Handcam how many d.z.'s do it

[rhys 0]

I am seeing more and more mention of handcam! my current d.z. and my last one both do handcam only. the one before that wanted to but the camera guys wouldn't have it!

I'm interested to see how many dz's out there are actually doing hand cam. I hasn't taken long to get going, where will it stop?

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, then the world will see peace." - 'Jimi' Hendrix

[Mixoligist 0]

We have no plans to complicate an already complicated skydive. Outside video & stills is by far a much better product.

Flame away but I believe GREED invented the handy cam.

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Better you than me
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[aliveboy2004 0]

I personally can't think of too many things more dangerous than a tandem instructor with a camera attached to his/her arm. Just too many safety factors involved with openings, cutaways, entanglements, etc. I view tandem instructor held handcams as just a way for the TM to 'show off' for their passanger.

[flyfree2day 0]

Have you used the handycam on a tandem jump?
out of about 8 or 9 hundred handycam jumps, there were a handful of people that jumped before and got video with a camera guy. 100% so far prefered the handycam. But most of them do ask about stills. All of our customers rave about the video.
You are getting rid of the risk of a camera man running into you or sliding over you in freefall. I think it's way more dangerous to have a camera guy. But it's what your comfortable with and what your use to doing. saftey of the passenger def. comes first.

[riggerrob 558]

If asked to work with a bumbling, beginner outside videographer, I find it safer to strap a camera to my left wrist and do all the work myself.

[riggerrob 558]

You are correct.
Some tandem instructors will never be bright enough to handle a camera and a flailing student at the same time.

As for cameras being a distraction during malfunctions, that is when we revert to "Plan A". Forget about the camera.
Get rid of the spinning main and get a reserve overhead.
Tandem masters should always revert to "Plan A" when they are having a bad day.

[AggieDave 6]

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Some tandem instructors will never be bright enough to handle a camera and a flailing student at the same time.

Some will be bright enough not to add a serious complication to an already complicated system.

The last few discussions we've had about this everyone told me that I just didn't have the experience as a TI. Now that I'm staring at 1000 tandems, I still believe that its a serious safety risk to add a hand mounted camera for tandems.

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[Mixoligist 0]

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100% so far prefered the handycam. But most of them do ask about stills. All of our customers rave about the video.

Of course they "rave" about it. They have nothing to compare it to. Tandem students would rave about a finger painting made of them in freefall. I am quite sure if I played one of my tandem vids or any of our staff's vid next to the handycam vid the passenger would want the outside video & stills.
Of course editing both videos together would be very sweet. How many DZs offer one or the other or both ??? What is the price difference???

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Better you than me
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[Mixoligist 0]

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You are getting rid of the risk of a camera man running into you or sliding over you in freefall. I think it's way more dangerous to have a camera guy.

I do no jump with any that I have any doubts about.
You are correct about that risk, thay can't get you if they aren't there. But-"way more dangerous"- I do not agree.

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Better you than me
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[BIGUN 1,049]

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Of course they "rave" about it. They have nothing to compare it to. Tandem students would rave about a finger painting made of them in freefall.

I had the same thoughts and had to read it a couple of times myself. He's said. "there were a handful of people that jumped before and got video with a camera guy. 100% so far prefered the handycam."

Nobody has time to listen; because they're desperately chasing the need of being heard.

[flyfree2day 0]

yeah, 100% of the people that have done a second jump with us that had camera guys before loved the handycam. I don't know how many people just about 10 out of around 800 or so. I so think that having a good or even decent camera guy is a better video. I've done tandem videos, love and miss doing them. But handycams are a great way to keep everyone happy at a small dz with one 206. The price yeah, I don't know. prob. not worth it. but keeps me working, jumping, the bills payed my boss happy. So I'm all about it, but I see your point.

[flyfree2day 0]

ok, not way more. It's not as dangerous as some people are making it out to be.

[Mixoligist 0]

Don't get me wrong though, I am well aware that my camera guys can fuck up and kill me/themselves.
That being said, I could fuck up too***knocks on wood***

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Better you than me
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[mwabd1 0]

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You are getting rid of the risk of a camera man running into you or sliding over you in freefall. I think it's way more dangerous to have a camera guy. But it's what your comfortable with and what your use to doing. saftey of the passenger def. comes first.

Maybe you should get better trained camera flyers. I have seen alot of handcam videos and have yet to see any that are even close to the quality of good outside video! I agree with others that adding a camera to the hand of a TM is just asking for trouble but I also acknowledge that it is being done hundreds of times a week without incident.

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.......I hereby reject your reality and instead choose to insert my own!

[flyfree2day 0]

Did I say that we had bad camera flyers?

[skydived19006 4]

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Some will be bright enough not to add a serious complication to an already complicated system.

The last few discussions we've had about this everyone told me that I just didn't have the experience as a TI. Now that I'm staring at 1000 tandems, I still believe that its a serious safety risk to add a hand mounted camera for tandems.

I had the very same concerns you have about hand cam Dave, then I started doing it. I’ll agree that it does add an element of risk, it is obviously heavier than an altimeter, but when I need to ignore that camera, it’s about as much of a distraction as an altimeter on my left hand.

As with many things we do there’s generally a period where new things are viewed as dangerous. Talk to someone who’s been jumping for 40 years. They’ll tell you that they’ve heard things like “those new square parachutes are dangers, you’re going to get yourself killed, it’s just another fad”, “you should never be that close to someone in freefall, you’re stupid, and you’re going to get yourself killed” (in reference to passing a baton), or how about “that freefly shit is just another fad, it’s dangerous, is going to kill people, and will be gone like the hoola hoop in no time”. Sometimes the nay sayers are right sometimes not. I’ve heard it said that high performance landings can kill a person, that one is definitely true, but again some choose to do it, and some get killed doing it every year.

I know, I know, I have a passenger with me on a tandem, and I’m putting their life in danger with my actions. I don’t know, but I’d imagine that Bill Booth, and Ted Strong could tell stories about how people thought their "new tandem jumping idea" was dangerous, shouldn’t be doing it, would be proven so by the inevitable fatalities, will turn our sport into an amusement ride, and most likely kill the sport because people will make one tandem jump and walk away. There was also a time when tandem skydiving was viewed as nothing more than a cash cow engaged in by those "damn greedy DZOs", maybe if you looked hard enough you could still find a few people who have that viewpoint.

I guess my point is not to be quite so quick to judge and condemn something, at least without first hand experience. Maybe you could get some training, borrow someone’s glove, take up an experienced skydiver, and see how it goes.

Martin

Experience is what you get when you thought you were going to get something else.

AC DZ

[AggieDave 6]

Your comparing things in the sport that revolutionised the sport in terms of safety and training with something that is simply another gimmick to make money from first time jumpers.

If its safe for tandems, then its obviously safe for AFF instructors to jump with as well, right? Or would you rather not see an AFF-I wear a handy cam on a jump? They could hold the camera hand out infront of the student and capture everything, right?

You know, if it wasn't for having a giant camera on your hand for a student to grab and then putting it directly in front of them to grab it, I wouldn't be against it. Ever had your altimeter wrapped up in linetwists? That can happen really quick, actually. Ever have a student grab your altimeter? What were you taught about putting your hands infront of your students?

As with all the other things you listed, there was a growing period, a time of evolution in technology that eventually made something ok in the sport. If handicams ever really catch on to the degree that others would like to see it, then its going to have to evolve. Perhaps with small remote lenses there will be a chance, as the remote lens technology grows up.

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Maybe you could get some training, borrow someone’s glove, take up an experienced skydiver, and see how it goes.

I've thought about it, I weighed the risks and decided against it. What you don't realize is that this is not a knee jerk reaction, this is something that I gave a lot of thought too, especially when I depended on skydiving to pay the bills. An extra $30 a jump would have been VERY nice to have. It still wasn't worth it to me. It wasn't worth it to the I/E on my DZ either, who, like me, had thought about it and thought about the extra money.

You know that incidents typically have a series of events that lead up to the overall incident and its severity. A lot of little factors that added up. All I know is I'm glad I didn't have to deal with anything extra when I had a side spin. And especially when I had that reserve malfunction on a tandem.

I have no idea what your experience is, besides the jump numbers you put in your profile, and so you might write my opinion off as an inexperience TI that only has about 1000 tandems. That's fine. Its still not an added risk factor I'm willing to engage in.

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[bentonu2 0]

You are getting rid of the risk of a camera man running into you or sliding over you in freefall. I think it's way more dangerous to have a camera guy.

I do no jump with any that I have any doubts about.
You are correct about that risk, thay can't get you if they aren't there. But-"way more dangerous"- I do not agree.

And they can't get the footage, if they aren't there either!

The real fact is that Hand cam is here to stay, as customers love it, DZO's love it, TI's love it, outside camera people, well what can I say, and the truth is that it also makes money that is funnelled back into skydiving in many ways, it helps build bigger and better DZ's, buy bigger faster aeroplanes and helps to bring many people a better living standard, helps maintain equipment and improves the world of skydiving in general. Don't knock it cause it aren't going away

[Liemberg 0]

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If its safe for tandems, then its obviously safe for AFF instructors to jump with as well, right? Or would you rather not see an AFF-I wear a handy cam on a jump? They could hold the camera hand out infront of the student and capture everything, right?

I don't think there would be much point. The handcam on a tandem catches the passengers face in freefall AND the canopy ride. The freefal part is captured 'inevitably', without realy aiming the camera, just from the way it is positioned on the TI's left hand. Under canopy, most of the time you have the opportunity to make some nice footage and things can be as calm as you want it to be - you don't have to make consecutive stall turns on fast canopies to get footage your passenger wants.
When you are doing AFF or coached jumps chances are you are NOT with your student under canopy.
If you would want to take a camera on that type of jumps it would make more sense to have it on the helmet.

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Perhaps with small remote lenses there will be a chance, as the remote lens technology grows up.

Small remote lense technology HAS grown up BTW, but that is not to say a glove with an upright positioned sony PC 10 / 105 /109 /1000 is inherently unsafe. However, with my setup (see attachment) it is a no-brainer; what is on my hand is hardly more than an 'oversized' altimeter. If that were dangerous (i.e. altimeter @ left hand) we would have noticed by now...

"Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." - Leonardo da Vinci
A thousand words...

[AggieDave 6]

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I don't think there would be much point. The handcam on a tandem catches the passengers face in freefall AND the canopy ride.

That wasn't the point of my statement. It was to compare the two different instructional techniques and that if its "safe" for one, then it must obviously be "safe" for the other.

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what is on my hand is hardly more than an 'oversized' altimeter. If that were dangerous (i.e. altimeter @ left hand) we would have noticed by now...

Yes and no. Like I asked, have you had a student grab your altimeter? What about placing your hand in the "grab zone" of the student? Have you ever had your altimeter caught up in your risers in linetwists?

Like I was saying previously, there has been maybe 1 jumps that I said "gee, a handicam would have been cool on that one" and probably 20 jumps where I landed and said "man, that proves my point, a handicam would have been in the way and a serious hazard."

The same points for the handicams and against the handicams are continuing to be made again and again in each new handicam thread that appears. It comes down to time. Time will tell how much of a hazard they are, or if they are at all. On the flip side, in the last nearly 30 years, how many students have fallen out of a tandem harness? Two, right? Those both happened in the past 18 months or so. The safety concerns may not become apparent directly at first. In the same regards, people have been warning others about the "hole" in harnesses and rigs for years, even with no data to show lethal potentiality.

I'm not saying that a handicam will make you fall out of a rig or make the plane explode in flames. Just that we have to remember that tandems are a dynamic thing, even more so then your typical skydive, and that every piece of complication that is added, it expounds and creates a significant change in the overall system of the jump (in this case, the system includes the TI).

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[swoopgaz 0]

I work at a dropzone where we offer both outside camera and handycam. First of all i'll say that the people who have had handycam and see an outside vid think that the handycam is much better, and the people who had outside wished they had handycam. We only really do outside camera with stills. I have never heard anyone say handycam is shit.

Having done 500+ hanycam with my fair share off chops, the camera has never been an issue. When i've had a struggling student the camera has still never been an issue.

There certainly are tandem masters out there who should never do handycam, and quite frankly not doing tandems at all. But for some people who have never done it before or refuse to do it should not be saying why it is shit and why no one should be doing it.

We brought handycam in at my DZ where i work simply because the camera staff were not reliable and we never new who was going to turn up. so we solved by getting rid of the camera man themselves. It would be a shame to see outside camera die out all together because it is a good prodeuct but doing hanycam works out to be more cost effective, especialy for the smaller operators, It's certainly not because we want to show off.

[skydived19006 4]

I respect your opinion, and your personal decision not to add a hand camera to your tandems. I personally don’t do, or have any desire to do high performance canopy landings, and I personally would never put myself in a bird man suit. Those two disciplines are added risk factors that I don’t wish to take on, for me the risk/benefit doesn’t add up. I also won’t load up a sport main above 1.5, and my reserve is loaded to 1.1, again my decision, not necessarily yours, but I respect your choice to do differently.

As for my experience: I’ve been jumping since 1990, instructing since 1995 (SL-I, IAD-I), Tandem I since 1999 with 1000+ tandems (need to catch up my log book!), 300 + outside tandem video, 30 +/- hand cam tandem vids. I’m also DZO of a 1 C182 DZ with two of us doing the tandems and trading out on outside video. We’re a weekend operation, and will do 500 +/- tandems this year, so the hand cam is also an economic, and efficiency decision for us as well. Hand cam also frees up the airplane for the fun jumpers (two tandems one load with video, one more load of fun jumpers)

Not that it’s exactly on topic, but if you never have you should “do a little time” at a small busy DZ. It’s quite a different operation compared to a medium/large turbine DZ! Next time you’re passing through Kansas, you’re welcome to stop in, make a jump or two, and hang out.

Martin

Experience is what you get when you thought you were going to get something else.

AC DZ

[Mixoligist 0]

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I have never heard anyone say handycam is shit.

Handycam is shit.
Handycam is shit.
Handycam is shit.

Now you have heard it three times.

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Better you than me
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[AggieDave 6]

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Not that it’s exactly on topic, but if you never have you should “do a little time” at a small busy DZ. It’s quite a different operation compared to a medium/large turbine DZ! Next time you’re passing through Kansas, you’re welcome to stop in, make a jump or two, and hang out.

I was there when Aggieland opened with a large tent and a rented 182. Its grown into a small turbine DZ over the years.

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[flyfree2day 0]

I think your to cool for this topic..