Seb Rogers: mountain bike photography

How much do you love your camera?

A camera is just an inanimate object - a collection of metal, plastic and glass designed to do a particular job. And for most people, most of the time, it's actually the end result that's more important than the tool used to get there. But that doesn't prevent people from developing certain attachments to their image-recording devices. F'rinstance, I've got a soft spot for my Olympus OM1, which has a beautifully engineered feel to it. 

But immortalising a team of Japanese engineers' efforts as a piece of body art? Not sure about that (and it would've been a whole lot cooler in manual mode rather than the default Program...)

ISO 102,400 - the new standard?

When Nikon launched the D3 a couple of years ago, the combination of enough-but-not-too-many pixels, high speed, great dynamic range and frankly astonishing high ISO performance won it many fans. It's continued to set the standard for clean high ISO files ever since, but things have moved on and some of the (indirect) competition offers similar high ISO specs with higher pixel counts. Oh, and video. Ya gotta have video these days (apparently).

Enter the imaginatively named D3S. Yes, it's got video (but, disappointingly, only 720p). It also has a completely redesigned sensor with the ability to shoot at up to ISO 102,400. Eek.

Over the past year-and-a-bit that I've been shooting with the D3 I've become a huge fan of its ability to deliver clean files full of detail in lighting conditions that would've been near impossible to shoot in just a few years ago. Although I was sceptical at first that it would make any real difference to my photography, I just take this low light performance for granted now. I routinely find myself in some shaded, wooded corner, shooting happily away at ISO 1600 - or even higher - happy in the knowledge that no-one but me will know. It's that good. 

The less-publicised side benefit of the D3's extraordinarily well-behaved sensor is its incredible dynamic range, which has also changed the way I shoot. It's straightforward to recover at least 2/3 stop of 'lost' highlight detail from the D3's files, which makes it possible for me to deliver shots with detail-rich skies to an extent that simply wasn't possible before. A subtle improvement? Sure, but it's the small details like these that count.

Although I won't be rushing out to buy a D3S (particularly at the suggested retail price of over £4000), it's clear that Nikon intend to maintain the camera's reputation for ultimate high ISO performance. All I can say is that the hype about the D3 is all true, which gives the D3S a high bar to climb over. By my reckoning ISO 102,400 should allow pictures in conditions that it's hard to even see (or focus) in. If the resulting images are in any way usable, that's a remarkable achievement.

Business as usual. Well, almost

It's been a quiet couple of months on the blog. I've had my reasons, but just because i haven't been posting here it doesn't mean I've been slacking off. Quite the opposite, in fact. I've been shooting plenty, have notched up five or so covers (of which, more another time) and have plenty more still to come.

By way of proof, here's a few of my recently published pics. Think of them as visual hold music while I attempt to shuffle things back into an order that vaguely resembles normality...

Chris Smith samples the spring air. Client: Mountain Biking UK

Nikon D3, 80-200mm f/2.8, 1/320sec f/10 @ ISO200, two radio slaves

 

Yep, it's as wet as it looks. My D3 still needs some attention as a result of this shoot... and I discovered the limits of Goretex trousers by lying in a succession of ditches. Client: Tri Plus

Nikon D3, 17-35mm f/2.8, 1/320sec f/9 @ ISO400, two radio slaves

Alpine singletrack. Can't beat it. Thirty minutes after shooting this the fog rolled in and we beat a hasty retreat down the mountain. Client: personal work, but published in What Mountain Bike

Nikon D300, 50-150mm f/2.8, 1/800sec f/6.3 @ ISO200

The glamorous life of the pro photographer

It's all bagfulls of L series lenses, fast cars and queues of clients desperately trying to swell your bank account. Oh yes. (Warning: contains a lot of swearing). 

Original clip here (this isn't my creation, by the way... I just spent so long laughing when I saw it I thought it worth sharing...)

I know nothing...

My D3 suffered a bit in the wet shoots I've done in the past couple of months. The first I knew of it was when the rear monitor fogged over in warm sunshine. I let it dry out, but there's a discoloured patch which makes viewing in bright light a bit of a pain. I can probably live with it, but it'd be nice to get it fixed. Provided, of course, the price is reasonable.

So what do I do? I phone Nikon's technical support line and ask how much a new rear screen is likely to be. 

'I don't know' is the helpful reply. 

OK, I say, just give me a ballpark. 

'It could be anywhere between £5 and £1000'.

I'm speechless for a second. Obviously, I point out, it's not going to be £5. Can't you just give me an idea of the cost of the parts so that I can work out whether it's worth my while sending it in?

'I'm sorry, no'.

And so on, round and round a few more times until I give up and phone independent repairers Fixation instead. In complete contrast to Nikon's total intransigence, the friendly person who answers the phone trundles off to find a technician and comes back with a straightforward answer. Job done.

This isn't the first time I've been on the receiving end of Nikon indifference. It's infuriating, and it's inexcusable. Nikon, sort it out. How hard is it to have a parts price list available to the support line staff? It ain't rocket science, it's basic customer service.

In the meantime, it looks like Nikon UK has lost a repair job. Fixation, my D3 will be in the post shortly...

Alpine high

I love it when a plan comes together. Last week's Alps photo course was, by all accounts, a huge success. Amongst the comments and feedback I've received are these:

'I thoroughly enjoyed the course, and I learned a lot, and had great fun too!'

'The whole week was a wonderful experience, and it was a major disappointment to return home'

You can read more first-hand experiences from the whole week here.

To be honest, I'm breathing a small sigh of relief. Although I was certain I'd picked the right location and had every confidence in our hosts, trailAddiction, it was a new venture for me: new location, extended hours and an (intentionally) small group size. We were usually first out of the door and last back in, grabbing food with our fellow chalet riders before huddling over laptops for the rest of the evening... and then doing the whole lot all over again. Intense.

But the results were well worth the effort. Early mornings, late nights, sunburn and far too many chocolate croissants are all a small price to pay for the images that David, Niels and Linda brought back. There's already talk of a repeat course next year...

Can you say 'just one more time?'

Nikon D300, 14-24mm f/2.8, 1/2500sec f/4 @ ISO200

That'll be Mont Blanc, then...

Canon EOS 1DIII, 70-200mm f/2.8, 1/250sec f/10 @ ISO200

Niels ladles on the cheese

Sony A100, lens unrecorded, 1/200sec f/16 @ ISO200

Linda gets acquainted with her camera's dynamic range. And the pic's not bad, either...

Nikon D80, 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6, 1/200sec f/5 @ ISO200, single radio slave

Skinned teeth

I know I posted recently that I haven't tended to - and wouldn't - post inane trivia about the day-to-day detail of my life. But I can't help noticing how I've had a run of bad luck recently.

Whether it's my thoroughly rinsed (ex) iPod, the weather I've had to contend with on shoots, the frankly astronomical cost of replacing the number one injector that was causing my car's intermittent rough idle (seven days after the warranty expired), or my ongoing family-related headaches, there's not a great deal on the bad luck front that surprises me any more. Yeah, I know: cue violins.

So when I checked my D300 over after checking in and getting through airport security today, it was with only a very slight sinking sensation that I noticed it didn't have a battery in it.

Yep, that's right. A pro photographer, setting off for a week in the Alps, without checking that there's actually a battery in his camera? That's not professional. That's downright slack.

And it was with a corresponding minor sigh of relief that I discovered said battery, nestled with a bunch of chargers and cables, tucked away in a corner of my bike bag at the other end of my journey.

The moral of the story is this: don't take anything for granted, and check everything. Always. Oh, and try not to spend the 24 hours before travelling overseas running around like the proverbial headless farmyard bird, trying to do too much on too little sleep. It'll only come right back at you...

Time out

i've made it a rule to keep this blog fairly tightly focussed on bikes and photography, which is why you won't find tweet-style posts about what I've had for breakfast (or whatever) on here.

But if you drop by here regularly you can't fail to have noticed the lack of recent posts. Don't worry, I've noticed too - but there's a reason (and it's here that I break my self-imposed rule). A family crisis has focussed my attention elsewhere to the extent that I simply haven't had the time to do simple things like, well, blog. 

Bear with me. As things return to something vaguely resembling normality, I'll be wittering on about dynamic range, copyright and uncooperative Atlantic weather fronts as though nothing had ever happened. Promise.

At this stage I'm just not quite sure when that will happen. Cue hold music...

Counting the cost of repairs

Twenty years after buying my first Nikon camera - and having owned 15 Nikon SLRs in that time* - I can honestly say I've had very few reliability problems. The least reliable of the lot was my F100, with which I had a love/hate relationship. I liked the fact that it was a junior F5, with much of that camera's functionality in a more portable package. I hated the fact that it suffered a slew of random mechanical and electrical glitches - and that it ate AA batteries by the dozen.

Anyhoo, when my D300's rear selector lock switch packed up a few months ago, I didn't pay much attention. After all, the only practical upshot was that my selected AF point couldn't be locked in place... hardly the end of the world. But then I remembered the camera came with a free 2 year warranty, so I took the opportunity of a quiet couple of weeks to send it back to Nikon for some attention.

I was slightly shocked, then, when the following invoice turned up in my email inbox:

Here's the bit I didn't like:

Around a fiver or so to replace the offending part... and nearly 75 quid for the labour to fix it. Eek!

Luckily the invoice was an administrative ****-up and, after I queried it, Nikon confirmed the camera was still under warranty and the work had been completed FOC. But it was a salutary reminder that kit can be expensive to fix. And that, rather like other manufactured goods (cars come to mind), it's often not the cost of the spare parts that pushes the cost up, but rather the price of labour.

I'm not for a moment begrudging Nikon their right to charge what they do for skilled repair work. But for any photographer contemplating setting up in business, it's worth factoring the cost of repairs and servicing into your business plan. My accounts include a 'camera repairs' section that, most years, accounts for a few hundred pounds' worth of servicing and repair expenses. Y'knoow, stuff gets dropped, or wears out, or just needs a bit of TLC. And it's not cheap. But without well maintained cameras and lenses, you're not going to get very far.

* That's a terrifying number, and one that surprised me. But it's true:

2 x F801 (I still have one)

1 x F90X

1 x F80

1 x F100

3 x F5 (I still have one)

1 x F6 (still in the bag)

1 x D100

1 x D200

1 x D300 (current)

1 x D40X (current)

1 x D2X

1 x D3 (current)

iPod 0, washing machine 1

No-one deliberately puts electronic gear in the laundry. But, well, y'know... it happens. Not so long ago half a dozen of my AA NiMH batteries emerged unscathed from a 40 degree wash and have been behaving impeccably ever since. But I'm not always so lucky.

So I'll just say this: don't leave your iPod in a pocket (it won't thank you for it). My first generation Nano died last week after I remembered 10 minutes into the first rinse exactly where I'd left it. Despite careful drying and even, after many attempts, successfully mounting it on my desktop once and accessing the contents of the memory, it turns out that both the logic board and (unsurprisingly) the battery are toast. Soggy toast, but toast nonetheless.

I'd been hoping to get away with a new battery, but the cost of replacing essentially all the innards is exactly a pound more than a refurbished current generation Nano with double the memory and a colour screen. Decision made. And lesson learnt.

Check. Those. Pockets.