F-Stop Junkie

Disclosure: I'm not affiliated with On-One in anyway, just thought some folk here might find the following useful: On-One Superlight Forks - Black or white, disc only. £60 Doofers - Chain tension for a tenner. And SoYo Grips - which used to be popular back in the day. Tenner. Also got some good deals on Avid Juicy 7s if you're into that kind of thing.

--> QUOTE(danny B @ Jan 29 2006, 06:31 PM) ←it was originally the idea of ben slinger to make some money because there ain't none in trials I guess you mean training? Granted, there's very little, but The MAD Team do it and Rich Johnson used to. Don't know if he still does.

I wasn't referring to you in anyway way, it was a general point about the forum that there's a high level of posts which add very little, especially when it comes to pictures and videos. It's almost like a poll should accompany each posted picture or video so people can easily say 'I like it' or 'Not my cup of tea' without building painfully long threads. Then those who want to add comments or criticism can do so. One thing though Luke, you may want to check your keyboard to see if the full stop and comma keys still work.

But don't you see that what I've said is based on experience and knowledge. It's something critical but explained and hopefully can be taken constructively to help Dave take better pictures in the future. Not just some 'witty' throw away comment,or a simple 'G8 pix matez!!!1!!11' A photo - or video for that matter - is made up of two things; the riding within it and the quality of the capture. As Andrew T said recently that great riding with bad capture is as bad as a perfectly shot sequence of bad riding. The move in the first shot is good, no question. The riding was never in doubt. But the way it's been shot means that you can't really make out what he's on. You can't see what comes next, where he's come from, which you could have if you'd shot landscape. Also shooting with a Fuji point & shoot means that you loose the detail out the shadows and you can't make out the fine detail which may have lifted the shot. If I'd taken those two shots, I'd have though "better luck next time" but not posted them, and I have some cracking shots which have been ruined with lens flare!

Right, two rubbish photos, and here's why. First one. The composition is off. Why shoot that in portrait format? There's so much foreground just taking up space and adding nothing. Also when you lined up the shot, you probably looked at the rock Mike went up and based everything around that. As a result, the rider isn't in the middle of the frame, which is messy. Also, with those deep shadows, and lack of shadow detail, you can't make out what he's riding on. The flash has also fired, which has made very little difference, except to crush your last hopes of this being a sillouette. However, the thing that really ruins it for me, and makes it pretty much unsavable, is the terrible lens flare all over the rider, and the way the sun has bleached out part of his legs. The Fuji has a pretty good lens for the money, but it will not cope with a situation like this! Second one. The rider is blurred first and foremost which he shouldn't be. Secondly, everything around the rider is dull. Flat ground and lots of sky. Both adding nothing to the picture. You've also taken the shot too late. 20 minutes earlier and the sky would have had a lot more colour in it and really added to the impact of the shot. In both cases, the shots have been heavily sharpened and show a lot of noise, but this may have been through excessive editing after the event. The way the images have been processed is really not pretty. But most of all, please crop pictures before posting them! Make them 33% of the original size, and it'll be much easier for people to view them!

Are you confusing the bike show and the cycle show?

Tom, I'd expect Hope will only be testing production ideas, not one offs for this person and that person. If you order one, expect it to be bolt up and six speed. I'm working on cassette options already Chris

Don't forget Gunmetal! I've had my trials hub on order in that colour for quite some time now...

Ah, such a pervasive mentality at the moment. Why buy videos when you can download them? Why pay for anything when you can get it somewhere else for free? Well, in some cases you get what you pay for. Would I benefit from spending a few hours getting tuition from a top rider? Certainly. Would other people? Certainly. It's not about going on a ride and saying "how do you do that?" It's about getting feedback on your riding, having their input on your technique and so on. It's great that people like Wayne do this for free to help the sport, but not everyone is lucky enough to have a Waynio on their doorstep. There are a few sports where having a coach is frowned upon. You don't see people strapping skis to their feet and going down a slope without an instructor, or diving without one. There are swathes of registered football coaches and tennis coaches and so on. If I ever scrape together enough pennies to get a big, bouncy bike and head off to the North Shore, you can bet your bottom dollar I'll be getting training and tution out there on how to ride that stuff! It seems that the trials community in the UK is largely driven by technology. New bikes, new tyres, new (cough) hubs. People will spend a fortune to upgrade perfectly good bits, but they won't pay to upgrade themselves. Yes, you can progress naturally, you can pick up techniques from others, but if you can accelerate the process by having A Top Rider help you for a few hours then you'll do far better than splashing the same amount of cash on a couple of fancy bike bits.

<pedantry> Point of order, arn't all mountain bike hubs (and BMX hubs, and anything that uses a freewheel) really adapted road hubs and freewheels?</Pedantry>

Wayne, don't get me wrong, I don't think ring drive is The Answer. I've never owned one or used one in anger. What I appreciate is the engineering simplicity and design. The pawl and ratchet design is very well proven, and Hope do it very, very well. I'm just glad there's an alternative which has a logical design advantage. I also enjoy a lively debate.

It's pretty hard for it to get into a Hope freehub too ) How often does crap get in there?

Yup, you're right. I don't deal with them on a day to day basis so I'm not completely au fait with them. Surely a pawl and ratchet would be rubbish if a bit of grit got into your freehub? Though it's more resistant to mud and the like.

If anything, I'd say it was bigger then in the eyes of the world. We had Under Pressure, multiple trials articles per month in MBUK, more riders, and competitions. Can you imagine queueing for two hours to see the trials at the Bike Show? Crowds full to capacity, and 5 deep around the barriers. Trials riders were like Rock Stars. Now we've trimmed the riders who weren't committed for whatever reason, and we've got the hardcore few in it for the long run.

Wayne, if I was there, I'd say you're wrong, with a couple of points... I have never owned a King, or indeed ridden on one, and I'm aware they seem to have a period of bedding in then - once tightened - they're fine. I also have three bikes, all equipped with Hope hubs front and rear. I love 'em. The ring drive mechanism is incredibly simple, with two toothed rings which mesh together. The harder you press on the pedals, the harder the two rings mesh, so at peak chain loadings (i.e. when you're doing a pedal kick or something) the drive mechanism is tightly meshed, with the load spread over many, many teeth. With a conventional pawl + ratchet system, you have one part trying to move one way, and a small piece of metal (maybe two or four) trying to stop it. It's the difference between trying to hold something up with one finger instead of ten. When you pull a king apart, I can imagine it being a mess of springs and plates, with a special tool needed to tighten it. That said, if you see a cutaway hub with the system in place and working, it suddenly becomes so simple. The pawl + ratchet system has been refined on many, many bikes over many, many years and is incredibly strong, but trials puts very specific loadings on a hub. I'm not saying ring drive is the answer, but it's a mechanically excellent solution to the problem.

I've seen the work that LA Cycles have done, as they used to do a fair few custom frames for my old employer. Good prices, but can do fancy stuff like flames and so on too. Good, tough paint. Based in the Midlands too. LA Cycles

Cheers for mention Wayne. The article can be found here.

Back in the day, many companies like Cannondale had rider support programmes. This would say "Send us your details and CV, and if we think you're good enough then we'll send you some free kit to promote us and give you a discount on bits." This helped out good riders, but did not dilute the pro sponsorship pool. That's effectively what's happening now in 90% of cases. The 'Gods' - for want of a better term - are still at a different level. They're the ones that get hooked up with good deals, appear in magazines and DVDs and get paid actual money. In some cases it's enough to live off, in others it isn't. If you want a sponsorship package that includes a team bus, pre-arranged travel and entry, and a free supply of bits, then you won't find one in trials. You'll have to race DH for Cannondale, Trek or Kona. Ultimately it's all about publicity. If I give you this, then I get publicity. It's then down to how people are willing to sell themselves and show off their sponsors. Some set their worth very low, others very high. If you're willing to sell yourself for a rim, forks or brake pads, then you've set your price. Companies will then look for an appropriate amount of value on their investment. I think a lot of small companies are very indiscriminate in their sponsorship activities. Taking money out the till for an unmeasured return. Those who are more structured, or more focussed will do better. I think if these small companies took a step back and looked at what they're getting out of this, and what their true marketing aims are, then they would quickly reconsider their actions. I could go on, but I think that those companies have fixed ideas about what they're doing and no intentions to examine their goals or how this is impacting their bottom lines. For those more open minded companies. PM me. Looking around the forum, there is an amount of 'fan sponsorship' going on. That is people who say "This company is great." There's no financial incentive to do it, it's done out of pride or respect for that company. The way it's presented makes it look like sponsorship though, which makes the situation look worse than it is.

That's pretty much it. All entries must be PM'd to me by 31st Jan. Remember you can only submit a max of two photos, one in the action category, one non-action. All details in the sticky thread at the top of this very forum, or here!

Good points there Andy. I'd love to have a good pop at making videos, and have a huge head full of ideas. Unfortunatley I don't have a movie camera, software or time, but all good stuff to think about!

Fred Miranda and dpreview.com are the mac daddies as far as I'm concerned. Like any forums, use the search! There's a lot on both that has been posted many times over like Sigma Vs Canon 70-200, C.Fn 14 usage and so on. Hehehe, that probably made no sense to 99.5% of people Or post it here, and let us camera boffins have a stab at it. We know a few things about cameras, like which end to look in.

Just looking at costs for the year. Yes, it's going to be expensive, but I'm lucky being in Yorkshire that a couple of the rounds should be pretty cheap! Given how much it costs to go to Devon - fuel, accomodation, pizza money - I don't think it'll be much more to go to Fort William, even flying there! Not sure how viable that is with a bike due to the measley baggage allowances internally, but even with a hire car, I expect it's going to work out only a few quid more than Devon - which we've now got twice too. That said, all the accomodation is cheaper than that around Hookwoods! Good to see new faces on the Biketrial comittee too. A bit of fresh blood is always welcome! One point, can the colour scheme on the BiketrialUK website be changed? Such dark, contrasting colours always make my eyes go a bit weird when I switch to another site/application with a light background. Good to have a central point of info though for all competition type stuff!

Stills or video?

Just out of interest, will UCI rules be applied to all categories? If a lumbering oaf fancies another shot at comps, then BIU rules in the lower classes would be good. But hey, gotta follow the rules on the day.

Don't get me wrong, I'm far from sympathetic for people who claim for tiny little accidents, but it's easy to take things at face value. Woman claim coffee is too hot is different to woman sues MacDonalds because coffee is so hot she gets first degree burns and spends several days in hospital because coffee was 150 degrees. People who take the piss do make things harder not just for genuine cases, but also for everyone else as insurance premiums go up, companies spend money doing stupid little things for fear of getting sued, etc...