F-Stop Junkie

Useful at preserving five year old articles? It's just a ti-glide with a longer Ti section, and a shorter freehub body. Though it was also the only one of it's kind...

Koxx. We all thought the 'K' on the links was for Koxx before someone spotted they were generic KMC chains.

Long bikes. One day there weren't any, the next everyone was raving about Level bosses, and with good reason. Warrenties - how to get free stuff when yours breaks, though this was some time ago. Someone/something being 'sexual' IRC Tyres Taboo frames and forks Making your bike looks more like Ashton's/Hawyes's/Akrigg's/a Tongue's All bikes - Pashley or otherewise - having the union jack headtube graphics and/or top tube pads Chopping that little bit of seat tube off above the top tube, and zip tying a saddle on the top DCDs Making your own pads Slamming disc brakes because the pads move a couple of mil and it feels like the wheel is 'rocking' back and forth Replacing your current bike to one with dual discs Push in megamo saddles on everything The strongest stuff possible being used for trials, because trials (not the riders) broke bits. Bikes weighed 35-40lbs People getting custom MTB builders to make trials rigs. When Brisa came along and were much better than what had gone before. Nelson Reis took the piss at the Bike Show When Koxx came along and were much better than what had gone before. Vincent Hermance took the piss at the Bike Show Everyone slamming Enos for being much more expensive than an ACS claw Everyone getting Enos .TK and freehosting websites Every man and his dog producing 'team' websites with them and their mates listed as 'Riders', full bike spec lists under 'bikes', a different technique and jargon section to everyone else, and a list of pro riders with photos scanned out of MBUK. (See .TK websites) Every manufacturer producing a trials bike which was an old jump frame with no outer ring and wide bars. Some put Maguras on them. None of us bought them. More to come, I'm sure...

Things I've learnt today: Good riders ride crazy things, and have no regard for their own safety. They also have the patience of saints, and will do stupid stuff over and over again for dozy camera folk No camera AF system can cope with a rider popping into frame for a wall ride Also, don't trust screens on the back of cameras. They lie. Lastly, good gloves are worth the weight in gold. If you don't have any, a latte will do instead. For sheer art value, I like this: And for sheer balls:

Just to add, you're only supposed to ride on the tarmac path there. I used to ride through on my XC bike, but I know a few people who have had their bikes confiscated for not riding on the tarmac. I'd suggest you go across the roads to swithland woods instead. The wardens may not be too bothered when it's quiet, but try and ride there in the summer, or around the deer, and they'll give you a bollocking, take your bike, or both.

arts tower, sheff uni

I'd still content that hanging around a McDonalds car park, 'cruizin', and doing up bangers is not being into cars... Anyway:

Bizzarist Insult Ever.

I don't think you mean facile...

Map of Sheffield Campus I see where it is now. Driving distance? That's walking distance from me! Basically the ring road that goes from the Station area, past Waitrose and has a tram underpass along the way comes to a roundabout. Take the third exit off there (The central island should be branded University of Sheffield) and it's just a touch further along on the left. Failing that, head for the University of Sheffield or the Royal Hallamshire Hospital, and you'll be near enough to work off the map above!

Or punctuate correctly.

Errr no. Directions? Address?

I've seen a disc or two break on here before... Also biketrials for Explicit Vector Language? Edit: Beaten too.

I don't know how cheap they are compared to anyone else, but I always use Lehmanns for all my camera repairs. They're a registered Canon repair centre, always helpful, very, very knowledgeable and keen to do warrenty repairs if it's within it's warrenty still. They've done some fairly big stuff for me, and the quotes are always less than I expect. Plus their service is really good. When I've sent my camera in before,they've emailed me a quote with exactly what they plan to do, parts they need, labour cost etc for me to approve before they continue. Give them a call, but be persistant. There phone is often busy.

A local bike shop may have a torque wrench, but maybe not a torx key. Torque wrench tells you how tight you've tightened something....

Well without a DCD, how would your chain not fall off your single ring? People never seemed to understand how that could happen...

Yeah Shaun went with his career, tried to keep X-Street going, but it didn't really work.. I was clearing out some old video tapes, and I came across my Under Pressure tapes! So crazy seeing some of those people again - like Shaun standing in the background... And me What else was it like? Middle rings were good, because then you could get around, sitting on your saddle of course. People chopping down the little bit of seat tube above the top tube, then zip tying a saddle on top because it was a bit like the Megamo ones with the push in seats. Having to order bits from Trialsin.com Goatwheels because no where here sold trials bits! Seeing Plazmatic pads or Threshold bits on someone's bike was seriously cool, as was BTM stickers! Do the truely old school have to have subscribed to the mtb-trials mailing list with people like Jason Chamberlain - Now a Specialized engineer - Aaron Lutze - Match Video Mag - Michael Fridell - Pete Wilk - Dan 'The Face' Schnieder... Not to mention, the Great Scone Incident of 1997

Heck, you're not oldschool unless you've entered modandstocktrialsriding into a URL, bought something of Shaun Roster and thought you can get free replacements under warrenty...

What the camera is doesn't matter. My Sony compact is probably very similar to the Fuji but I've got some great pictures out of it. Ditto old Fuji and Nikon compacts. Learn how your camera works. How it meters, what happens in different flash modes, what happens if you half press the shutter button (AF Lock? AE lock?) Relying on manual mode means taking 10 attempts at one shot instead of one or two. If you don't have a live histogram on the screen, you will have problems taking shots in bright sun, otherwise how do you know if what you see on the screen will match what appears on your monitor? If the pictures you take in manual mode are so good, then the camera is capable of them. How can you make the camera do that itself? A half press somewhere? A change of picture mode? Play around, read the manual, find out. Don't struggle on making life hard for yourself! Find out what works for you too, don't just use the same settings as everyone else, as different people have different styles and patience. Oh Dave, that was my line on MSN for a while...

Leave it in auto, or put in the camera into an 'indoor' setting if there is one. It'll do everything Rob P suggested for you, without you having to worry.

Being detirmined as I am to use a Saint chainset on my new bike, I'm trying to come up with a inner ring bashring which is available in a four bolt pattern, and the only one I can find so far is a black spire ring god. Any other suggestions I'm missing? Try-all? Echo? I'm obviously behind the days though, as Tarty don't offer any bolt on bashrings at all these days! Cheers!

The problem with manual mode is that the camera contains an advanced light meter, so why disregard it? It just seems that some people on TF think that putting the camera in manual mode is the 'right' thing to do. I rarely use manual mode because I let the camera do some of the work for me and give me something less to worry about. The real question is, do you know why the camera was giving a crap exposure when left to it's own devices? Since you're trying to use the screen to guess the exposure, then you're risking problems of glare on the screen, as well as the gamma on the screen not being accurate and giving you inaccurate exposures. The best way to learn is to take lots of pictures and see if they come out like you want. If not, why not? Set up experiments to see how the camera reacts, read the manual over and over, look on forums, etc... That way you'll spend less time faffing about with settings (potentially getting them wrong, as you have here) and more time taking good photos. Plus, this will help you take better photos of moving too!

As I was saying, what is the diameter of the Middleburn Pro bashguard? Cheers!

[attachmentid=2727] I think the size is OK for TF to be honest... I've had a quick play with the Robin one, and I think it is just under exposed. Since it was taken at F3.2, you couldn't have gone for a bigger aperture, so I would have suggested that you either bump the shutter speed down one stop (down to 1/30th of a second) or take the ISO up to 200 (it was taken at 100). Why did you have the camera in manual mode though? Why not just let it sort out the best exposure. Also why wasn't the flash on? That could have lifted the bird out of it's surroundings. Why is there an obsession on TF generally for people to use manual modes? Nice, clever people at Fuji, Nikon and Canon spend a lot of time making sure the camera can do what you want it to. Unless you carry a light meter around - and I guess there's only three people on TF who have one - you can't do any better. The only real problem with a shot like this is that it's surrounded by so many elements that are brighter than it. You can't do anything about it, and with a point and shoot digital camera, you can not get a suitably small depth of field to start blurring bits out. Assuming you were fully zoomed out, you got the best you can get. I think you should check your settings on your camera. If you haven't resized either of these, then you're probably not running in the possible highest resolution - in other words, you're only using part of the cameras ability. There is also a lot of sharpening/compression going on in both these pictures. This is making any noise (NOT grain! No such thing in digital photography...) really stand out. This may also be because when you're saving them in Photoshop, you're selecting quality of 4-6 when I'd suggest 8-10. The castle one looks ok, but again it's heavily sharpened/compressed. Look at where the tops of the turrets meet the sky, there's like a halo around them. That is the effect you want to remove. I'd say perhaps the castle is slightly underexposed, but if you lighten it then you'll lighten the sky too. No bad thing though. Given the amount of sharpening going on, I wouldn't sharpen again! Levels and curves? Can't you do all the adjustment in one step, seeing as they're just modifying the same thing? Also one thing neither of us have done is to adjust the white balance properly. There's a definite magenta cast where the WB hasn't hit correctly. Just noticed that...

Trials has been around since the late 70s? Early 80s?