Category: Technical

Never stop learning

ConfusedHeadscratchSo, on today’s ride, I had an issue with gear changes. The rear Derailleur would not shift down from one particular cog. So it was onto the repair stand when I got home.

I looked at the rear Derailleur, looked fine and moving fine. The hangar looked straight and true. So the process of elimination was almost complete and I moved on to cabling. I shifted to the highest gear and made some slack in the cable system. The rear housing looked fine, cleaned it off and applied some oil to the cable.

“When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin down the road, without thought on anything but the ride you are taking.” — Arthur Conan Doyle

The bike still did it. Would not shift down over the second highest cog. Thinking I’d checked almost everything, and it was down to a cable tension issue I was considering ripping out the whole system and re cabling. But before that I thought I’d just try adjusting the barrel adjuster at the top of the down tube. Low and behold, the bike shifted fine after slacking that off slightly. So with no cable tension, I removed the cable from the adjuster, and there was a shed load of grit in there. It must of been thrown up by the front wheel during a rather wet ride I had a couple of days back.

Sprayed a good helping of GT85 in the adjuster, oiled it over and reassembled. It was shifting like a dream again.

So the whole moral of the story, is one of trouble shooting the system, work backwards, don’t head down blind alleys and you’ll get there.

Elemnt Screens

Going around the various forums, one of the common questions I see, is “what fields should I have?” when setting up a GPS computer.

I’d previously done this type of post for my garmin so I’d thought I’d do one for the screens on my elemnt.

First Page

The first page is pretty much on screen most of the time. It contains all the critical information.

 

  1. W 5 sec, this simply shows my 5 second average power.
  2. KPH, is my current speed. I’ve found d myself looking at power more than speed recently, so speed is relegated to second field.
  3. BPM, current heart rate I have my heart rate zones displayed on the left hand LED display.
  4. RPM, my current cadence
  5. KM, Distance travelled
  6. Elevation, current elevation above sea-level.
  7. DEG-C current temperature

I don’t need much else on that screen. Using the zoom function on the elemnt, the 4 top items are the ones that are most important and on screen in a zoom state.

Climbing Screen

The climbing screen is pretty much the default. I think I just added RPM and BPM datafields.

There is the default Elevation display at the bottom of the screen.

 

 

 

 

 

Course Screen

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Similar to the Main screen, this screen shows all the important metrics, along with a KM to go display for the currently loaded course and a ride time display too. As the Elemnt lacks the timed course feature on the Garmin, we have to remember the time we are out to beat and do it manually.

First ride with Wahoo Elemnt

So, I’ve changed over from a Garmin 520 to a Wahoo Elemnt. And despite the missing vowel, it’s a worthy Garmin competitor.

Initially, I thought the LED’s where a little gimmick, but they are actually bloody useful. I’ve currently got mine set to display heart rate zone but have also used them for average speed, and found them useful for a quick reference point.

Screen wise, it’s a lot more readable in all conditions than the garmin, with better field presentation. Speaking of fields, setting up screens on the elemnt is stupidly easy. You just select the fields in the app, and drag and drop to were you want them on screen. Nothing could be easier. Non of this many button pressing garmin malarkey.

I’d replaced the maps on the garmin with open street maps from garmin.openstreetmap.nl which where miles better than the tosh you got preloaded. You can’t replace maps on the elemnt, however they are more than good enough to use as is.

All in all, a great bike GPS unit, and one that’s earned a place on my bike. Just a shame it dos’nt support my garmin lights. Yet.

A day on the river.

01092013- DSC0060

Today was the one day a year Yorkshire water open the outfall of thruscoss dam, and allow the Washburn to flood down to fewston reservoir. The canoe club is not one to allow this opportunity to go to waste. And I’m not one to allow a photo op go either.

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the day was grey with a lot of cloud it really was dull and this meant there where a few issues with photography. Most of the river is under tree cover, which meant the lack of light was further limited. I had to really bump up the ISO to get the shutter speed I needed, and the fastest lens I had brought was a 2.8 17-50.

I switched to full manual and constantly tweaked the exposures. It was hard work. But well worth it as I feel I got some good shots, and I worked for them. I would of used a flash but felt it would be off putting to the canoeists.

The Long walk back.

More images of course available on my ipernity site: http://www.ipernity.com/doc/mikethompson/album/505491

Backup Lightroom Tip

Lightroom is a fantastic piece of software. But if it goes wrong, or your computer goes wrong, there is a lot of work you stand to lose. So here are my top tips to make sure you can recover Lightroom if the worst should happen.

1.) Backup your catalogue files. This can be done from within lightroom. So to make sure this go to your catalogue settings, and make sure it is to be backed up. I recommend this is done on another drive, and you can specify the place on the backup dialogue itself when it does a backup

cat_settings

2.) Ensure Pre-sets are kept with the Lightroom catalogue. This is the best option for those of you who only use one catalogue. Once this is done, you can back up the entire contents of the catalogue folder, and keep all your pre-sets safe. Pre-sets include all Meta data, Import, develop, export and preferences. So by backing this folder up, light room is fully installable back to how you had it without worry. Just make sure you are not backing up the <catalogue_name> Previews.lrdata, or the smart previews folder if your running LR5. These don’t need to be backed up and only contain rendering information for previews and 1:1 viewing.

By following these two simple ideas, you can safeguard your lightoom install.

Hope this helps someone out there. 🙂

Hunting the Hunter

Thats a better hold!
11000 • f2.8 • 50.0 mm • ISO 100

I really enjoy catching other photographers in the act. The moment the eye is at the view finder, nothing else matters. Hundred things rushing through the mind. Is it in focus? Is it at the right shutter speed, aperture? Then the gentle squeeze on the button, and that glorious clack as the mirror flips. The world could be ending around you, but it does not matter until that mirror slaps up. Looking through that view finder, you are no longer part of it, you are simply a viewer, an onlooker looking at the subject, distant. It’s a strange mindset.

I am very guilty of judging people with their cameras. I see another photographer and I instantly look over their gear. I just can’t help it.

All sorts of people are out there with their cameras. Some big DSLR users, photographing the Minster, with the DSLR, and the in built flash pops up, and they have the same kit lens and uncomfortable next strap on the camera as the day they bought it. I have a want to help these people, show them what they, and their camera is capable of, but that would be so wrong of me.

04082013-DSC_9460So hears to everyone with a camera. Go out, use your cameras however you see fit. Enjoy it, use it, love it. Live for that clack.

Dont worry about other people, just enjoy your photography. 🙂

More photographers in the act: http://www.ipernity.com/doc/mikethompson/album/486729

Lightroom

I use Lightroom to organise and edit all the photos I take. It is by far the best application out there for it.

I thought I might just take a minute to outline my basic work flow, and hint at a few keyboard short-cuts you may find help you.

After importing the files from my memory cards, I sort through the images, rejecting images, that are unusable, or I just don’t like. I do this by pressing x for reject on the keyboard. F will flag it. If you press caps lock, the focus will shift automatically to the next image.  If I need to see the image in the Loupe view I can either, just press enter or E. Should I have two similar images I want to compare, side-by-side I press C for compare, or N for survey depending on what I need to do at the time.

I also set the filters, so it disappears from the grid view after I reject them.

Once I have worked through, this stage, I then identify images that need work, or are ready to upload. I do this by colour. I use red for Requires Work, Blue for ready to upload.

I do this, by keeping the Caps Lock key on, and pressing 6-9 depending on the colour. (Red label 6, Yellow 7).

This is the fastest way I find of sorting through the images.

Hope this helps someone out there.