Last night was the monthly San Diego Mountain Biking Associationmeeting that was held at REI in Encinitas. Before the meeting a handful of decided to get in a quick spin at the Rancho La Costa Preserve. I got there quite a bit early so I tinkered with a new camera gadget that I have modified for use with a mountain bike. It is a RF remote shutter release that has a range of over 100 feet. The remote is a bit on the bulky side for using while you are riding as it could not be mounted on the handlebar in an easy to reach spot. After some geekage, soldering and a bit of trial and error I made a remote micro-switch for the remote. This “remote remote” allows me to put the camera on a tripod and then take pictures by just barely moving my thumb on the handlebar.
Here is one of the first test shots. I’m snapping the shot using my left thumb. It was a good test as pressing the button did not detract from the riding.
During the second test shoot, I wanted to test out the range of the system. The camera is at least 100 feet away when I snapped this first shot of the sequence. I am going to do another test later at a further distance to see just how far you can push the range. I also had the autofocus set to servo mode to it refocused as I moved along the trail getting closer to the camera. Continuous shooting mode also works with this setup. The main intended use for this setup is when I traveling and riding solo. While I like taking trail photos, so of them would be so much nicer with a rider in the shot. Now at least can use myself as photo fodder. I may have a couple of tweaks left to do with the setup, I’ll put up some additional details on the gadget mods when everything is dialed.
After the photo tinkering, I zipped back down to the trailhead and hooked with the folks for the ride. It was good ride, but I took next to nothing for pictures as I was doing a lot of chasing.
Here is Gardner Grady, aka SDMBA Vice President and member of the National Mountain Bike Patrol showing how is done on a section know as “Meet Your Maker”. If you think you might me interesting in becoming a member of the SDMBA chapter of the National Mountain Bike Patrol, touch bases with Gyan Penrose-Kafka who can give you all the 411 on the program.
We finished up the ride with enough time to chill for a bit before heading off to meeting. There was a really good turn out and there are lots of stuff happening around the county and particularly in North County. It was well worth a few hours of my time to see what is going on in person without having to sift through all of the talking head chatterbox BS that seems to be so prevalent on the various online forums. If you can out about upcomign SDMBA events by signing up for thier Trailnews mailing list.