Seb Rogers: mountain bike photography

Shopping list update

I've written about yet-to-be-released gear in a 'hmmm, that looks promising' kind of a way several times over the past year or so, so I thought it'd be interesting to do a quick round-up of which bits have persuaded me to dip into my wallet. And, er, which ones didn't...

Sigma DP-1
Oh my word, Sigma took their time getting this out. I can't remember how long it was between announcement and delivery... over a year? Anyhoo, by the time this little APS-C sensored compact made it to the shops earlier this year, pent-up demand was huge. I wanted one to take riding, until I saw the price (which made me wince) and, worse, read the reviews. Whilst I don't normally rely on reviews to make my buying decisions, there was a noticeable consensus that the Sigma suffers from noticeable shutter lag and slow write speeds.

So I've saved myself £550... but there's still a compact-sized hole in my Camelbak for something that'll do the job. Canon G9? Lens isn't wide enough; camera's too bulky. Ricoh GX100? Definite maybe, but I really want a bigger sensor. Maybe Nikon has something around the corner? But wait, 13mp in a teenytiny sensor...? When will the madness end?

Fstop gear bags
I've been tinkering with different ways of carrying my gear since the very first time I took my F801 and a couple of lenses out for a ride stuffed in a couple of pouches in a Karrimor climbing rucksack. Last year I finally got my hands on the bag that north American bike photographers have been relying on for a while - the Dakine Sequence. And very good it is, too. But I think I might have found something better.

The Fstopgear Satori and Lotus have been keeping my kit safe for a few months. I'll be writing about them both in more detail soon, but the fact that I have no intention of pulling my Sequence out of semi-retirement should give you some idea of where I'm at.

Radiopopper triggers
My cameras and flashguns are stuffed full of clever technology. They can talk to each other, nudge lighting ratios one way or the other, and so on. But only if there's line-of-sight between each of the individual bits in the system, and only over a very limited range.

So, like many photographers, I choose to ignore all that clever stuff and rely on third-party radio triggers instead. Without the limitations of line-of-sight I can hide flashguns behind rocks and trees, but in technology terms it's a step back to the dark ages, and I can only change lighting ratios by tweaking each flash manually, then schlepping back to my shot position to check the outcome.

Radiopoppers provide a radio bridge between the camera's proprietary infrared system and the flashguns, ostensibly combining the advantages of both. They've been available for a while in the US, and there are even some reviews out there on the interweb. Hallelujah! Except that, in Europe, we're still waiting...

Nikon D700: the cat's out of the bag

Update: Nikon UK has officially announced the D700, and DPReview has a hands-on preview...

No official announcement at the time of writing, but a German photo magazine has hit the newsstands with details of Nikon's new compact D700 'full frame' dSLR. There's a scan of the mag with pictures here, for anyone interested in testing their linguistic skills.

Salient points are:

- sensor appears to be the same 12.1mp unit as the D3
- sensor cleaning has been added
- frame rate is 5fps in standard form; 8fps with the MB-D10 grip (which also fits the D300)
- smaller and lighter than the D3 (though heavier than the D300)
- viewfinder is 95% view (against the D3's 100%)

The price doesn't appear to be confirmed yet, though it's likely to be around the £2000 mark.

For what it's worth, here are some initial thoughts:

- the 12mp sensor will be raising some eyebrows, if only because Canon's upcoming replacement for their (12mp) 5D is likely to cram in more pixels. But it actually makes sense, for several reasons. First, 12mp seems to have established itself as a sweet spot that suits most users' needs without compromising noise levels or diffraction limits. Second, using the same sensor as the D3 will presumably allow Nikon to drive down the per-unit sensor cost, which will translate into better margins and more price flexibility in the longer term. And third, keeping the pixel count down has enabled Nikon to keep the frame rate up; the D700 will be snapped up by landscape shooters, I'm sure, but it'll be no slouch on the football field either.

- there's some discussion on the forums about whether or not the D700 will shoot 14 bit raw files at 5fps. I think it's unlikely; the D300 only manages 14 bits at 2.5fps, but this fact is buried deep in the spec tables. One of the contributing factors to the price differential between the D3 and D300 is processor bandwidth; there may have been some improvement since the D300's launch, but we'll have to wait and see. 14 bits at 5fps for a camera at this price would be a seriously impressive achievement. Update: looks like 14 bit capture doesn't slow down the D700 after all. I'm suitably impressed...

- why the increased weight over the D300? Seems likely to me that it's caused by the bigger optical components necessitated by the larger sensor: bigger mirror box, mirror, pentaprism and housing. That's all going to add weight but, in fact, the D700 weighs almost exactly the same as the similarly sized (and, er, 'full frame') F6 (the weights in the mag link above include battery; Nikon specs don't). In fact, in just about every respect the D700 is a digital F6, albeit with updated AF and a built-in flash.

- the 'info' feature (which displays all the current shooting info on the rear LCD) finally has its own dedicated button on the right of the camera's back, close to the AF mode selector switch. It bugs me that Nikon keeps moving the buttons (even the D300 and D3 buttons don't work in exactly the same way - go figure), but this is where it should have been to start with.

Whatever the detail, it's an interesting move by Nikon that's sure to have any remaining well-heeled fence-sitters ditching their film SLRs and switching to digi.

It may look, on the face of it, as though all the reasons to buy a D3 just went away, but Nikon has a long history of launching slightly stripped-down versions of its range-toppers going right back to the Nikon F / Nikkormat. In 1989 I bought an F801 for precisely this reason; it offered most of the F4's features at around half the price and in a smaller body. The D3's higher speed, tougher build, dual card slots, 100% viewfinder and a few other wrinkles will be enough to persuade those photographers that need these features to keep buying. For the rest of the world, the D700 looks like finally making the FX format a little more accessible for Nikon owners.

In fact it looks good enough that, had it been available when I decided to take the FX plunge, I almost certainly would have bought it over the D3...

What's Nikon up to?

The usual over-excited forum murmurs about a new Nikon camera have become a low, window-rattling rumble in the past week or so. I don't pay much attention to them (the D3 rumours - 18mp and a bizarre 1.1x crop - turned out to be so wildly off-base it's hard to believe how much time was wasted perpetuating them), but normally reliable Nikon commentator Thom Hogan hints that there's definitely something around the corner.

The smart money's on a solid 'full frame' (deliberate quotation marks) competitor to go up alongside Canon's well-regarded but by now long in the tooth 5D (or, more accurately, its overdue successor). But a higher resolution version of the D3 can't be far off either, and there are rumours of lens announcements too.

We'll see. Having spent what feels like the GDP of a small country replacing my D200 and D2X with a D300, D3 and two new lenses in the past year, I'm fairly unlikely to be biting... whatever it is that Nikon's got up its corporate sleeve (although, on past performance, I've learnt never to say never...)

Interesting times, though. An FX version of the D300 is sure to have any remaining Nikon film stalwarts jumping in. And the latest forecasts I've seen put dSLR sales growth at 20% this year - a rare piece of good news for the photo industry that may help several companies delay the effects of the credit crunch somewhat.

New camera, new rules

When I bought my D3 a couple of months ago, I knew that the high ISO performance had the potential to change the way I shoot. The thing is, after years of shooting film (followed by dSLRs that pretty much mimicked film in terms of ISO performance - OK up to ISO400, a bit marginal beyond), it's taking me a little while to get used to the fact that I can rip up the rule book and start over. But boy, am I having fun in the process.

Here's a comped shot of a hipped ladder drop that I simply couldn't have got before (I know I've written that a couple of times before, but this is the furthest I've pushed the D3 so far... and it's still blowing me away):

Nikon D3, 16mm f/2.8, 1/200sec f/5 @ ISO3200, two radio slaves

Here's a 100% crop:

I processed the RAW files in Bibble with just a shade of noise reduction. What makes the result even more remarkable is that I also lightened the shadows and midtones a little - something that would normally cause a high ISO image to fall apart. But although there are some demosaicing artefacts and traces of noise in the crop, the level of detail and shadow gradations are both amazingly good.

I've printed it at A3 and, at that size, it's easily the equal of the D2X at ISO400 (which is to say, pretty darn good). You have to look very closely to find hints that it was shot at high ISO.

Let's backtrack a moment to the situation I found myself in the woods. It was a bright day, with sunlight filtering through the tree canopy, but - as usual in these situations - the light down at ground level was flat, minimal and nowhere near enough to capture a single shot, let alone a sequence. A couple of remote flashes provided the fill I needed to bring the foreground illumination closer to the level of the tree canopy, but I was still looking at a slow shutter speed and wide aperture to get the shot at normal ISOs (say, below ISO800).

But hold on a moment... this is a D3. Normal rules don't apply.

So I cranked the ISO up to 3200, took a couple of test exposures and realised that I could shoot at f/5 and 1/200sec without blocking up the shadows. Better yet, the high ISO meant I could run the flashguns at less than 1/4 power, which allowed me to get a seven shot sequence at 6fps.

With my D2X cranked to its maximum usable ISO of 800 I'd have been looking at 1/160sec at f/2.8. Too slow to freeze the bike's movement, too wide for edge-to-edge sharpness (though I would've been shooting on the 10.5mm fisheye, which does seem to be a bit better than the 16mm at the edges), the shadows would've been lost in mush... and, to be honest, I just wouldn't have bothered even attempting the shot.

This is, as far as I can see, the first time that a digital SLR has offered functionality that significantly exceeds what was possible with film. And now that Nikon has raised the bar, you can bet that Canon won't be far behind.

Don't try this at home

One of the fascinations of life is the extent to which people vary. We may all come from the same mould, but it's a truism that no two of us are alike.

F'rinstance, many people are understandably wary of attempting to clean their dSLR sensor themselves. On the other hand, there are, it seems, people out there who are quite happy to take the sensor to bits... and then put it back together again.

Cripes.

Licking the sticky edge

If you've been dropping by here for a while, you'll know that I generally advocate a hands-on, switch-to-manual approach to photographic technique. Manual exposure, manual white balance, manual focus... it all takes practice, but it works, and works consistently.

Still, technology does provide some useful extra tools in the box for those occasions when it's just not possible to react quickly enough. I'm enjoying exploring the new possibilities that the D3 opens up for me - (much) better high ISO speed, very accurate and flexible autofocus and higher frame rates amongst them. Here's an example of a shot that I would have struggled to get with my D2X:

Nikon D3, 80-200mm f/2.8, 1/1600sec f/2.8 @ ISO 1250

It's usually best to squeeze off a single, carefully-timed shot at the peak of the action, but a lot of dirt jump tricks work better as a sequence. This is the first of a multi-frame sequence of a tailwhip, shot in overcast conditions under tree cover. Previously I would have run into multiple problems in this situation: 5 frames per second isn't enough to shoot a whip, really; low light and low contrast can cause problems with autofocus; the D2X was unusable at these kinds of ISOs, period.

The D3 handled the situation easily, delivering 5 out of 6 pin-sharp frames at 9 frames per second. Even more impressive, as far as I'm concerned, is the image quality in these less-than-ideal conditions. Here's a 100% crop (click to open it in a new window and see it full size):

This is straight out of camera with no noise reduction. What you can't see here are other big bonuses to the D3's output that I'm still discovering, including impressive highlight headroom and an almost unbelievably clean, artifact-free quality that means the files sharpen and resize beautifully.

Which is nice. But it's really the functional changes that are exciting me most. The low light ability - in terms of both clean files and usable AF - should open up possibilities that just weren't there before. For 90% of my work - which tends to be outdoors in reasonable light - it won't make much difference. But the remaining 10% will involve situations that would previously have been difficult or impossible to capture, and that's what's really exciting.

D3 shoots black cat in coal cellar

Well, almost.

The interweb is clearly lacking in pictures of people's pets shot with their expensive new camera gear *. So when Jasper climbed into the cat igloo we bought him 18 months ago for the first time ever today, there was only one thing for me to do. Grab thousands of pounds' worth of D3 and wide zoom, stick the lens through the small opening in the igloo, and attempt to cajole the sensor into giving me a usable image from the available gloom inside.

There was so little light the meter wasn't working properly, so I hazarded a guess. Here's the result:

Nikon D3, 14-24mm f/2.8, 1/20sec f/2.8 @ ISO12800

No that's not a typo - that really is ISO twelve thousand eight hundred. Five stops more sensitive than ISO400.

Yeah, it's kinda noisy in the shadows (of which there are a lot in this picture). I can see a couple of stuck pixels. But hey, it's a usable image in a situation that would've required an exposure of 2 seconds at f/2.8 with ISO400. Blimey, strewth and all that.

Practical applications? I don't know, yet. But it's reassuring to know that I could take pictures of a black cat in a coal cellar at night, if I really wanted to. I think...

* Er, not...

Sshhh! D3 at work...

Nikon D3, 14-24mm f/2.8, 1/30 sec f/4 @ ISO1600

It's a good idea, when you buy a new piece of kit, to get some idea of how it behaves before you go out and use it in anger. So I've been having a play with the D3 today, trying to get some sense of how useable high ISO is. (You might notice the lack of bikes in these pics - we're fogbound here today, and anyway it's good to shoot other stuff sometimes. Kinda like doing scales on the piano. Keeps my shooting finger supple...)

'Noise' seems a strangely inappropriate word, frankly. It's bloomin' quiet, even at ISO1600. Here's a 100% crop from the image above, processed straight from raw out of Bibble with no noise reduction. None. Nada.

Impressed? I was. There's a hint of chroma noise (that's the ugly coloured blotchy stuff) - just a hint, mind, and barely any luma noise (that's the stuff that makes it look 'grainy') to speak of. It's significantly better than the D2X was at ISO400. A lot better. Wow.

Of course, the flip side to this wonderful lack of ugly noise is that, when you want to get all arty, you have to really crank things up. I shot this at ISO25600 (now there's a figure I never expected to be typing) and converted it to toned mono in Bibble with the noise reduction switched off. Even at this reduced size you should be able to see the 'grain'. Lovely.

Nikon D3, 85mm f/1.4, 1/4000 sec f/11 @ ISO25600

What does this mean in practice? I'm not entirely sure yet, but it'll certainly give me more options shooting action under thick tree cover. Watch this space...

Next up

You might think that the current crop of megapixel dSLR wonders is pretty impressive (I certainly do), but you can bet your bottom dollar there's some even better stuff around the corner:

- In-viewfinder dynamic range indicators
Those rear LCD blinkies - which show the highlight areas that are blown or close to blowing - are useful to help set exposure. Why not have an option to overlay them in the viewfinder, in real time? Video cameras have had a similar feature for years. And while you're at it, can I have a shadow blinky too (with an adjustable threshold - say between 3 and 5 stops below mid grey)?

- Post-Bayer sensors
Unless you currently use a Sigma dSLR (or the new DP1 compact), you'll be shooting with a Bayer sensor. Bayer sensors - which use an array of blue, green and red filters - only record a single colour at each pixel location and rely on demosaicing algorithms to interpolate the missing colour information.

Clever stuff, but what if you could record all the colours at each pixel location, and cut out the computer guesswork? That's what the Sigma sensors do. The principal advantage is that conventional pixel wisdom goes out of the window - Sigma advocates claim sharper, cleaner per-pixel images from sensors containing fewer pixels than their rivals. Put another way, a 10 million pixel non-Bayer sensor should be capable of delivering detail similar to a 30 million pixel Bayer sensor.

The technology used in Sigma's sensors is heavily patented, but you can be certain that the big players are working on alternatives.

- Auto composition mode
We've already got 'face detection' and Nikon's 'scene recognition system', but why stop there? Sophisticated algorithms could compare the scene currently framed in the viewfinder with a database of 'ideal' compositions and make real-time suggestions in the form of voice prompts to improve the outcome. 'Move left so the tree doesn't look like it's growing out of your mother-in-law's head'... that kind of thing.

- HD video
News organisations have been making use of HD video for a couple of years. Multi-platform use (print, web, streaming video) means it sometimes makes more sense to send a videographer to cover an event, then pull individual frames out of the resulting footage to use as stills (the quality sucks and video isn't capable of freezing action in the same way as still cameras can, but there you go - another victory for the bean-counters).

News photographers are already dipping their toes in the HD water. So why not give them cameras that can be used for both hi-res stills and HD video? The 'live view' modes in recent dSLRs and HDMI outputs on new Nikons and Sonys gives a hint of what's likely just around the corner - HD video recording on dSLRs. There are some technical hurdles to be overcome, but I'd put money on the successor to Canon's 1DMk3 having some kind of HD recording mode.

- Live upload
Why record to a puny flash drive in the camera when you could upload to a remote server wirelessly, wherever you are? Built-in wireless is surely just around the corner; add a SIM card and mobile contract and you've got wireless data transfer just about anywhere... with a backup to the card in the camera, if you feel that way inclined.

The most expensive 7mm in the world

As far as what passes for the 'debate' surrounding 'full frame' dSLRs is concerned, I've always been a mildly disinterested observer. Given that 35mm still cameras evolved out of a pre-existing movie standard (and that the first examples were widely derided as being too small for 'serious' use), I've never really understood what all the fuss was about.*

So much so, that when Nikon announced the FX-format (oh, ok, 'full frame' if you insist) D3 and the DX-format (1.5x 'crop', though it's not really a crop at all) D300, it was the smaller, lighter, cheaper D300 that interested me. And when I had the opportunity to try them at a pre-launch demo, I left my co-photographers drooling over the D3 and spent some time getting acquainted with the D300.

So how on earth did one of these behemoths...

...find its way into my camera bag last week? Given that I had no intention of buying a D3, I'm still pretty surprised myself. But it all makes sense, kinda. See, it's like this...

There's absolutely no doubt that the D300 fulfils nearly all of my needs. The trouble is, I've been yearning for a fast ultra-wide for a while. My faithful 12-24mm f/4 gave me the equivalent of an 18mm in 35mm terms, but its wide-open performance wasn't exactly stellar. So I replaced it with the 14-24mm f/2.8 in spite of some misgivings about its size, weight, price (and, after a few weeks' use, its practicality in wet conditions).

The new lens is astoundingly good, concerns about that vulnerable front element notwithstanding. Several reviews have called it the best ultra-wide ever made and, whilst I'm not in a position to agree or disagree, it is quite obscenely sharp.

But.

There's always a 'but', isn't there? And the 'but' in this case is that it only gives me 21mm-worth of width, in 35mm terms, on the D300. That's a big difference from 18mm equivalent, and a world away from the 17mm that I used to have with my old film cameras (1mm might sound like a trivial amount, but at the wide end it makes a noticeable difference to angle of view).

So I've been looking for a way to get that width back. But none of the alternatives for the D300 looked like they'd give me both the speed and quality that I wanted... and all of them pre-supposed that I was happy adding a second wide lens. Which seemed, quite frankly, a bit daft.

In the thick of the action at 12mm (18mm equivalent) on the D200
Nikon D200, 12-24mm f/4, 1/250sec f/8 @ ISO100, two radio slaves

And then the bottom fell out of the D3's price (well, OK, it dropped by a bit over 10%), and suddenly a 'what if?' thought popped into my head. What if I had a full frame camera? I'd be able to make full use of the 14mm of my lovely new lens, that's what. Wider than a very wide thing. And my plastic had hit the counter before you could say 'that's a lot of money for 7mm'.**

Which, of course, it is. But I've always been a fan of ultra-wides. The 17-35mm f/2.8 (which I still own) was semi-permanently attached to the front of my F5 and F6, and spent much of its life at the widest setting. Being able to shoot at 14mm is going to open up a whole world of new possibilities - and to that extent, at least, I'm beginning to understand some of the 'full frame' fuss. I still don't really care what the dimensions of the sensor are - but I do like the fact that I can go that wide with a seriously sharp, fast lens.

Sometimes you can't walk back any further and just need to fit more in...
Nikon D2X, 12-24mm f/4, 1/250sec f/6.3 @ ISO200

I'm confident that the combination of D3 and 14-24mm f/2.8 will allow me to get shots that I couldn't otherwise capture. Whether my bank manager is as impressed is, of course, an entirely different matter. Best start earning some money with it, then...

* In fact I've been watching Olympus's 4/3 format with interest for a few years. Ditching 35mm legacy standards makes a lot of sense, given all the problems everyone else has had with chromatic aberrations and the like. Olympus has some of the best lenses out there, period, and I might have been tempted to switch were it not for the fact that the 4/3 aspect ratio doesn't sit well with European A-format paper sizes.

** UK-based riders who've been around long enough may recall the Hairsine ratio. Named after rider, inveterate weight-weenie and occasional writer Jon Hairsine, it was intended to indicate the value for money of bike components in terms of the weight they'd shave per £ spent. The equivalent here would be width gained (in mm) per £ spent. Hmm, let's see. I've gone from 21mm to 14mm at a cost of... eeek!

The only D300 review you need to read

... is here. If you've been sitting on the fence wondering whether or not to buy, Thom's down-to-earth approach will help you make the decision, one way or the other. There's a lot of it and you'll need some time to read and digest it, but - as usual - it's worth the effort.

Gear gotchas

Once you've spent a bit of time with any camera system, it's easy to get to know its little idiosyncracies. I've shot Nikon since 1989, so I've got used to the button-and-dial interface and, on the whole, I like it a lot. There are a few niggles that crop up from time to time, like the tendency for the autofocus switch to get knocked out of position once in a while (though the D300 does seem to be a bit better in this regard than earlier Nikons - finally!) or the irritating quirk of the D300 and D200 battery to go on strike occasionally. But, for the most part, familiarity breeds contentment.

The trouble is, no matter how much experience you have (or how much you research a new purchase), there's always the unforeseen gotcha that can catch you out. Take, for example, my new 14-24mm f/2.8. I'd been dithering about whether or not to buy this lens for a while... and recently I decided that the only way to make a decision, one way or the other, was to go ahead and give it a try. Compared to my trusty 12-24mm f/4, which it replaces, the differences seemed obvious:

I like:

- the wider aperture. The new lens is useably sharp right up to wide open, giving me up to 2 stops extra leeway for low light or restricting depth of field
- the quality. Can you say sharp? Whilst the 12-24 is no slouch, the 14-24 is bitingly crisp

I don't like:

- the weight. No two ways about it, there's a lot of glass in the new lens - and I can feel the difference carrying it about
- the size. It's long and wide, too, taking up more space in my bag

A couple of months of use out in the real world has just confirmed these initial impressions. But it's also thrown up a completely unexpected one out of the blue. The huge front element - nearly 100mm, or 4 inches, in diameter - is particularly prone to getting mud or water splashes on it.

It doesn't stay this clean for long when the spray's flying...

Sound obvious? Well, I'm used to getting in close to the action with a wide lens, but the smallish front element of the 12-24mm didn't seem to need too much in the way of regular cleaning. My 14-24mm, on the other hand, has needed a careful and thorough clean after almost every shoot - and sometimes after every shot, when there's been a fair bit of water thrown about.

The reason, when I stop and think about it, is fairly obvious. There must be somewhere between 4 and 8 times the surface area of glass (I'm guesstimating) on the front of the 14-24mm, compared with the far more discrete 12-24mm - a factor both of its wider aperture and the fact that it covers a full 35mm frame. Given a certain density of water or mud droplets in the air, that translates to between 4 and 8 times the number of resulting splashes landing on the glass surface.

It makes the sensibly sealed-against-water-ingress mount look a bit redundant, since if there's enough water about to make the lens/camera interface vulnerable the front element will long since have been completely covered in water droplets. Worse, zooming from 14mm to 24mm pulls water out of the serrations in the built-in hood, where it tends to settle, into the lens' innards. I know, because I've been there.

I tend to subscribe to the view that less cleaning, in the long run, is better than more. Paranoid lens polishing is far more likely to result in long-term damage (in the form of scratches and hazing) than any noticeable increase in image quality. Having said that, ultra-wide lenses are particularly prone to showing blobs of water or dust on the front element in the image. There's a compromise to be struck, but so far the 14-24mm is forcing me to clean more often than I'd like.

Whether this is largely because I've been shooting in wet and muddy conditions a fair bit lately remains to be seen. But stockpiling supplies of lens cleaning fluid and PecPads certainly wasn't what I had in mind when I bought it. The jury's still out on this lens.

The march of progress

My D300 continues to surprise me. Improved high ISO noise (over my D2X and D200) has already enabled me to get shots at ISO800 that I previously would have passed over, but today I had to push my luck further than ever.

In pouring rain and dwindling light, the pressure was on to get a couple more shots to add to a successful day's shooting. My glasses were fogged up, so I used my bag as a makeshift support, relied entirely on the autofocus and squeezed off a few shots. Here's a very tight crop at around 50%:

Nikon D300, 80-200mm f/2.8, 1/125sec f/2.8 @ ISO3200

The exposure should give you an idea of just how little light there was. Although it's hardly the world's greatest mountain bike image, it's sharp and well exposed and, despite the high ISO, there's a surprising amount of detail and very little noise considering the conditions. If you look closely you can see the driving rain...

I won't be making a habit of pushing the ISO this far, but it's good to know that it works as well as this. Yep, I'm impressed. All over again.

Inkjet hoodoo

Like millions of people all over the world, I own an Epson inkjet printer. It's been properly profiled and runs Lyson inks via a bulk CIS system, but in essence it's just like any ol' Epson.

And therein lies the problem.

Because, like millions of Epson owners, although I love the quality of the prints my printer has produced for me (and many satisfied customers) over the years, it suffers the same sporadic hissy fits as many Epsons. Clogged and misfiring nozzles are a fact of Epson inkjet life, it seems. But coaxing and cajoling a sickly Epson back to life involves a bizarre mix of luck, perseverance and endless reserves of patience. And it always - always - packs up just when I need it most (and, conversely, happily churns out dozens of perfect prints when the pressure's off).

After spending four days nurturing it back to health in the last week, here's what I learnt (in between bouts of profane language and periods of utter despair):

1. Sometimes running a nozzle clean is the worst thing you can do
Any Epson owner will be familiar with the nozzle clean function. It's Epson's solution to the problem caused by ink drying and blocking the smaller-than-human-hair nozzles that squirt ink onto the paper: force quantities of ink through the nozzles in the hope of clearing the blockage. The more cleaning cycles you run, the more ink is pulled through. The problem is, often it just seems to make the problem worse. No, I don't know why. But I've learnt this: if you run three cleaning cycles and there are still blocked nozzles (or, worse, there are more blocked nozzles than when you started), the worst thing you can do is keep running cleaning cycles. Turn the printer off, walk away, and leave it for a few hours - or, better, overnight. Which brings me to...

2. Patience is more than a virtue, it's a necessity
The hardest thing to accept about a clogged Epson is that sometimes the best thing to do is just to leave it. For a long time. I've read a number of theories about why a rested Epson often seems to magically perform better, but it seems to come down to a need for the ink in the cartridges and nozzles to settle and for small air bubbles to work their way to the surface. It doesn't always cure a stubborn clog, but an overnight rest is almost always more effective than prolonged head cleaning cycles.

3. Extreme clogs sometimes call for extreme measures
Despairing Epson owners can find all kinds of advice out there on the web, some of it more useful than others. The best source of practical maintenance tips I've found is here. Techniques like using a syringe to flush blocked nozzles clear of dried ink aren't for the faint-hearted, but the advice on this site is based on years of experience and some of the techniques have worked for me. Your mileage may vary, of course...

4. When all else fails, go with your gut...
This morning I had an urgent print job to finish, and two days of intermittent manual head cleaning and letting the printer rest left me with most nozzles firing... but one still blocked. It shouldn't be possible to get good print quality this way, but I ran a test print anyway, took a very close look at it... and found I couldn't detect any evidence of a misfiring nozzle. So either a single nozzle doesn't visibly impact print quality (possible), or it was only misfiring during the nozzle test (less likely, but still conceivable). Either way, I wasn't prepared to risk clogging other nozzles by running more cleaning cycles. I ran off a batch of perfect prints, and stopped worrying about it. For now...

My advice if your Epson misbehaves? Don't overdo the head cleaning. Do switch off and walk away (to let it rest for a few hours) if you appear to be making no progress. And take some comfort from the fact that nearly every Epson owner, everywhere, has likely gone through the same torment as you.

You know you've got a lot of pictures when...

...transferring data from your existing bank of external drives to a new, bigger one takes the better part of 24 hours. And then backing it up to a second large drive takes a whole 'nother day and night.

Faster transfer speeds required, methinks. The next time I have to do this I'll have double the data again...

Dear Nikon, in 2008 I'd like...

Now that Nikon has finally given (sorry - sold) me the camera I've always wanted in the D300 (12mp, up to 8fps, decent ISO 800, removable grip), I've been cogitating about lens choices (long, dark winter days do that to a photographer. I'd rather be out shooting, but it's either daydream about glass that'd make my life easier or finish my tax return. I know which I'd rather be doing).

With the launch of the D3, Nikon has understandably been concentrating its efforts on lenses that will work with the larger sensor. The 14-24mm f/2.8 has got me pretty interested in spite of the size (large), weight (lots of it), loss of a few degrees at the wide end on the D300 (18mm equivalent on the 12-24mm vs. 21mm on the 14-24mm - an appreciable gap) and, er, price (hefty). But it'd leave me short (pun intended) at the wide end, and there are other lenses I'd like to replace in my lineup too. So here's what I'd like Nikon to deliver this year:

DX 12mm f/4
Assuming I replace my 12-24 with the 14-24, I'll be gaining a stop of extra speed but losing a few useful degrees at the short end. A 12mm f/4 prime, built to cover just the DX sensor imaging circle, should be small and light enough to just pop in a corner of the bag and win back those lost degrees. f/2.8 would be nice but would, I suspect, add too much to the size, weight and price to be worth the extra.

50mm f/1.4 AFS
I've been using my nearly 20-year-old, first generation 50mm f/1.8 AF lens quite a bit. It's very sharp from f/2.8 on, and small and light enough to carry everywhere. But it has some optical liabilities (susceptibility to flare and ghosting; indifferent wide open performance) and a nasty, plastic, rattly manual focus ring with slow, noisy AF. An update is overdue.

DX 50-135mm f/2.8
My Sigma 50-150mm f/2.8 has served me well, but it has its limitations. It's not as sharp as my old 80-200mm f/2.8 wide open, and more prone to colour fringing too. I do like the smaller size and lower weight, though - a lot. And Pentax already has one in their lineup. I'd snap up an optically superior Nikon version straight away. Pretty please?

The trouble is that Nikon's recent (read: last 2-3 years) DX lens attentions have been focussed on the mass market mid-range zooms. At last count, I reckon there were around half a dozen 18-ish to 55-plus Nikon zooms for DX-sensored cameras, and it looks like they're gearing up to launch another in the next few weeks.

Commercially this decision makes a lot of sense for Nikon. Despite all the interweb hot air about 'full frame' (use of the quotation marks is quite deliberate, since the entire debate centres around a legacy film format which was itself a bastardised setup borrowed from the movie industry. But I digress), it's the mass market that generates the biggest revenue. Nikon has launched a succession of well-received mid-range dSLRs, and it needs the zoomage to support them. Ripple of applause, please, for Nikon's (mostly) well-executed corporate strategy.

But if we're to believe Nikon when it says that the new, larger FX format of the D3 and the DX format of all its other dSLRs are to continue to evolve side-by-side, I think it needs to show greater commitment to the higher end of DX SLR users. I'm sure the DX format will be with us for many more years, and I have no problem investing money in good glass to go with it. Let's have a couple of high-end, specialist DX lenses to demonstrate that commitment to DX. They won't sell in huge quantities, but they'll send a clear signal that Nikon stands behind DX for the forseeable future.

D300: the digital F6?

Frustratingly, my favoured raw converter - Bibble - still hasn't released a final version that'll work with my new D300 (there's a pre-release version available here, but it's buggy and incomplete at the time of writing). That fact, combined with short wet days and a bunch of office-bound jobs to be finished, has meant I haven't really had the chance to put it to the test. But I've done enough fiddling and fettling to have formed a few early opinions:

1.) Speed is good
The D300's shutter lag and mirror blackout times can't quite match the standard-setting figures of the D2 and D3 series, but they're improved over the already good D200. And, intriguingly, the 45ms lag actually bests Canon's 1Dmk3's 55ms figure.

Say what? Yes, on paper the £1300 D300 is quicker off the mark than a camera twice its price. Hmmm. Does it matter? Well, yes, it does. My D2X had a shoot-by-wire feel to the shutter that meant I never felt I was waiting for the camera to keep up with my reactions. The D300 isn't quite up to that standard, but it's very, very close. And I love being able to shoot at 8fps with all 12 million pixels. It's like having my F6 back: fast enough and small and light without the battery pack; blisteringly quick at the expense of some bulk and weight with it. Best of both worlds.

2.) AF comes home to roost
I'm a big critic of AF systems partly because I think they can make photographers lazy. But they also tend not to deliver on their promises. Bikes are some of the toughest AF targets out there because, although they tend to follow fairly predictable paths, they're full of holes. I want my camera to focus accurately on either the handlebars or the rider's head - not the rear wheel, the rider's shoulders or some other random point.

I haven't been able to comprehensively test the D300's new 51-point AF system on a bike and rider yet, but first impressions (and a couple of quick-and-dirty tests) are very encouraging. Smaller, more densely packed sensors make it much easier to pick out small areas for critical focus. The D300 seems far less prone than any camera I've ever used to 'seeing' the background behind a subject - even a small and/or distant one. That's a big step forward. Accuracy, even shooting with notoriously finicky lenses like my 85mm f/1.4 and 200mm f/2, is astonishingly good. And the '3D' mode, which tracks a moving subject across the frame according to its colour, seems startlingly effective and a bit too good to be true.

I'll certainly be giving the whole thing a good workout as soon as I get the opportunity, but it's the first time I've felt genuinely optimistic about useable AF. Ever.

3.) Grain is back
Forum mutterings suggest that some photographers are unhappy that the D300 doesn't deliver ultra-smooth midtones and shadows, even at its base ISO. It's true, it doesn't. But - and here's the thing - Nikon has managed to endow the D300's sensor with noise characteristics that are very reminiscent of film.

Chroma noise - those multi-coloured speckles that get in the way of everything and are a right pain to get rid of - is almost absent, even at high ISOs. Luma noise - the stuff that looks more like grain - is there in tiny quantities even at base ISO, and gradually becomes more apparent as you ramp up the sensor's gain. But it's always tight and even, so that only minimal noise reduction is needed to keep it under control. And shadow and edge details are both held remarkably well, even towards the sensor's limits.

I'm very, very impressed, and looking forward to being able to shoot cover-quality images at ISOs that would previously have been unimaginable.

(My comments apply to raw files processed with no noise reduction at all. Out-of-camera JPEGs with standard noise reduction are, in some respects, even better - but since I never shoot that way, it's the sensor's raw (no pun intended) characteristics that interest me.)

4.) Screen fumblings
There's so much to like about the D300 and the way it handles, it took me a while to figure out what Nikon got wrong. But they fumbled the ball, as far as I'm concerned, by not showing the active AF point on the top-plate LCD - something practically every other Nikon AF SLR, ever, has always done.

It's hardly a deal-breaker, but with 51 user-selectable AF sensors to keep on top of it can be handy to know where you are without having to look through the viewfinder (or press the 'info' button to bring up the, erm, info display on the rear screen). I can't for the life of me understand why it's been done this way, but there you go. Guess they had to get something wrong.

Noise schmoise

Many photographers who remember film (yes, really - it wasn't that long ago, k'now) have been following the, um, noise on various web forums about dSLR noise with some amusement. Anyone who's shot with Scotch 1000, Fujicolor 1600 or even Fuji Provia 400 pushed a stop or two will know all about detail-robbing grain, shoddy contrast and blacks that aren't. Sound familiar? Oh yes. The two technologies may be chalk and cheese, in photon-converting terms, but the problems to be solved in terms of making high quality images when light's in short supply are fairly similar.

Until three years ago I shot mostly film - mostly either Fuji Provia 100 or Velvia 100. When the light started to dip a bit, I'd push Provia a stop to ISO 200. It handled this abuse pretty well, with a slight contrast hike (that actually tended to help on dull, overcast days) and a corresponding dip in dynamic range that just meant I had to be careful to nail the midtones. On even dimmer days, I'd reluctantly pull out my back-up supply of Provia 400. The ISO 400 version didn't have great saturation, couldn't hold detail nearly as well as its lower-speed counterpart and had grain out of all proportion to its sensitivity. But it was the best that was available. If things got really dire I'd push it a stop to ISO 800, which actually seemed to suit it better.

Thing is, photographers have always been constrained by the limits of the available technology. When the first colour slide films become widely available, they were rated at ISOs unthinkable today - 25 or below. Early colour photographer Ernst Haas used the resulting slow shutter speeds to great effect, introducing deliberate motion blur in moving subjects in a way that's influenced a generation of photographers. But he was just working around the limitations of his gear.

With all the brouhaha surrounding digital noise (or the lack of it), it's easy to forget that we've come on in leaps and bounds in a very short time. Here's a shot I took as part of a sequence for a magazine technique feature about a year ago:

Nikon D200, 12-24mm f/4, 1/250 sec f/5 @ ISO800, two radio slaves

We were running out of time - and light - at the very end of a particularly dull winter's day. ISO 800 is about as far as I'm comfortable going on the D200, 1/250 sec was the slowest speed I could afford to set for this fast-moving shot, and the 12-24 isn't really sharp enough to shoot wide open, so f/5 was as wide as I could go. In other words, I was at or close to the limit with every variable. If the light dropped any further, I was going to really struggle.

But the quality held up fine with some careful raw processing and noise reduction, and the resulting sequence ran across a double page spread. Here's a tight (not quite 100%) crop:

There's no way I would have been able to get even close to that quality with film. Sure, I could've got the shot. But it would've been grainy, desaturated and lacking in detail in comparison.

I was thinking about all this again yesterday, out on another dull winter's day shoot. As the light started to fail I was running up against all my gear's limits again: ISO 800, f/2 on my 200mm, shutter speed as slow as I dared. The odd thing is, just three years ago I wouldn't have been able to shoot in these conditions at all. But the goalposts keep moving, and with them new opportunities present themselves.

For example, although I haven't been able to shoot in anger with my D300 yet (because Bibble hasn't released an update for its raw processing software), my early tests indicate that it's around a stop better at noise handling than the D200 (and perhaps as much as two stops better than the D2X). I'm fairly confidently expecting the D300's ISO 800 to be on a par with the D200's ISO 400. And that means that my new upper limit may well turn out to be ISO 1600 (incidentally, I define my upper limit as the highest ISO that'll yield a publishable double page spread or cover, at a push. Yes, I'm picky). D3 owners will be able to push the boundaries even further, by all accounts.

There are other limitations, of course. Light low enough to be demanding ISOs that high often tends to be fairly poor quality. And it places high demands on AF systems, if that's what you're using. But still, the combination of decent high ISO and fast prime lenses has got me thinking about all the picture opportunities that I would previously have dismissed on 'not enough light' grounds. It's going to be an interesting ride over the next couple of years.

The revenge of the gremlins

I picked up my new D300 about a week ago, and I've been slowly adapting to it. I can't actually use it in anger until Bibble releases an update so that I can batch large numbers of raw files, but I've been using the latest version of Nikon's own Capture NX to get a handle on what the camera can do. Of which, more some other time.

It was while I was playing around that I stumbled on an odd thing: apparently random raw files would cause NX to fall over. I was about to put this down to an early software update bug when I noticed something else about the problem files that made me sit up and take notice: they weren't random. Or, at least, they had something in common - they were all taken in portrait format. And all of them were also missing some elements of the embedded EXIF data.

Which was, to put it mildly, odd.

To test whether it was the portrait-ness that was causing the problem, I tried a few test shots of the same subject in portrait and landscape format. Sure enough, the landscape shots were fine and the portrait ones appeared to be corrupt. Weirder still, jpegs recorded alongside the problematic raw files were fine.

After some more head-scratching and testing, I'd narrowed the problem down to a set of 100% repeatable circumstances: portrait format shots in lossless compressed raw mode. Jpegs, lossy compressed raw and uncompressed raw were all fine, as was anything shot in landscape format.

Very odd. So odd, in fact, that I rang Nikon. Who said, 'that's odd' (or words to that effect) and offered to look into it.

I was about to put the whole thing down to some weird early production glitch when, thanks to a turn of events that I won't bore you with, I discovered that the problem may not lie with the camera at all. After downloading some of the same test images to my laptop to check that the new version of NX I'd just installed was running properly, I noticed that the problem files weren't problem files any more. They were just fine.

Huh?

Now the only thing that's different about my laptop and desktop setups is that I use different software to transfer images from my Firewire card reader: Nikon's Picture Project Transfer on the desktop and Apple's own image transfer app on the laptop. So, acting on a hunch, I tried using Nikon's new Transfer app on the desktop to download the test images... and the problem appears to have gone away.

The moral to which long, rambling and rather tedious story is that software really can **** you up in ways you never imagined. Nikon's own transfer app - albeit an older one, but one which has never caused any problems before - was corrupting portrait format, lossless compressed raw files (and only portrait format, lossless compressed raw files) as they were being transferred to my desktop. You just couldn't make it up.

Hip to wall ride 8fps 12mp sequence. Didn't think I'd ever be able to do that. And in fact, there are three pics missing from the sequence for clarity.
Nikon D300, 12-24mm f/4, 1/1000 sec f/5 @ ISO400

Update: someone far cleverer than me has told me that this isn't a new problem. Apparently Nikon's Transfer software alters files as they're moved from card to camera, and this has caused difficulties before (in a previous incarnation it was apparently D2X files shot with flash that were buggy). Why should this be? I can't see any reason for it, and it's made me re-think how I go about transferring files. What I like about Nikon's Transfer app is that I can re-name files as they're moved, but maybe I should go through a two-stage process to avoid the files being altered in any other way...

Mini (mini) wifi

Can't be bothered with the hassle of downloading pics from your camera's memory card to your computer? This company claims to have the answer (if you live in the US and own a camera that takes SD memory cards, at least). For just under US $100 you can be the proud owner of a 2Gb SD card that, apparently (I only add the qualification because I can't quite believe it), includes built in wifi to enable instant wireless transfer of your images from camera to PC. Of, if that's not sufficiently on-demand for you, direct to a photo-sharing website.

Given that Nikon and Canon's pro-level wifi units cost many times the Eye-Fi's asking price and are the size of a couple of decks of cards, that's quite some engineering feat...

Radio googoo?

The guys at Radiopopper have just updated their website with more details about the impending early '08 launch of their industry-first radio slave TTL units (in case you missed it first time around, I first wrote about the concept here).

There are (still) no pictures, but a few more details to flesh out what we already know. The idea is to solve a problem I've written about before - to free Nikon's (and Canon's equivalent) clever infra-red based remote TTL flash system from its reliance on line-of-sight. The Nikon system, for example, allows you to control and trigger umpteen remote flash units from the camera in both fully manual and TTL modes... but only within a limited range and only if there's clear line-of-sight between all the units. In practice that rules out its use in all kinds of situations, and certainly most of the flashgun-hidden-behind-a-tree setups that I use.

I thought I told you to hide behind that tree? One of my slaves pops out to say 'hello' as Andrew Shandro rips past
Nikon D200, 12-24mm f/4, 1/80 sec f/5.6 @ ISO200, two radio slaves

Clearly I wasn't the only photographer frustrated with the mismatch between the system's potential and its performance in practice. The Radiopopper acts like a radio bridge between master and slave units, converting infrared signals into radio waves and back again to allow (theoretically) seamless communication. The big deal about this is that radio doesn't need line-of-sight. So, in theory, we have the best of both worlds: wireless freedom and full control from the camera.

The latest website update answers one of the questions that had been bugging me: how are the IR signals picked up from the master flash (and transmitted back to the remote flash)? The answer's simple: a short length of fibre optic. Whilst it's an obvious and, in its own way, neat solution, it's not quite the streamlined approach I'd hoped for. But without radio built into the flash - a solution which for global radio licensing reasons alone is likely to pose a considerable manufacturing and inventory headache for both Nikon and Canon - it's all we've got. And at US $350 for a pair of units, the price is comparable with existing radio triggers that don't offer TTL and full remote control. So, as soon as the European version is available, I'll be giving it a go.

Assuming it works as advertised, it should reduce the number of times I have to run backwards and forwards adjusting light output on remote units, which means more time to actually take pictures. And I'll have TTL back if I want it. Win, win.

Buried in the website updates is one other interesting nugget that may get lost in all the TTL hoopla: a baby, stripped-down-to-basics radio trigger that looks set to retail at around US $25. Yes, you read that right and no, I can't quite believe it either. But there you go: on the face of it, remote flash is about to get an order of magnitude cheaper and more accessible. More than that, Radiopopper is pledging to plough the profits from the sale of these units into a kind of photographers' hardship fund, to help bail out pros who get themselves into financial difficulties.

The curious case of the tail wagging the dog

I'd read about Nikon's legendary - and unique - 300mm f/2 before. This was a manual focus, ultra-fast aperture lens produced at a time when bragging rights were all about the size of your front element rather than the number of pixels on a chip. (Sports photography back then was for real men: manual focus on film. Great technique was essential; the technological crutches of autofocus and instant preview hadn't been invented).

Knowing the size and weight of my own mini-behemoth, the 200mm f/2, I'd figured the 300 f/2 would be pretty large. Guess what? It is. I stumbled across this set of pictures today whilst on the lookout for a completely different secondhand lens. They don't come up for sale very often, so if you've always lusted after one I suggest you start finding out how flexible your plastic really is...

Hands on the D300

I've just returned from a (very) brief hands-on look at Nikon's new D300. There are plenty of similar accounts dotted around the web, but for what it's worth these are my impressions:

- BUILD
Just like the D200 and D2X, the D300 has a solid and reassuringly 'engineered' feel in the hand. I tried it with the optional battery grip installed; the grip also has a metal chassis, includes an 8-way joystick and front and rear command dials and feels to all intents and purposes as though it's part of the body. Very nicely done, and the fact that the grip boosts the frame rate from 6 to 8fps gives it a useful purpose in life (other than just bulking out the camera).

- HANDLING
Solidly Nikon. Some things have moved, some of the display options have been tweaked, but it all just works and, if you're already a Nikon user, you probably won't need a manual to find your way around. I was particularly impressed with the 51-point AF, which seemed to me like a recipe for getting lost in a maze of viewfinder AF points. But in practice the familiar pad on the D300's back makes finding an AF point quick and easy, and it's very cool being able to place it (almost) exactly where you want it in the viewfinder.

- VIEWFINDER
Talking of which, it's great. A bit bigger than the D200's (presumably because of the 100% view), it's out-sized by dSLRs with 35mm sensors... but not by much else. Big enough to be genuinely useful for manual focussing: thank you, Nikon.

- DISPLAY
The 900-and-however-many dot display has to be seen to be believed. You've probably already read comments like that, but it really is astonishingly detailed - rather like the difference between SD and HD TV. It makes every other display out there look shabby by comparison. Just fantastic.

- SPEED
Although I'm looking forward to getting back to the 8fps of my old film F5s, shutter lag and mirror blackout are actually more important day-to-day considerations. The D2X is my benchmark here and, whilst the D200's not bad, it is noticeably slower. The D300's specs put it midway between the two, although during my brief hands-on I thought it felt closer to the D2X. That's good - very good, for the money.

Overall, the camera exudes a feeling of well thought-out useability. The 12mp files should be as detailed as those from my D2X - in other words, they're big enough for the vast majority of uses. The noise handling should be much better (I do have some shots on a CF card, but a dimly lit hotel banquet hall isn't the best test and no, I'm not going to share them. Suffice to say that I'm confident that ISO 800 will be as useable for covers and double trucks as 400 currently is). It's faster. I can remove the grip to make it smaller and lighter for long rides. The viewfinder's better. And it's less than half the price.

I can't wait to get my hands on one. It's the camera I've been waiting for since I switched to digital...

Radio gaga

Just about my only disappointment with Nikon's recent announcements of the D3 and D300 is that they clearly didn't feel the need (or, possibly, didn't have the time or the resources) to update the otherwise excellent iTTL flash system from clunky line-of-sight infrared to useable radio.

Clearly I'm not the only one who'd like to be able to control remote flashes from the on-camera master unit. This new product, currently in development, sounds as though it should solve the problem. I'm intrigued to find out exactly how it attaches to the flash ('lick 'n stick' doesn't sound terribly appealing, to be honest), and of course it won't solve the problem of the built-in extra shutter lag that iTTL introduces. But it's an interesting idea, and I really hope it works.

Oh, and apparently it works with Canon's flash system too.

Thanks to Gerhard Engelbrecht for bringing it to my attention.

No skill required

The convergence of video and stills was inevitable, and this new camera from Casio gives a hint of what's just around the corner. 60 frames per second for 6 megapixel images is fairly astonishing, but I'm particularly taken by the 'pre-shot burst mode', which starts filling the camera's buffer at a half-press of the shutter release.

Casio boast that this means you'll never miss the shot; to my cynical eyes it just means absolutely minimal involvement on the part of the photographer is required. Waft the camera in the general direction of the scene you're recording, half-fill a memory card with images and debate at your leisure which of the resulting dozens of near-identical shots you want to keep.

It's either genius, or the ultimate in lazy 'spray and pray' photography. I'll leave you to make up your own mind...

dSLRs come of age

With a few days of Alpine riding (and a stack of pictures) under my belt, I've had a bit of time to digest the impact of Nikon's new dSLR offerings. My pre-order for the D300 is already in; the only thing I'm not sure about until it's arrived is whether it'll be replacing the D200 or the D2X (which reminds me, later this year one of those cameras will be up for sale... one careful owner, etc.).

dSLRs are different beasts from their old film counterparts for three reasons. First, their design both defines and limits the image quality of which they're capable (you could change the appearance and technical quality of your film photos simply by loading a roll of the latest emulsion into your xx-year-old SLR). Second, they've traditionally been more expensive than film SLRs, particularly at the pro end (this is a significant factor for anyone with an interest in using cameras as part of their business, because a dSLR is a capital expense that can't be fully offset against tax). And third, dSLR lifecycles have been shorter than their film equivalents (a pro film SLR typically wouldn't be updated for 5-8 years, whereas pro dSLRs are on a 2-3 year refresh cycle. So that's both more, and more frequent, capital expense).

Although the D3 is getting a lot of the attention, it's the D300 that I think is particularly interesting. On the first point, it promises to at least match the D2X on image quality (this, in case you're wondering, is a Good Thing. The D2X is my benchmark for clean, accurate and detail-filled files - it's noticeably, if only slightly, better than the D200 in this respect). And it's going to achieve that - along with some worthwhile performance and useability hops like higher frame rates and better AF - at a price that's about the same as Nikon's closest-equivalent semi-pro film SLR from a few years ago, the F100. Which blows the second point out of the water, and should give Canon something to think about (although the 1DIII offers some advantages over the D300, it's out-resolved by the Nikon, matched or exceeded in spec in most other areas and costs twice as much).

So in two respects, at least, the D300 represents a welcome watershed in dSLR design. The D200 was the first camera that persuaded me that good digital performance didn't have to mean a second mortgage; the D300 simply takes that process to its logical conclusion. It's not so much a stripped-down D3, but a fully-featured pro camera in its own right at a price that should have the competition running back to the drawing board.

But that third point - short product lifecycles - doesn't look like going away, and that presents pro photographers with a problem that simply didn't exist in the days of film. How do you pay for more frequent capital expenses that also depreciate more quickly... and all against the backdrop of image over-supply and falling rates?

Answers on a new 14-24mm f/2.8, to be left (carefully) by my back door, please...

Mine's bigger than yours

Wow. And wow.

Whilst I'm a great believer in the principle that the person behind the camera is more important than any quantity of clever technology, the latent gear freak in me is mightily impressed with Nikon's new D3 and D300. On paper, at least.

Let's see. D3: full frame, 12 megapixels, 9 frames per second, 51 point AF with colour-based subject recognition (!)... and this comes in at just 10% more than the asking price for Canon's ground-breaking 1.3x, 10mp, 10fps 1DmkIII. It's rather like a much, much faster full frame D2X with a bunch of other cool stuff thrown in. Yes, it's expensive. But it's also all the camera most photographers will ever need.

Or there's the D300: 1.5x, 12 megapixels, 6-8 frames per second, the same 51 point AF module and most of the D3's other innovations in a package the size and weight of the already excellent D200, for 1/3 (yep, you read that right) of the price of the D3. Which, come to think of it, is rather like a faster D200 with more pixels and...

You get the idea. No new flash system, and no live histograms. But lots of useful-sounding new features, and a big hop-up in terms of speed.

If money were no object, I'd take one of each, just for the faster frame rate. Time to dust off my 'how to rob a bank and not get caught' plans.

Bags. Again.

My search for the perfect bag continues...

New kids on the block fstopgear seem to have finally got around to launching their range (I'm guessing here, but I suspect it might've been a bit later in the year than they would've hoped). And very interesting it looks, too. They appear to have taken Dakine's Sequence concept - ergonomic bacpack design, removeable padded camera insert, access through the rear of the bag - and run with it. Two different sizes of insert and a range of different sized backpacks mean there should be something for everyone, and it all looks as though - unlike many camera backpacks, but in common with the Dakine - it should be comfortable and stable to carry on the bike.

All of which speculation is, of course, just that - speculation. Yes, I'll be trying to get my hands on one. And I'll let you know how I get on.

Have camera, will ride

The chance to buy a mint, used D40X from ebay means that I've given up - for the time being, at least - waiting for Sigma to launch the long-awaited DP1 compact. I've been looking for a smaller, lighter camera to take riding with me for ages, but I've never been willing to compromise on image quality. My Olympus C-8080 came close to delivering the file quality I need - and had a fantastic lens - but never got much use because it was just too slow and fiddly.

So how does the new camera stack up against the camera that currently accompanies me on rides, the D200?

Little and large. Mother-in-law joke not pictured*

Surprisingly well, actually, considering its price and the fact that it's an entry-level model aimed at newcomers to dSLR photography:

1. Weight and bulk
Less of both. The D40X shaves the best part of a pound off the weight of my D200 body, and takes up considerably less room (though I may have to buy a new bag to capitalise on this). For a camera that I can just chuck in the bag to take with me on every ride, that's a very appealing trait.

2. Image quality
I haven't had much time to try out the new camera, but the sensor is essentially the same as the D200's, so I'm not anticipating any problems. The D200 has plenty of detail for my needs. Early impressions suggest that the newer camera's high ISO performance is a tad cleaner, too.

3. Useability
This is where the Olympus fell down for me, with an arcane menu-driven system and awkwardly-sited buttons. Although the D40X is a bit slower in use than the D200, I've found the menu system well designed and easy to navigate.

4. Viewfinder
The D40X's viewfinder image is very bright and contrasty, but a bit smaller than the D200's and not as easy to use for manual focussing. Given that only lenses with built-in motors will AF with this camera (and I have a couple of lenses that don't have them), this is a niggle that I'll just have to live with.

5. Flash sync speed
It's lower than the D200's, at a still-useable-but-marginal 1/200 sec. Still, I seldom use on-camera flash and I know from experience that I can over-clock the sync speed with my radio slave, so I'm confident that 1/250 sec will be do-able.

6. Weatherproofing
The D200 has it, the D40X doesn't. What d'you expect for the money? To be honest, if it's that manky I'm probably running for cover. And if the D40X does get drowned, it's a lot less expensive to replace.

7. Continuous shooting
At 3fps and a buffer that's full up with 5 raw files (2 if you have noise reduction turned on), the D40X isn't going to be capturing many sequences. It'll be a case of setting up a shot and squeezing off a single, well-timed frame, but that suits my way of working.

8. Autofocus
The one handling quirk I haven't yet found a way round is that the D40X simply won't fire if the subject under the active AF point isn't in focus. Why is this a problem? Because when I assign the AF/AE-L button on the rear of the camera to activate the AF (as I have on all my other cameras), for reasons known only to Nikon this fail-safe shutter lock isn't deactivated. That means I can't focus, recompose and shoot using the rear button, but have to rely instead on the default setup of using the shutter release half-press to focus, then press and hold the AF/AE-L button before recomposing and shooting. It works, but it's slower and it's not the way I'm used to using my cameras.

9. Speed
For a cheap camera, the D40X is surprisingly snappy (no pun intended) in use. Entry-level cameras often have noticeably longer shutter lags and laggardly mirror blackout times, neither of which help in capturing the peak of the action. But although the D40X is a bit slower than the D200 (which in itself is a bit slower than the D2X), it's eminently useable - and much better in this respect than I expected.

10. Compatability
No AF witout built-in lens motors, SD cards instead of Compact Flash, and yet another battery and charger combo. None of this is ideal, but if it's part of the price I have to pay for a smaller, lighter camera, I can live with it.

So can an entry-level camera really replace my much-loved D200? Well, no. The D200's better viewfinder, more competent AF, higher speed and better build quality still give it a comfortable edge. But when I'm more focussed on the riding than the shooting, the small, light D40X will give me the option of getting equivalent-quality images without a huge penalty in weight and bulk. Which has to be a Good Thing.

*Reading this outside the UK and baffled by the caption? You'll find enlightenment here.

Third time lucky?

I've commented before that I don't really need (and can't really afford) a replacement for my D2X. Whe