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Help Photographing a bike

TCC

Tokyo Cycling Club
Jun 30, 2013
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Right.

Next week I am going to build my new whip, and it turns out @saibot has caught a terrible, debilitating disease called 'anställning' which prevents him from coming along and photographing the procedure.

So, I was wondering if any of the photographers here could give any advice on photographing everything. @saibot had the idea of doing it time-lapse, so sticking to that plan would be best.

Any tips on close ups, lighting, angles and all that would be good. You only get to build a bike up from brand new once, and I wanted to document it.

Nice one.
 
It is imperative you buy either of the following bodies before commencing with the build
1)Canon EOS-1D X
2) Nikon D4

Both are full frame cameras which will mean you can get very shallow depth of field, vital as you will want to show you are a real pro.

You must also buy a very fast lens. I recommend the canon EF 85mm f1.2L II or the Canon EF 50mm f1.2L. Both of these will again maximise your bokeh, which is what it is all about. The more bokeh, the more professional you are.


I actually have a Tachihara 4x5 field camera that you can borrow, although you are best asking someone like @macrophotofly how to use it as I only have it to look cool ;) . Not sure it would be very good for time lapse photos though.
 
Right, well I am building an absolute top of the line bike, so it would make sense to photograph it with a top of the line camera.

I am all about the Bokeh. I purposefully had my eyes lasered to make them worse just so I would have permanent Bokeh at all times. I also rub Vaseline around the edge of every screen in my apartment to ensure constant Bokeh there too.

I expect nothing less from my photography.
 
It is clear to me by browsing some of the pro photography here on TCC that there is no real correlation between the quality of the photos and speed of the rider. We have liecaman who is a beast on the bike and takes a quality bokeh photo. We have the other end of the spectrum joe Wien who takes a great photo but is slower than my grandma on the bike. Then there's the macrofotoguy who is at the bottom end of both scales despite knowing everything about everything.

So you are probably best to talk with all three to get your advice, listen to liecaman and Joe first, take notes. Then talk with fotoguy and write down the opposite of everything he says.
Compare your notes and correlate your lists and you should be able to get the info you need to build the fastest rig known to man and end up with some decent photos too.
 
LOMO
 
Oh, I guess you're building a <road bike> , in that case , meh!
 
Congratulations to @saibot - may you be able to afford shiny new bike parts again :)
 
@saibot is old money, and far from the hand to mouth masses. He needs not a job to afford bike parts.

Cycling is a quick to max out activity in terms of equipment anyway- a handful of millions of yen and you have the best of everything. Chump change for Alphas like Saibot.
 
Correct, old money as in living of the handout's of the swedish socialist system... god I love it!

After reading the advice from the photo pros here my original plan on shooting a time laps with my no-so-full-frame gopro seem like a pretty silly idea... I'm such an amateur!
 
Then there's the macrofotoguy who is at the bottom end of both scales despite knowing everything about everything.

WTF! When did that happen.... Jesus need to try harder...... for the love of God.
 
Agreed. Nouveau riche are so passé ... Both for equippe and rider..

@saibot is old money, and far from the hand to mouth masses. He needs not a job to afford bike parts.

Cycling is a quick to max out activity in terms of equipment anyway- a handful of millions of yen and you have the best of everything. Chump change for Alphas like Saibot.



Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
Amateurs are people too. Well, kind of.

Those are the truck load of people that come to races to watch people like me.
 
So anyway, stop derailing my thread. I never do that to any of you lot. Ever.

I have decided to take photos using the camera in my phone. It is easily as good as any dedicated camera you can buy from a camera shop, and I would actually argue better because I can upload the shots to Instgram and bokeh them up on there to my hearts content.

I will post up the shots when I take them. They will be of a bike, in case you don't know what to look out for.
 
Well that is a whole other issue. How am I going to know if I have built it the right way round?
 
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