Seb Rogers: mountain bike photography

Two wheels good

i don't often post links to other photographers' work here for, well, obvious reasons. But if you like bikes, enjoy looking at pictures of bikes and have a spare ten minutes, there are a couple of places on the web worth visiting at the moment.

Foreign Policy's online magazine has a photo story tying together bicycle use around the world, from the Tour de France to transporting bananas in Burundi. And the Boston Globe's Big Picture feature on the Tour has some stunning images from the toughest race on earth (TM).

It's enough to make you want to go out for a ride.

More biggerer

I was having trouble with one of my backup hard drives recently (again), so I decided to invest in a pair of new, even bigger ones:

As the bloke at Calumet said when I ordered them, 'you must have a lot of pictures...' Yup. One or two. Hundred thousand, that is.

Just to put it into context, my first laptop had a 4Gb drive. Or, mind-bogglingiy, less storage than a single blank DVD. Makes me feel positively old...

You can't always get what you want

After weeks of long, hot, sunny days and dusty trails, the return of Atlantic low pressure systems has caught me on the hop.

Matt contemplates another approaching rain cloud

Despite coming prepared with bags for weatherproofing my Speedlights and Pocket Wizards on the one hand, and top-to-toe Goretex for weatherproofing the photographer on the other, an hour and a half of being battered by heavy showers and strong winds on an exposed Lakeland ridge today was enough to destroy the spirits of both rider and photographer, and send me scurrying back to the safety of the car empty-handed.

The forecast for tomorrow? 'Heavy and persistent rain' with 'accumulations of more than 15mm over 3 hours'. Looks like I'm going to have my work cut out... 

Sony launches big sensor HD video for the masses

Despite all the hoopla surrounding the arrival of basic HD video capabilities in dSLRs over the past three years or so, I've come round to the idea that every current implementation is flawed in a way that's basically irredeemable. SLRs have evolved to be efficient stills capture devices. Video cameras are a different shape for a good reason: they work better that way for capturing moving images. Video with an SLR? Well, sure, it's possible. But if you're serious about video with your SLR you'll likely end up investing in a range of aftermarket rigs, clamps and supports that dwarf the camera's size and, frankly, purchase price. It isn't quite the promised land of image capture integration that the dSLR makers would have us believe.

So I'm pretty excited about Sony's new NEX-VG10 (snappy, huh?) video camera. It's essentially the guts of a mirrorless Sony APS-C camera - specifically, a 14 megapixel sensor that's nearly 20 times the size of most consumer camcorder sensors - in familiar handheld video camera format. It accepts interchangeable lenses including (via an adaptor) lenses designed for Sony's Alpha dSLR range (which means, by extension, Minolta lenses too), can record stills and offers all the limited depth-of-field potential and low light ability of any current video-enabled dSLR... without the need to bolt a load of scaffolding to it in order to get a steady shot.

Even at the suggested retail price of nearly £2000, that sounds like a good deal to me. 

Suddenly the reasons for RED's existence on the one hand and video-enabled dSLRs on the other seem a whole lot less compelling. Mainstream video is going to big sensors. Sony was first, but Panasonic isn't far behind... and there'll be others. 

So much for convergence. Nice buzzword, shame about the execution...