Man, it was a busy weekend. Finally we had some good weather after what seemed weeks of wetness. Schleker the Machine and Mad Max kept me busy taking pics for two days solid. First day was Bozen bike test shooting where we eventually found some killer light.  Photographically there aint nothing better than bolting the 70-200mm on and catching some early evening Italian light at f/2.8.  Second day was to shoot, for them, the perfect biking day. For me it turned out to be the fucking perfect shooting day and these pics are sure to come soon in one of the next FREERIDE magazines.

Tonight was a social ride along the Isar with Mario and Max.  Pic above shows Mario pulling a table top off one of the kickers near the Großhessenlohe Brücke. D700 + 85mm f/1.8 @ ISO 4000, 1/1000th sec, f/1.8.

Spent an afternoon up at Lohof back in March with the BMX Dudes. Off this ramp they were pulling no hand nose dives and tail whips, mainly. Cut a video from the session and fused in some color stills to the footage. Quite liked the pics and, once again, couldn’t resist turning one of them into B&W. Rider is Michael Rösler and this is about the highest he was hitting that day.

A lot of cold rainy weather right now in Munich so I’ve been looking through some old pics from last year. This one shows Karin having some fun about a 1 min ride down from the Spielberghaus biergarden and hot pot. Pic taken with a D700, 14-24mm lens and two SB-24 flashes triggered with Skyports.

Out for an after work ride with Mad Max along the Isar tonight.  Was keen just to ride and at first thought about not taking a camera. Then changed my mind and took the GH1 + 20mm pancake lens.  Got this shot close to the start of the trail in pretty poor light. Was at f/1.7, ISO 3200 and 1/800th sec.  Manual pre-set focus using the MF-assist just to minimise shutter lag. Now if you take a close look at the quality then it’s nowhere near close to Nikon D700 standard at the same ISO. There is some visible banding in the shadows, for example. However, for a very light cam it’s not bad, and a 100% better pic than I would have got without taking a cam at all, which, if I didn’t have it would have been the case tonight.

Here’s a pic of the man, post Isar ride in Munich, settling into the Rotwild Cayenne just before he smoked it out the car park gently drove it back to the Freeride office. Was great to take some action pics of The Dude but, funnily enough, I think I ended up with more Porsche pics than bike pics;-)

Bit of a ride party out today above Garmisch.  A cloudy day followed a sunny start and below 2000m the trails are pretty much snow free. Top pic shows Mad Max tanking along at his normal cruising speed.  Pic looked okay in color but, again, too tempted to covert to B&W. Captured using a Panasonic GH1 and the superb 20mm f/1.7 lens (ISO 800, f/3.2, 1/1600 sec). Man, the light weight cam is shaping up great for the mountain biking.

Next up was Berni – here she is at the famous Fabi nose wheely spot that I shot last year.  This time I thought the clouds were cool so Berni obliged with a pose. Used the Nikon 50mm for this one on the GH1, so effective 100m. Format is 16:9.

And last but not least is Vinc … he was filming today with a cool Canon 7D rig. Hope we see some footage soon

Megavalanche 2009: 20 B&W pics… from Big Col on Vimeo.

FREERIDE magazine this month has a report written by Schleker the Machine from our visit there in July 2009.  All the pics in the magazine are in color, and I like them in color, but I also just couldn’t resist converting some of them to B&W.

A couple of pics showing the size/dimensions difference between these two babies. To add extra scale Niall added his 3 year old hand in the bottom right of the top pic. Ok, I know the Panasonic lens is F4 (which is fine for a lot of mountain pics), but the size difference and weight is amazing. The possibility of 16:9 video at this wide is quite nice too.  No real shooting with it yet so haven’t really compared IQ’s, or not found out how far behind the Panny is compared to the Nikkor, but from what I’ve seen so far it’s quite usable.

Tegernsee trails from Big Col on Vimeo.

Some helm cam vid here of Max horsing down one of my favourite Tegernsee trails. There’s nothing like finishing a trail ride at a brewery;) It’s a quick cut streamed out at low-ish quality for now. Couple of stills there too.