Seb Rogers: mountain bike photography

A hat-trick of What Mountain Bike covers

I've been a bit slack keeping up with my published cover shots lately. Which is how I find myself with three consecutive What Mountain Bike covers to share:

Nikon D3, 80-200mm f/2.8, 1/250sec f/6.3 @ ISO200, two radio slaves

Nikon D3, 80-200mm f/2.8, 1/80sec f/6.3 @ ISO800, two radio slaves

Nikon D3, 24-70mm f/2.8, 1/200sec f/7.1 @ ISO640, two radio slaves

There's something these three covers have in common: none of them are shot wide. The shortest focal length in use was 70mm, and the longest 130mm. Why does this matter? Because, as students of any of my courses will know, long lenses take the viewer away from the action and slow things down. Looked at another way, shooting a mountain bike in close with a wide lens is a good way to involve the viewer in the action, adding a dose of drama and movement even in situations where there's not much of either happening. Step back, put a longer lens on, and the viewer involvement decreases. 

In other words, the further you are from the action, the more you're relying on visual cues to impart the sense of movement. It's very easy to take a boring shot of mountain biking on a long lens, particularly from head on. There needs to be something going on to grab - and hold - the viewer's attention. Usually, in the absence of obvious movement, it's all about implied movement.

So in the first shot, we've got a climbing rider working the bike hard, out of the saddle and about to put in a power stroke. Timing is critical in an image like this - bike upright and pedals level just won't cut it. The fact that the rider's smiling doesn't imply hard effort (although it works in this context, because publishers like readers to feel that riding a bike is fun), but his body position does. You won't be able to see it here, but there's also enough movement in the front tyre's tread to show that the bike's moving. 

The second shot also makes use of the rider's body position and facial expression, but it's helped along by a slow shutter speed and the added interest of plenty of backlit spray. The bike's hauling - and you know it. I actually tried some wide shots of this corner and they didn't work as well...

The final shot is all about the rider's position on the bike - elbows bent, body low and pushing the bike into the corner. The shutter speed's higher than I'd like on this one, but what you can't see is that as soon as i'd taken the shot the rider needed to straighten the bike and push it the other way into a berm. My attempts at slowing things down just resulted in too many shots with blurred handblebars or face. The first isn't ideal; the second is a definite no-on. Details matter, and it's my job to get them right.

Nikon D4: a video camera with a dSLR bolted on?

Nikon's D4 has been officially announced. Headline specs, in case you missed them, include the following:

- 16mp FX sensor with EXPEED 3 processor

- 10fps with full AF and AE; 11fps without

- tweaked 51 point AF system with more sensitivity

- ISO100 - 12800 native; expandable to ISO50 - 204800

- 91,000 pixel RGB sensor to replace the previous 1005 pixel version

- lots of ergonomic tweaks including illuminated buttons and two extra joystick controllers

So far, so evolutionary. The D3/s have a devoted (and deservedly so) following. They're accurate, reliable and capable of turning out incredibly clean files in all sorts of challenging situations. Nikon would've messed with that succesful formula at its peril. Still, taken on their own, there's not really enough here to persuade a happy 3-series owner to upgrade. A few extra pixels, a tiny bit more speed... at the price Nikon's asking ($6000 or £4800) those incremental extras are looking expensive.

Oh, and inevitably the forums are already full of doom and gloom about the fact that Canon's forthcoming competitor is, apparently, better (summary: 'OMG the Nikon D4 is 2 smaller and 2 slower. WTF?'). Can I be the first to point out that this isn't remotely like the D2H vs the 1DII? (in case you weren't there, Nikon's 8fps 4mp D2D was launched weeks ahead of Canon's markedly superior 8fps 8mp 1DII, although it wasn't the pixel count that killed the D2H. But that's another story).

The real story is away from the internet sideshow and the D4's basic specs. The real story is video. Because Nikon has been working hard to build as much video goodness into the D4 as it possibly can:

- a full set of 1080p and 720p output options inluding 30, 25 and 24fps (60fps only at 720p, though)

- reduced rolling shutter effect thanks to faster data processing

- B-frame compression to improve H.264 output

- uncompressed video output available via HDMI port

- stereo headphone jack

- stereo mic jack with manually adjustable level

- video-specific controls 

- full manual exposure via shutter speed, aperture and ISO

- full-time AF with face detection

- full HD integration with crop modes (1.5x and 2.7x)

It's an impressive feature set, for a stills camera at least. If you need to produce video as well as stills, it's possibly worth a look. But (unfashionably) I'm still not convinced by video in dSLRs. The biggest problem, as I see it, is that dSLR ergonomics are just plain wrong for video shooting. The D4, as a stills camera, is designed for fast, portable operation. Decades of design experience have gone into the user interface (I can trace the basic design of many of the D4's controls back to my 1989 F801). It's a camera that'll work very well indeed on the fly, off a tripod, with a photographer who's not afraid to follow the action. I can say that with confidence because, in all important aspects of design, it's barely different from my D3.

Switch to video and it's a different story. A video-enabled dSLR really needs to be tethered to a tripod - and a solid one, at that. While you can certainly make the case that that's good practice for any video shooting, dedicated video cameras are at least useable handheld. A dSLR? Not so much. The ergonomics for video are just plain terrible, and that's not really surprising. I'm as impressed with video in a dSLR as I would be with a stills function built into a video camera.

Much of the original impetus for incorporating video into a dSLR came from big news organisations, who were clamouring a few years ago for multimedia content. But the revolution never really happened, partly because (surprise, surprise) the budget wasn't there. It may sound attractive to a commissioning editor to ask for video and stills from a single photographer, but have you ever tried shooting both at a single event? It's not easy. And, contrary to popular belief, simply having a video mode on your stills camera doesn't actually make it any easier.

So I'm left with the feeling that video is an extra that relatively few photographers need, let alone know how to make effective use of. If you strip away the big sensor / shallow depth of field thing (which has become so over-used in the past few years that it's now a visual cliche), the only remaining 'benefit' of incorporating video into dSLRs is the 'two into one' argument. And, as I've just argued, I'm not sure that's compelling either commercially or in ergonomic terms.

None of which would matter much, if it weren't for the fact that video is clearly eating up more R&D resources and almost certainly adding to production costs.

Will I buy a D4? No. Would I buy a D700 with the D4's sensor (and no video) in it? Probably.

The Nikon D4 is coming. Lock up your credit cards...

Hot on the heels of Canon's pre-announcement of its new, all-things-to-all-pros full frame 1DX, Nikon is scheduled to announce the D4 this Friday. Unsurprisingly, the rumoured specs are very close to the new Canon. If you're comparing to the D3(s), there's more of everything. More speed. More pixels. More high ISO capability. More video gubbins. You get the idea. (Inevitably, the spec-sheet doomsayers have already decided that there's not enough more-ness, but that's another story).

I'll have more to say when the launch is official and all the specs are confirmed. For now, though, I'll just point out that, barring surprise spec details that haven't been leaked, this is to all intents and purposes an incremental upgrade. Successive generations of Nikon's top pro dSLRs have, until now, offered substantive gains over their predecessors. Given the stellar and proven performance of the D3, though, the new model has its work cut out to persuade working pros to upgrade (and that's before we know the price. If Nikon matches Canon's new price point there'll be a lot more credit cards staying warmly nestled in wallets).

As for the rumoured D800 with 36mp... it occurs to me that many of its target buyers are likely to bolt it to a tripod, stop the lens down as far as it'll go and lose much of the extra detail advantage of all those pixels in diffraction (which may account for the rumoured anti-alias-less version). But who am I to argue? I'm sure it'll go down a storm.

Check back on Friday for more...

Happy New Year

2011 marked the end of my 15th year as a full time pro photographer. If you'd asked me back in 1996 (when I was just starting out with a few hundred pounds in the bank and an F801 with a couple of lenses) if I'd still be a photographer 15 years down the line you probably would've been met with a blank look. Still? I hadn't even turned a profit yet. 

If you're a regular here you'll know from some of the posts I've written over the past few years that it's not always been an easy ride. From a pro's perspective costs are up, there's more competition, budgets are down and fees are static or falling. 2011 didn't change any of that. There's never been a more important time to be good at the 'pro' part of pro photographer. Luckily, it appears that I can still add and subtract reasonably well.

More importantly, there are enough clients out there who appreciate a job well done for me to continue to earn a living doing something that I love. The people that I work with - from magazine editors and art directors to the riders who turn up with enthusiasm, in all weathers, to ride that corner 'just one more time' - are fantastic. If you've worked with me over the past few years... thank you. I couldn't do what I do without you.

So 2011 turned out to be a pretty good year despite recession gloom. It turns out that more people like riding bikes than ever before - and who can blame them? Bikes rock. All I do is try to capture that essence of that simple truth. Over the year I scored 17 covers across 4 magazine titles, which equals my previous best. Then again, I didn't ride my bike as much as I'd like... but there's always the next 12 months to put that right.

Whatever your plans for 2012, thanks for reading over the past year. Here's to 2012!

Golden hour. Scott Nicol, Santa Cruz CA

Nikon D300, 50-150mm f/2.8, 1/500sec f/4 @ ISO200