Showing posts sorted by relevance for query photography. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query photography. Sort by date Show all posts

Sunday 24 June 2018

To Sell or Not to Sell

That'd get back what I've put into it and mean I've
put 15,000kms on it for free!
I put the Concours ZG1K project bike up for sale just to see how it would do.  I didn't expect a reply but got someone who is smitten with it and immediately offered me a trade worth about $2000 (a Phantom3 drone with a pile of expensive peripherals).  I took a drone training course last year and have been looking for a way to get some flight time in accordance with the Transport Canada flight planning we practiced in the course.  This would do that and also let me explore the aerial photography market first hand.  This is a trade that could end up paying for itself many times over.

Finding a trade that fits this well seems too good to be true.  In my experience, something that is too good to be true usually is.

I'm fighting that skepticism, but what I'm also fighting is some classism, morality and loyalty.  The young guy interested in the bike has the kind of online profile that makes you roll your eyes.  Every photo of him is half dressed and flipping the bird.  Which leads me to the moral quandary.  Handing this bike off to some yobbo who is likely to kill himself on it isn't something I can wash my hands of.  Then there is the loyalty.  I brought the Concours back from the dead.  We've done many long trips, including a once in a lifetime ride down the back straight of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.  Had the carbs not shit the bed on the worst possible day (the first day of a new riding season after a long winter off), I would have still been happily riding it today.  Had they died the autumn before, I'd have had the winter to sort them out.  Bygones, but I love that my hands brought this old thing back to life.


So here I am, with a great opportunity to make some space in the garage while pursuing a trade that could end up being quite lucrative.  That space could be filled with a new project bike and I'd be back doing aerial photography again.  There is a lot to recommend moving on this, but I've got some issues to work through first.

The classism I can get past, but the selling a weapon to someone without the sense to handle it is nagging at me.  I'd feel responsible if something happened.  As heavy as that is, what really bugs me is feeling like I'm sending Connie on to an unworthy home where she'll be abused, broken and forgotten.  The mechanical sympathy that I apply to technical work often breaks out into full on mechanical empathy.  This is one of those times.  Maybe now isn't the right time to pass on the Concours.  Maybe what I should be doing is re-energizing this project and finishing it to the point where I can eventually pass it on to a more deserving home.  (Hmm, the classism crept back in again).

Saturday 23 April 2016

360° Video on a Motorcycle

I borrowed a 360° video camera from work to see what it could do.  This one is Ricoh's Theta, and it produces some astonishing results (you can move the point of view around with your mouse as you watch it):
On occasion I teach media arts and one of the key aspects of that course is considering point of view in the media you create.  These 360° cameras ask some challenging questions around how camera operators will present point of view in the future.  At some point we'll be telling our grand kids that we once all watched the same movie at the same time and they'll look at us like we're old and backwards.

Immersive video like this means the viewer tells the story by controlling their own point of view.  You can watch the bike going down the road, watch me on it, watch what the other traffic is doing - it's a different video for each person who views it.

When you upload this to youtube it's a big file.  Youtube throws up a low resolution version very quickly, but if you give it some processing time you'll eventually get access to a full 1080p version, which offers impressive detail in all directions.

For three hundred bucks Canadian the Theta does things the more expensive GoPro can't.  It isn't as tough as the GoPro, but forty bucks will get you a waterproof case that resolves that.  If you've never tried 360° video, the Ricoh Theta makes for an easy introduction.  I wish I had it for more than a short term loan!

It also does a good job of 360° photography:

trying the photo app on the phone with the 360° Ricog Theta.. - Spherical Image - RICOH THETA


For the video above I clipped the camera to the windshield with a rubber clamp.  It's so low profile that the wind had no effect on it.

Below are some screen grabs from the video that show the native resolution of the video in the Ricoh app.  In that Ricoh software you can zoom in and out of the 360° image as well as pan around it.  This is as close as I've seen to the Bladerunner photography tool Harrison Ford uses - you can use the video or photo to actually explore the scene you're looking at.



If you zoom right out you can see the native/fisheye view of the camera.  It does an impressive job of managing the
geometry of filming in all directions simultaneously.

Stills from the garage showing off the resolution of still images on the Ricoh


You can get some pretty interesting perspectives and abstract images out of this kind of camera:





Taken at pretty much the same time as the one above.  This gives you some idea of what the 360° can catch at once.



Wednesday 2 December 2015

Motorcycle Photography







Some recent photos that caught my eye from the digital motorcycle magazine and book realm.

Adventure Bike Rider is pretty ace with the off the beaten path photos.  BIKE magazine does the business as well.
One of ABR's more extreme trips: Germans riding in Oman


Riding in Borneo
 
Ducati Scrambler... vroom vroom!


How rim size matters... courtesy of  Total Control: High Performance Street Riding Techniques....
so far an accessible and in depth look at all aspects of motorcycle riding and vehicle dynamics

ABR does nice photography!


Kawasaki's 600cc supercharged maybe

Riding the Alps

BIKE magazine at the Bol D'Or, 2015

The new Ninja

Riding in Nepal

Saturday 22 March 2014

Micro Ninja

I picked up a Celestron digital microscope/camera a few weeks ago.  These are surprisingly cheap and let you take some astonishing video and photography on a micro level you might not otherwise get to see with a normal camera and even the fanciest macro setup.  

The model I got takes 4mb images and does high-def video at high frame rates (for smooth slow motion).  After messing around with ice crystals and eyeballs I turned the it on the Ninja.





I've always thought the petal type rotors on the Ninja are a nice feature, and up close they take on an abstract modernism that is really beautiful.  I couldn't help but critically exam them while they were under the microscope, they seem to be wearing very evenly.







Looking at the chain up close was another matter.  What I thought was a clean, well lubricated chain didn't look so clean under a microscope.  The road grit that gets caught up in the lubricant is obvious at even low magnification.  I suppose the only time your chain looks nice is before you use it.





The radiator fins made another interesting closeup.  These look perfectly formed and even to the naked eye, but up close the folds in the cooling fins look like they were made by hand.  It's another world when you get to micro-photography.  No corrosion and they look to be wearing well though.

The small-print on the tires are very sharp considering that they are branded into rubber.  The sidewalls look to be in very clean shape after my first season too.

What was freakier was looking at the micro-detail in the treads.  Motorcyclists have such tiny contact patches on the road, they tend to be much more tire focused than four wheeled vehicles.  With the naked eye the tires on the bike still look in great shape, but under the microscope they made me nervous.  Don't look at your bike tires under a microscope unless you've got a strong stomach:
That's the narrow end of one of the tread cuts on the rear tire (not quite a season old) of the Avon Storms on the Ninja.  Once again, they look in great shape to the naked eye, but tires are the sharp end of the spear on a bike and up close they show their wear in the tread grooves.  In this case it looks like the contact patch is in good shape but the rubber in the grooves has dried out.

As a photographic exercise the Celestron digital microscope/camera was a lot of fun to play with, and at only about fifty bucks it might also make a handy diagnostic tool (the photos are jpgs and the videos are avi, so you could easily share them with people too).  In video mode it could create high-def, high frame rate (slow motion) images as you scan over an area and show cracks or damage in fantastic detail.  It would be interesting to run this over internal engine parts after high mileage to get a sense of how they wear.

Saturday 7 November 2015

Motorcycle Photography & Art

I usually toss anything graphically motorbike related that I find onto pinterest.

Here is some motorbike bike art recently found mostly as is (but some photoshopped):

The photography in Performance Bike Magazine's recent article on the Kawasaki H2 on the Isle of Mann was fantastic.
After a bit of photoshop it became my current background wallpaper.
The new Triumph Bonneville with a Scrambler kit
The bonkers new Honda RC213R - the $140k Motogp 1%er collector bike
Riding in South East Asia with Adventure Bike Rider Magazine

H2 on the Isle of Mann

H2 wheelies in 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th...
Adventure riding in Oman with ABR
Adventure Riding into the Himalayas with ABR

Sunday 14 June 2015

Around The Bay: Part 5, motorcycle media from the trip

The story told in a photo is told as much by the viewer as it is
by the photographer, and it's non-linear.
Since I was solo on the circumnavigation of Georgian Bay I brought along some gear to capture the moment.  I prefer photography.  I think a good photo is an entire world you can get lost in, and unlike video it isn't forcing you to follow along frame by frame.  In a photo you're free to wander with your eyes in a non-linear way.

Having said all that, I brought along some video gear to try out on this trip.  I'd love a GoPro, but since they cost almost as much as my bike did, I got a cheap Chinese knock-off instead (and a cheap knockoff it is!)  The Foscam AC1080 takes fantastic video (full 1080p) and decent photos (up to 12 megapixels), and at only about $140 taxes in, it's less than 1/3 the price of a GoPro.  Where it falls apart is in the fit and finish.  In a week of what I'd describe as gentle use for an 'action camera' the buttons never lined up right with the unit inside the waterproof case (I ended up having to remove the camera to start and stop it), the case itself was so rickety it would just blow over in the wind (the GoPro has a ratchet in the stand that locks in position, the Foscam is just a plastic screw), and the case itself snapped at the base after only a few uses.  It also gets uncomfortably hot when it recharges.  I have some concerns about the physical capabilities of this 'action' camera.

The Foscam takes nice stills too, when it takes them.
The other shaky part of the Foscam is its operation.  You can start it up and it'll stop again for no apparent reason (though this might have to do with convoluted options buried in menus).

You might think the GoPro lacking in options, but it has very streamlined operation and always gets what you're filming (which is vital in action video), and it does it without an LCD or menu options buried three deep.

The Foscam also saves in a .mov file format which Sony Vegas seems determined not to render properly.  If you can get past all that frustration you can get some very nice video out of the Foscam:
... and you can find you've got nothing because it shut off just when you were about to do a one time thing:
A quick video of the boarding of the Chicheemaun ferry in Tobermory - why did I take it from the Olympus Camera around my neck?  Because the Foscam shut off for no apparent reason just as we were about to board.  But hey, when it works it makes nice pictures.

The go-to camera was my trusty Olympus Pen.  This is the best camera I've ever owned - a micro SLR with swappable lenses and full manual control.  It also takes video in a pinch.  This camera punches well above its weight.  If I were to pony up for something better, it would be an Olympus OM-D that takes the same size lenses, and then go on a lens hunt for some macro and telephoto madness.

Also on this trip I brought along a Samsung S5, which takes nice pics and decent video.  Smartphone cameras have gotten so good that I don't think about point and shoot cameras any more, they are redundant.  My only regret is not picking up the bonkers Nokia Lumia 1020 with it's massive camera built in, but then Telus didn't have it.


I'm not really through with the Foscam yet.  Once I've got it worked out, hopefully I can still use it to get some quality video off the bike.  The other day we were out for a ride so I decided to focus on getting some audio instead.  Yes, riding a bike really is as fun as this sounds.  I'm going to look into making some finer audio recordings to catch the sound of riding, it's a different angle on motorbike media.

Over the summer I plan to look into more advanced 3d modelling and micro-photography as well as maybe some drone work.  I'm looking forward to pushing the limits with motorbike media creation.

LINKS

Google Album: photos from the trip
Google made a story: Google Photos auto-arranged pictures from the trip into scrapbook.

Tuesday 27 May 2014

Coast to Coast to Coast

It can be done!  Coast to Coast to Coast in Canada.  It's a monster ride though, over twenty thousand kilometres, all in the second biggest country in the world.  

Leg 1:  Go West Young Man

Starting from home in Southern Ontario I'd strike west up the Bruce Peninsula and over Manitoulin Island and up around Lake Superior.  From there it's a straight shot across the Prairies and then through Calgary into the Rockies.  Through the Southern Rockies and Vancouver and then a ferry over to Vancouver Island and on to Tofino on the Pacific Ocean.

Leg 2:  True North, all the way


Dempster Highway, North West Territories
From Tofino it's back across Vancouver Island and then north up the coast before taking the ferry from Port Hardy to Prince Rupert.  The ride from Prince Rupert is where things start to get tricky.  You're on paved if very remote roads all the way up to the Dempster Highway and then it's hundreds of kilometres up to the arctic circle and the mid-night sun.  By 2016 they hope to have an extension of the highway all the way to Tuktoyaktuk on the edge of the Arctic Ocean, then it'll really be coast to coast to coast.

Leg 3: Eastern Promises

After dipping a toe in the Arctic Ocean it's back down the Dempster before striking east through Grande Prarie and Edmonton.  The trip east retraces a bit of the Trans-Canada past Winnipeg before crossing Northern Ontario to Montreal.  It's then up the North Shore to Quebec City before crossing the St. Laurence and making the turn at Rivière du Loup and heading into New Brunswick.  Crossing New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, it's then a ferry ride to Newfoundland for the final leg to Cape Spear, the eastern-most point in Canada.

I think I'd have to make a point of crossing Confederation Bridge on the way past just to have set foot in every province and every Territory you can ride to in Canada.

The round trip is over twenty thousand kilometres, all in Canada, crazy!  Between higher kilometre days on highways and the lower mileage moments in the north, I'd hope to average 800kms a day.  If I could keep that up it could be done in just under a month (27 days).  Aiming at July of 2015, leaving on Canada Day (July 1st), I'd aim to be back home by July 31st, giving me four extra days in the mix to get the job done.  Leaving at that time will also mean seeing the mid-night sun above the Arctic Circle.

At about $60 in gas a day (3 fillups), a conservative $100 for lodging and $40 a day in food, I'd have an operating budget of $6200.  BC Ferries look like they'll be about $260.  To get on and off Newfoundland it looks to be about $180 in ferry costs.  I'd land at Port Aux Basques and cross NFLD on the way to Cape Spear, but take the Agentia Ferry back directly to Sydney for the ride home.  All in I think I'd be looking at about seven grand to cover the trip.

Bike-wise I think I'd be considering sport touring options.  The vast majority of mileage would be on pavement, with only the push north on gravel.  Tire-wise I'd start on street tires and then switch over to something more multi-purpose in Whitehorse for the ride to the Arctic.  If John Ryan can go from Prudhoe Bay on an FJR, I don't think I need to go full-SUV motorcycle with an adventure bike to get up to and back from the arctic.  The rest is a high mileage ride on first world roads.  I'd want to do it on a bike that makes corners fun.


My current choice would be a bike that handles long distance duties well.  The Kawasaki Concours is just such a machine.  Two-Wheel Motorsport happens to have just what I'm looking for, a low mileage 2006 that would do the deed.  With a shaft drive and a bullet proof reputation, it would cover the miles enthusiastically.  My other bike choice would be the new Honda VFR800F.  It's another sports tourer that could swallow these huge distances with confidence.

The final piece would be the media.  A Gopro clipped onto the bike would be running whenever the bike was in motion.  I'd also have a mobile video camera and my trusty Olympus SLR for other footage.  The trick would be not to get hung up with the photography, I tend to lollygag when I have a camera in my hand.

If the production was stepped up a notch, I'd meet up with my production crew at various spots along the way to off load footage and do some stock footage of me on the bike (which wouldn't happen so much when I was alone).  Ideally I'd have a wingman for the trip and we'd both take turns at filming (and half the cost of lodging).  The trip itself would offer a live webfeed of mileage covered and where we are, including uploads of recent images and footage.

In the more fully-decked out version I'd go to OLN or Discovery Channel or the Travel Channel for some media support.  Then TelusRogers or Bell for some communications support, and finally to Kawasaki Canada or Honda Canada for some bike support.  It wouldn't hurt to hit up local, provincial and federal governments to help as well, this is a uniquely Canadian focused trip, and with the final leg of the Dempster Highway finally happening coast-to-coast-to-coast is at last a possibility, it'd be nice to get the word out.

For more check out Coast to Coast to Coast 2.0.

Friday 21 November 2014

Motorbike media bits and pieces...

I came across some motorcycle media recently that is a nice diversion if you're suffering from PMS.

Eatsleepride.com has a series of motorcycle short documentaries that will keep you rolling on two wheels, even if it's vicariously.

The Women's Motorcycle Exhibit video led me to the site;  much better than the floozy on a bike photography you usually see.  There is nothing sexier than a strong, capable woman riding a bike (as opposed to a skinny model draping herself on one).

The other shorts were all new to me except for Long Live The Kings, which has since spawned The Greasy Hands Preachers.  The reviews for that film have suggested that it's a shallow but pretty look at current motorbike customization trends.  I was hoping for something that plumbs the depths like Matt Crawford's Shopclass As Soulcraft (a must read),  but it evidently isn't that, though I'm still looking forward to seeing it.


I also found Brittown, a documentary about Meatball, a master mechanic and Triumph motorbike connoisseur out of California.  It's a genuine look at a genuine fellow.  You'd be hard pressed to find any hipster bullshit in this video.

I also completed the set.  Having already seen Faster and Fastest, I was finally able to see The Doctor, The Tornado and The Kentucky Kid, the middle Motogp video in the trilogy.  It's a close look at a single race at Leguna Seca.  The phoned in interviews are a bit low-rent, but the drama is as engaging as ever.  If you want to get into Motogp, these videos will give you the background you need to get right into next season.

In the meantime, the mighty Austin Vince put out Mini-Mondo, another motorbike short (poem!) that (hopefully) gets you out on two wheels and seeing what's around you:







We're buried in snow in mid-November and thoughts of riding are weeks behind me now, but at least the media I'm finding keeps the two wheel dreaming alive.