Seb Rogers: mountain bike photography

Cover: MBUK August '11

The new MBUK thudded onto my doormat just before the weekend... and it's got one of my pictures on the cover. This is one of my favourite MBUK cover shots for a while, featuring ace rider Mike Smith, a Whyte something-or-other... and a whole load of bracken. It's very British and very summery, right down to the puff of dust being kicked up by Mike's rear wheel.

Nikon D3, 24-70mm f/2.8, 1/250sec f/6.3 @ ISO200, two radio slaves

It was also a lot of fun to shoot. I've probably mentioned before that UK magazine covers tend to be rather formulaic. On the face of it, that should make things easier, right? There's a check list of things that all need to be right, so you can be sure as you're working that you've got a shot that'll fit.

Well yes... and no. In practice a prescriptive cover style can end up being a bit like a visual straitjacket. Recently, though, a complete contents page-up redesign on MBUK has liberated the cover a little, giving the mag's art ed - and me - a bit of creative leeway on this one. Summery green was the theme, so off we went looking for plenty of bracken fonds. This was the last shot of the day and I wasn't entirely sure I could pull it off, because I couldn't see Mike as he approached the corner at a rate of knots. I had to pre-position my camera where I thought he would emerge, listen carefully, then match his speed and squeeze off a single shot as he turned in.

The out of focus bracken in the foreground adds depth to what could otherwise have been a fairly flat image... and although there's no blue sky (or even any sky at all) in shot you can just tell it's summer.

I'm often my own worst critic, but I like this shot a lot and it'll be finding its way into the tearsheet section of my portfolio. That's always a good feeling...

iPhone 4 Flickr's most popular camera: official

The iPhone 4, after months of snapping (pun intended) at the heels of Nikon's D90, has finally overtaken the popular dSLR as Flickr's most popular camera.

To which I can only add: told you so. If that doesn't make the world's camera manufacturers sit up and take notice, I don't know what will.

Big bokeh

A road shoot yesterday gave me a rare opportunity to pull one of my favourite lenses out of the cupboard - my big, ludicrously heavy but fantastically sharp 200mm f/2. It's probably the most expensive piece of kit I own in terms of cost per completed shot, simply because its bulk and weight make it hard for me to use on a lot of shoots. But every time I make the effort I'm reminded just why I like it so much.

Click to make (a lot) bigger. Nikon D3, 200mm f/2, 1/3200sec f/2 @ ISO800

It's the incredible wide open crispness and the creamy out of focus areas (bokeh, to use the jargon) that make it so special. Have a close look at this shot and you'll see that the bike's wheelbase just barely fits in the available depth of field at f/2. The lead rider is barely an extra bike length in the lead, and yet is completely out of focus. The crisp transition from in to out of focus adds depth to the shot in a way that even the best f/2.8 long zooms can only dream of. 

Here's a 100% crop to prove the point:

Click to display actual size

Sometimes the best gear really does make a difference. It may be a small difference, but it's one that's worth having in my book. Perhaps I need to spend a bit more time down the gym (or on my singlespeed) to make carrying this beast around a bit easier. Now there's a thought...

iPhone: all the camera you need?

I wasn't kidding when I wrote the other day that Apple's launch of iCloud should have the camera manufacturers worried. The iPhone 4 - which is 'just' a phone, remember - is already perilously close to knocking the Nikon D90 - a bona fide dSLR, natch - off top spot as the most popular camera for Flickr users. That's right. A camera phone is challenging a real life dSLR for top honours on the world's biggest image sharing site. 

Who would have predicted that, even as recently as a couple of years ago?

Have iPhone, will take snaps...

It's not just the camera manufacturers who should be thinking about the consequences, either. Having spent years deriding the addition of token cameras to phones, I've found myself using the camera app on my iPhone more and more over the past 6 months. Initially it was just for family snaps and the like, but then one day I found myself arriving on location... without my camera bag.

Yeah, I know, that sounds terribly amateurish. In my defence the job in question wasn't primarily a photographic one. But anyway. There I was, a minimum 3 hour round trip from my normal tools, with a job to do and only my iPhone in my pocket. Figuring that I could get the bulk of the rest of the job done anyway, I decided to take the pictures I needed with the iPhone and then evaluate them back at base to determine whether a return visit was called for.

They were fine.

Train journey tedium relieved...

I should probably qualify that. The subjects in question weren't moving (at all), there were no complex lighting or depth of field requirements, and I knew that the resulting images would be running at less than 1/4 page in print. But still. I didn't do anything other than convert from sRGB to Adobe RGB in Photoshop and send them on their way. On the page you'd never know they were shot with a phone.

So I took that experience to its logical conclusion. The next similar job that came my way was even further from home but, knowing that my iPhone was up to the job, I left behind my camera, laptop and dictaphone too. Apple's tiny box of tricks helped me navigate my way around an unfamiliar city, recorded my audio notes, gave me web access when I needed it and recorded the images that I needed (which, at risk of labouring the point, will appear in print alongside images shot on my £3500 dSLR with £1500 lens). 

I think that's pretty remarkable. And I'm not the only one to have used the iPhone's camera to earn my living. During a Twitter conversation the other day a fellow freelance bike journo admitted to having had iPhone images published in National Geographic Adventure. NG sets notoriously high standards for its images. Publishing iPhone pictures demonstrates both how times have changed and just how good, within its own limitations, the iPhone is.

Gale force winds not pictured

What makes the iPhone's appeal even more incredible is that a camera with an equivalent feature set (fixed lens, no exposure control, touch screen interface only, etc.) would hold no appeal at all for me. The iPhone wins me over in spite of its features, because it's there already. I carry my phone habitually, in the same way that I carry my wallet and keys. Carrying an additional compact digital camera means remembering another object, finding room for it, remembering to use it. Given that the iPhone is already adequate for the job - just - an extra camera would need a very compelling feature set indeed to find room in my pocket.

Which leaves the market wide open for Apple to exploit. The launch of iOS5 gives a hint that Apple is beginning to realise the potential of the iPhone's camera. With a direct shortcut from the lock screen and a dedicated 'real' shutter button, the iPhone just got a step closer to the ergonomics of a proper compact. Want to put money on the iPhone 5's camera functionality being a whole lot better still?

I'll not be buying a new compact just yet, I don't think. Not until I see what Apple's up to. Yep, I'm waiting for a computer manufacturer to produce a camera. Strange how things change...

iCloud and iPhone: your camera is now obsolete

Nikon expert Thom Hogan has some interesting things to say about Apple's announcement of iCloud. In typical Apple fashion, the seamless integration of users' Apple devices with automatically uploaded iCloud content looks like being a game-changer. Apple bashers will doubtless point out that it's not a new idea, which is true. But it's the execution that's important. Synced content that you don't even need to ingest is something the camera manufacturers haven't even begun to address, as Thom points out:

"Consider this: you and I are the first two people to show up at some spectacular news event. You've got a new D4, I've got an iPhone 5. Whose images do you think will show up on CNN first? Oh oh. That's not a good answer for the camera companies, is it?"

More on Thom's front page.

The trouble with compact cameras

As i write this there's a 3 megapixel relic of the digital age sitting next to my keyboard. It's an Olympus Mju 300, a little all-weather (read: will resist the odd splash of water) compact that I bought around 2004, or thereabouts. It doesn't get much use now, although the fact that it's still here 7 years on says something about its appeal. 

By modern standards it's no great shakes. The screen is tiny, there's a token (and all but useless) optical viewfinder and, of course, the pixel count is lower than the cameras built into most phones these days. But it's small(ish), the clamshell lens cover is clever and, provided you use it within its limitations, it's perfectly capable of turning out decent prints up to around A4.

I mention it because recently I had the opportunity to test half a dozen of its more modern counterparts for a brief magazine review. In the time since I bought the little Olympus things have moved on. Deeper menus, bigger screens and more pixels - a lot more pixels - are the most obvious changes. And yet... there was only one camera in this (hand picked) selection of current compacts that I'd spend my own money on.

One.

That's not particularly impressive for nearly a decade of development. And it begs the question, why?

There are, as far as I'm concerned, three main issues:

 

1. Megapixel overload

The cameras I reviewed boasted between 10 and 14 million pixels. On paper that's enough to embarrass the expensive dSLRs that I use every day to earn my living. But of course not all pixels are created equal, particularly in cameras where they're crammed onto a tiny chip. Without exception, the 12 and 14 million pixel cameras' image quality was demonstrably worse than the best of the 10 Mp crop. I knew this would be the case, but I was shocked at how bad the results were, even at base ISO. Although I didn't get around to trying it, I'd put money on my 7 year old 3 Mp camera equalling or bettering the 14 Mp newcomers in an A4 print. That's progress?

Less is most definitely more, but the depressing reality is that camera manufacturers - with a few honourable exceptions - continue to chase more pixels. Truly a case of marketing over engineering - and in what universe do Facebook uploads need millions of pixels anyway? Bonkers.

2. Button stabbing madness

I'm old enough to remember when the first 35mm film SLRs started appearing with buttons instead of dials, back in the '80s. It was hailed (more accurately, marketed) as an advance. We had to suffer through a few years of cameras looking increasingly like pocket calculators with a lens grafted on the front before sanity returned and the wheel was quietly reinvented. Dials - or, with more complex cameras, buttons and dials together - rock.

Dials move, natch. And I suspect that makes them too expensive for most compacts, which increasingly look like (small) pocket calculators. If you're going to ask users to change settings via a menu accessed through a series of buttons, the UI becomes very important. And it's just not an area that many camera manufacturers get even close to right. Sorry, but a camera that forces me to press several buttons just to change (say) ISO or white balance isn't going to get my vote.

Funnily enough, the camera that emerged on top had both a well-designed menu system and a couple of concessions to old-school dial settings.

3. Press.................click

Nearly a decade of processor development, and yet we're still stuck with cameras that impose a significant delay between pressing the button and anything useful actually happening. Whether it's because there are more pixels to interrogate or some other arcane electronic engineering hurdle that I'm not aware of, the end result is the same. Unless your subject is anchored to the spot you're more likely to miss the shot than get it.

Before anyone accuses me of setting unrealistically high standards for cameras that are aimed at the mass market, I'm not just talking about bikes here. Most people use their cameras for people pictures. Some of the best people 'moments' are spontaneous. How are you going to capture them with a camera that doesn't take the shot when you ask it to?

 

You could reasonably infer that I'm not especially impressed, and you'd be right. What I see is a market driven by marketing rather than engineering, squeezed at the bottom end by camera phones and at the top by the new breed of EVIL cameras and cheap dSLRs. The result isn't pretty. It's certainly barely an improvement on what we had at the beginning of the last decade.

Oh, the camera that I'd actually buy? Canon's Powershot S95. It's a long way from perfect, but it stands head and shoulders above most of the competition.