has. So, for once, I can give myself a pat on the back for taking a financial leap in the dark...

Find what you're looking for

This blog is just over two years old. Which means, rather worryingly, that I've been spouting forth about things bike-and-camera related for well over 100 weeks. That's a lot of words.

Recently even I've been having trouble keeping track of what I've written - and I've got a pretty good idea of what's on the site. So I thought it was time to make digging out the information you're looking for a bit easier, which is why you'll now find a little search box over in the top right hand corner. Thanks to the awesome power of Google, you can now easily find what I've written about... well, pretty much anything you care to search for.

Oh, and that panel under the search box? Those ads are there largely because of the incredible response I had to breaking the news of the arrival of Nikon's D3X. Vast volumes of traffic from all over the world put a big strain on my bandwidth and have added to the costs of running this site. If you enjoy reading my random musings and have a few spare moments, please feel free to click on a couple of the ad links and have an explore. It won't cost you a penny, but it'll help me to offset the cost of running the blog.

Thanks!

How to shoot a magazine feature

Well, kinda.

Usually when a big feature of mine appears in a mag I use the blog to post a pic or two that didn't make the cut. This time I thought it might be interesting (your mileage may vary, of course!) to post some of the pics that were printed, along with an explanation of how they came about and how they fit into the feature as a whole. Most features, despite appearances to the contrary, are more than just a collection of random images, and there's a surprising amount of thought and effort that goes into the whole process.

The feature in question is my profile of Tim Flooks in the December 2008 issue of MBUK, which should still be on the shelves. It forms part of an occasional series profiling prominent names in mountain biking and their favourite haunts. Tim is a legend on the UK mountain bike scene, having raced both cross-country and downhill at just about every level, but he's probably best known on the international race scene for his years as RockShox's support technician on the World Cup circuit.

There are two elements to a feature like this: the profile (in which the reader finds out more about the person in question) and the ride (er, which does what it says on the tin). In this case I was writing as well as shooting the feature, which is something of a double-edged sword, but if there's a writer involved I'll always make sure I liaise with them before I start shooting to find out their angle. There's also usually a brief from the magazine - for words and pictures separately - and I may, as in this case, know something about the subject and the area we're riding before we start. All of it is useful information.

I knew that we needed some shots of Tim working in his high-tech suspension workshop, and that this was probably also the best opportunity to get some unposed pictures of him in his natural element. So that's where we started.

Nikon D3, 24-70mm f/2.8, 1/250sec f/2.8 @ ISO800

Tim was hard at work when I arrived and, although he was happy to make time for me, I asked him to just carry on doing what he normally did while I worked around him. I shot wide open to isolate the background, knowing that ISO800 on the D3 would be perfectly clean. Because of the big difference in tone between Tim's work clothing and the bright background I set exposure manually and periodically checked the histogram.

A couple of times I asked Tim to stop for a second, or go back and re-do something he'd just done, but mostly I interfered as little as possible. Being able to use natural light makes this a whole lot easier than the days when I would've been relying on flash...

Nikon D3, 24-70mm f/2.8, 1/320sec f/2.8 @ ISO800

Detail shots are important in a feature like this, because they help to highlight sections of the copy. I spent some time searching the workshop for clues to Tim's racing past... it wasn't as easy as I was expecting, because he's scrupulously tidy and doesn't tend to leave things lying around. Still, there was the odd race jersey or two pinned to the wall, and these medals draped over a picture frame. I asked Tim if he could take them down and hold them for me - it's a more personal shot, somehow, than shooting them where they were.

Nikon D300, 14-24mm f/2.8, 1/400sec f/8 @ ISO200, two radio slaves

Onto the riding, where I knew the bulk of the pictures would be drawn from...

Every magazine feature needs an opener. It's the shot that draws readers in, gives a hint of what's in store and leaves space for a headline, standfirst, credits and opening copy. This location, with the stream crossing and trail snaking away into the distance, was the perfect opportunity, so Tim and I spent some time shooting variations on a theme. The light was bright and harsh so I needed two flashes on full power to lift the shadows, but I also found it impossible to get the image sharp enough without boosting the shutter speed beyond the normal flash sync (the eagle-eyed will have noticed the swap in cameras; I took the D300 riding to save a little bulk and weight).

Nikon D300, 14-24mm f/2.8, 1/800sec f/8 @ ISO200

As well as plenty of action (MBUK, as a magazine, is all about the action. Good photographers always shoot to suit their target market; it's not about just getting a nice set of shots, it's about meeting the clients' requirements too), it's important to get some mood shots of the riding as well. Tim's favourite haunt, the Quantock Hills in Somerset, is a place that I associate with big skies, so I made the most of these glowering clouds by using the trees to frame Tim against the horizon.

Nikon D300, 50-150mm f/2.8, 1/320sec f/5 @ ISO400

This rocky trail also serves as a part-time stream bed, giving the opportunity for plenty of spray on a corner that works well shot long and front-on. Wet, loose rocks keep Tim's concentration levels high, so I didn't need to ask him to put any extra effort in. I kept the shutter speed as low as I dared to maintain plenty of movement in the front wheel, tracked the bike on AF and squeezed off a handful of shots, of which this was the best. The result is sharp enough to have withstood a very tight crop in the magazine.

So, at the end of a full day's shooting in two different locations, I submitted 76 processed jpegs to MBUK's art editor - of which 12 ran over 7 pages. Old habits die hard - as a long-time film user, I'm used to making every shot count rather than spraying and praying on a 'it's not costing me anything so I'll just shoot a load more' basis. Ultimately it's not about numbers, though, it's about providing the options needed to give the story the maximum possible impact on the page. 

Throughout a shoot I'm constantly updating my mental checklist: am I shooting a mix of landscape and portrait format pics? Have I got at least one strong opener? Detail shots? A mix of wide and long lens pics? Action shots? Head shots? Any specific shot requests? What's round the next corner? Is the weather going to change? And so on.

This was a relatively straightforward shoot, working with one rider (who's used to the requirements of mag shoots) in a location I know well on a day when the weather was on our side. The key to earning a living from shooting features is to be able to come up with the goods when the weather's poor, the riders are uncooperative, the location's rubbish and the deadline's looming. Hey, it's not always as glamourous as it looks!

Alchemy

One of the minor downsides of being a pro is that I have less time than I'd like to just take pictures. Seeing photographic opportunities in everyday banality is something that I've enjoyed for as long as I've been able to use a camera, but these days I'm usually too distracted by the need to get the money shot to stop, look and take a picture just for the joy of it.

Nikon D3, 14-24mm f/2.8, 1/320sec f/2.8 @ ISO3200, processed in Bibble

So when I discovered these antique - and I use that word advisedly - urinals in the bathroom of the college where we were editing our Kendal Mountain Festival film entry the other week, I went back to grab my camera and record them for posterity. Shot in colour but envisaged from the outset in mono, the very limited space was the perfect opportunity to make full use of the wide end of my 14-24mm. With the ISO cranked up to 3200 for a hint of graininess and the lens wide open for subtle selective focus and vignetting, I processed the results in Bibble for a punchy, grainy and toned look. The slight barrel distortion comes free. Look, I don't make a habit of shooting brick (or tiled) walls, so it really doesn't bother me...

Nikon D3, 14-24mm f/2.8, 1/320sec f/2.8 @ ISO3200, processed in Bibble

You might protest that it's a rather odd subject to be shooting, and I suppose you'd be right. But I like these pictures. And the great thing is, that's all that matters. For once, there's no client to satisfy.

And by way of a strange epilogue, the week after I took these shots I sold a stock shot of washable nappies (diapers if you're reading this in north America) drying on a washing line. Which just goes to prove the old Yorkshire saying - that where there's muck, there's brass.

D3X: let the armchair critics loose!

It's here. Really, this time. (And do I need to say I told you so?).

Predictably, everyone has an opinion about a camera they've never seen, let alone handled, and the web is awash with under-informed commentary. But what the heck - here's my contribution:

1. Price

Wow. $8000 in the US and 7000 Euros in Europe. Nikon UK doesn't appear to have released pricing information yet, but that would put it at around £5500 - or around £2000 more on RRP than the D3, for a few more pixels. Hmmm.

I was expecting Nikon to try to shake up the market with a price that dramatically undercut its 1DSIII competitor, but it looks as though they've gone for a small undercut on RRP (in the UK at least), which means it'll be a while before the street price matches the direct competition. Good for Nikon's margins in the short term, I'm sure. But given that many Canon pros have held off buying the 1DSIII because they think it's too expensive (and that those same pros are now eyeing up the 5DII as a more realistic alternative), is it really such a good move? 

Um, probably not.

2. Bit depth

That 16-bit Expeed processor had a bunch of people hypothesising that Nikon had found a way to nudge (a lot) more data around than the competition.  They haven't. RAW files from the D3X are 12 or 14 bit. And car photographer Tim Andrew's comment in one of the D3X microsite's gallery sections that he 'completed the static shots and switched to 12-bit mode for the action shots' suggests strongly that the D3X's 14 bit mode may carry a similar speed penalty to the D300's.

So we're back to the fact that the D3X doesn't offer much more (crop modes, a few more pixels) than the established competition...

3. Will I buy one?

Here's something I should be able to comment on with some authority (although, given that I decided originally that the D3 was too big, heavy and expensive for my needs before relenting and realising that, in fact, it was just the camera I'd been looking for apart from the size, weight and price, my comments here ought perhaps to be taken with a large pinch of salt).

In a word: no.

If my clients were clamouring for bigger files, I'd find a way to scrape together the money. But 12mp has served me well so far, including some pretty large POS (that's 'point of sale', not the alternative acronym) banners, cropped double trucks and more covers than you can shake a stick at. More importantly, the D3's super-clean high ISO really has got me out of some scrapes recently. I'm sure the D3X's 1600 is fine, but those extra pixels do come at a price.

Give me a D800 (or a D700X) with the same sensor in a smaller body at a price closer to the 5DII, on the other hand, and I might (just might, mind you) be interested. Oh, wait... that means there'll be thousands of people like me who won't buy the D3X partly because we'll be waiting for the inevitable D3X junior.

But that, I think sums the D3X up. I'm sure it'll produce lovely files. But really it's too little, too late, and above all waaaay too spendy.

Update: for some well-informed commentary on the new camera, read what Thom Hogan has to say. Summary: 'Nikon has a big problem with the D3x, I think. It's last to the market (FX, high resolution), with everything riding solely on the sensor. And they're asking a huge price for it. At US$4999 the risk of failure wouldn't have been very large. At its US$7999 price, it really needs to perform beyond expectations for it to shore up the top side of Nikon's lineup.'