Names and faces to bikes

the machine:

the mug (the real me is notoriously difficult to capture on film and frankly, this one is better looking...)

the mog:

Lovely... makes me want a banana

do cats do that to you?

"um nice cat.....i wouldnt mind a banana right now"

it seems to be an unphotographable shade of yellow.
i think it really confuses metering system - I'll have to try again when I've got the hang of this new-fangled camera..

aidan "um nice cat.....i wouldnt mind a banana right now"

you're not bringing a banana anywhere near my cat.

natureboy it seems to be an unphotographable shade of yellow.
i think it really confuses metering system - I'll have to try again when I've got the hang of this new-fangled camera..

Your face? :)

natureboy,

That picture is pretty good. But the bike is more recognisable.

You got the camera on auto? If so metering is fine.

photoben You got the camera on auto? If so metering is fine.

my guess is that it's metering for the background and slightly over-exposing the bright yellow, so it comes out a bit less saturated and less orangey than it is in real life - I reckon a slight negative EV adjustment should do the trick.

plus, it's quite difficult to get the camera to focus on the skinny bike rather than what's behind it! Maybe there is a point to oversized tubes after all..

Spot on.

I take it you can't manual focus on your camera? If not point it straight at the chainring or the handlebars (largest objects to focus on) to focus then compose and shoot.

hello from san francisco... thought i'd poke my head in here out of curiosity of what goes on fixed wise in other parts of the globe. i started the san francisco version of this site, sffixed.com. i also hold it down out here with a really old British bike.

me

my carlton flyer

i also have a stan miles track frame made by bill hurlow under going some repairs after an unfortunate run in with an automobile.

Nice lugwork and stem on the Stan Miles there :)

They look very similar to Holdsworth style lugs

photoben Spot on.

I take it you can't manual focus on your camera? If not point it straight at the chainring or the handlebars (largest objects to focus on) to focus then compose and shoot.

Also they offer more substantial localised contrast, which most phase differential AF systems favour. The somewhat lairy colour temperature of the alloy components will also warm up yer actual yellow frame.

that's more or less what I did - spot focus on the cranks and then move up to compose. there is a manual focus but the feedback image is not nearly as clear as the split image you get with the focusing screen on an SLR.

I think the remaining blur (not so bad on that shot but worse on some of the others) is mainly due to camera shake - the camera is v. light and there doesn't seem to be a way to persuade it to take a manual aperture or shutter speed setting. silly automatic things. wouldn't be so bad if you could patch the software.

hmm.. think I'll resurrect the manual SLR - got an old Canon EF knocking around which might (a) take decent photos if I can find batteries for it and (b) make a handy club for knocking intruders unconscious with.

Cannondale Track

Wintermute - are you a Gibson fan?

yeah, you know it :D was it the orange rims or the name that gave me away :D

wintermute what cranks are they?

They look like DuraAce 7400's. What's the Gibson reference?

William Gibson wrote the seminal cyberpunk novel "Neuromancer" back in the early 80s. Wintermute was an AI in that book.

Gibson invented the term 'Cyberspace' don't you know.

He's one of my favourite authors, and I'm reading his just released novel "Spook Country" at the moment.

Yes, I read that book many years ago.. not much of it stuck though. I thought the bike had something to do with the novel not his name :)

hippy Yes, I read that book many years ago.. not much of it stuck though.

Heathen! ;-)

Actually, getting sort of back on topic, his novel Virtual Light had a main character, Chevette Washington, who was a woman bike courier in SF.

Can't remember if she rode fixed; I'll have to dig out my copy and look it up.

stompy William Gibson wrote the seminal cyberpunk novel "Neuromancer" back in the early 80s. Wintermute was an AI in that book.

Gibson invented the term 'Cyberspace' don't you know.

He's one of my favourite authors, and I'm reading his just released novel "Spook Country" at the moment.

damn, you all beat me to it, by several hours (my excuse is kosher though - I was at Herne Hill!)

I'm just reading Neuromancer at the moment. Trouble is I keep reading little bits in highly stimulating environments like tube trains and airports so at this point I'm a bit confused and need to read it again from the beginning. Have you read Pattern Recognition and All Tomorrow's Parties? I read those a while back.

One thing I realised after reading some of Neuromancer is that the Wachowski brothers are thieving little bastards who had no original ideas (apart from that crap about using humans as batteries). I'll forgive them The Matrix, which was
quite entertaining IMO but the sequels II and III ... (shakes head)

btw stompy, have you seen Cronenberg's eXistenZ? I thought I was great - the first time I saw it I only started watching in the middle, which is guaranteed to add to the confusion! - serious case of parenthetical dislocation - any LISP programmers out there?