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Deuce

SCWHING!

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excuse me while i'm drooling...

Hey, my birthday is in April, if anyone wants to get me something useful, i could sure use a 10D. I'll jump with you and shoot and print good stills of you...

i know i know, i'll just keep dreaming...

peace
http://www.exitshot.com

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I can't believe Canon is really letting them go for that price. That's really amazing.

I see no real reason for me to go out and buy one at this time since my D60 is working just fine but if I had to replace it, I would have no qualms whatsoever at buying that -- especially for that price. Wow.
quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

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With the 20MM lens, right? Puts it at about the same as a 28mm film camera?



a 20mm will be about a 32mm equalivilant. The multiplier is 1.6 for the D10 (and D60).

Like Quade said, I won't run out and buy one right now, but if I need to replace my D60...B|

Josh
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. - Edmund Burke

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Ok...now you have me in a quandry. I wasn't tempted in this direction until now. Thanks JP :S.

Now...do I spend my soon to be arriving tax refund on:

1) Paying off my car
2) Clearing all my credit card balances
3) Putting the money in a savings (CD) account
4) or...buy the 10D?

Arghhh.....!!!!
ltdiver


Don't tell me the sky's the limit when there are footprints on the moon

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Well, you asked me:
Consolidate the credit cards, and use a zero interest rate one to buy the digital camera.

It must be much harder for you to resist this, I don't have Quade jumping at the same DZ generating humongous amounts of Digital Envy.

And you'll give me a huge vicarious thrill.:ph34r:

DO IT!

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Hey, man, I'm almost never the reason to do anything at Perris. We just have -way- too many other cool kids; The FlyBoyz, OB, Raoul . . . not to mention all the visiting cool kids.
I could easily drop off the map at Perris and never be missed.
quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

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Man, it's way too early to get sappy, but NIETHER of you could drop of the planet without being seriously missed.

Knock it off!

:P

I'd be the first guy at my DZ to go digital, so I'm really thinking about this. Sell the N90S and a couple of guns I no longer have a use for and I'm in to the Canon with a 20mm and the direct print printer.

Yepper;)

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I'd be the first guy at my DZ to go digital, so I'm really thinking about this. Sell the N90S and a couple of guns I no longer have a use for and I'm in to the Canon with a 20mm and the direct print printer.



i'll give ya $10 for your N90S:P:P:P:P

do lenses come with it? B|hee hee

:)peace
http://www.exitshot.com

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Lew, I'm thinking the one's to work at the guys all sweaty to get the new one.

I'm thinking we can both get a cheap D60 that's been conquered and used by one of the Digital Masters that's ready for a new fling with a D100:ph34r::ph34r::ph34r:

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I looked at the canon site and it seems to basically be a D60 with only a couple of extra features and a much smaller price tag. Is this about right????
I think I'm with Quade on this one. No reason to replace my D60 with it. It's good to know that if my D60 quit working I could replace it for much cheaper-Tony
My O.C.D. has me chasing a dream my A.D.D. won't let me catch.

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I looked at the canon site and it seems to basically be a D60 with only a couple of extra features and a much smaller price tag. Is this about right????
I think I'm with Quade on this one. No reason to replace my D60 with it. It's good to know that if my D60 quit working I could replace it for much cheaper-Tony



For the most part it appears to be the same camera. The plastic body of the D60 has been replaced with a magnesium alloy body. Although the CMOS sensor appears to be the same, all of the reviews I've read show that the 10D produces sharper, clearer images, and handles low-light conditions better. Plus, the auto-focus has been dramatically improved, though this doesn't matter much for skydiving. The shutter release lag has been reduced from 240ms to 190ms and the viewfinder blackout has been cut from 300ms to 140ms. Also, the 10D supports FAT32, which means it can use compact flash cards larger than 2GB. All in all, it looks like a descent improvement over the D60 at a cheaper price. I definately know what my next new 'toy' will be.

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I'm getting serious about this. Q, what's the best practical storage media for this thing?



For sure you don't want to do a microdrive. Something about the atmospheric pressure doesn't let them work reliably at altitude. At least, that was OB's experience -- I never tried it based on his bad experiences.

If you plan on always having a computer with you at the DZ -- possibly for on-site printing. A 256 meg card will hold about 100 shots at the largest size and least .jpg compression (what all the cool kids are shooting). RAW files are just too freekin' big.

Anyway, with about 100 shots in the chamber, I can easliy do back-to-back loads and offload images every other jump.

I'd personally recommend nothing smaller than 256 and I've thought about getting a larger card myself, but so far, I haven't had the need. I suppose that if you don't plan on having computer access at the DZ then you'd want at least a 1 meg card. You can always blow off images to make a bit more room, but it's a SLOW process just using the camera to do it.

Also, write your name on the card with a Sharpie. If you start swapping cards with other guys or putting them in other computers, it gets pretty confusing who owns what really fast.
quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

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I've been jumping a Canon Rebel for the last 5 years or so.

I know a lot of people just give the roll of film to the tandem passengers, but I preferred to keep the original work. (I know, that's a whole other thread.) Part of the cost of keeping the original negatives is taking the film to get developed, going to pick it up. Going to the post office to ship it and repeating for enlargements and duplicates when they were ordered.

So, at the end of last season, I decided to investigate going digital.

And so this spring I started buying what I thought I would need to get started in the digital world. I don't remember the prices for everything I've bought so far but following is a partial list. I keep thinking it is going to end.

Canon 10D (arrived last Friday) $1500
Canon 20mm USM $400
Canon 28-135mm USM IS $400 (Not really needed but it's for ground shots, etc.)
2 x 512 24x cf cards $?
spare battery $?
remote switch adapter $50
cf card reader $20
epson 960 printer $?
spare set of ink cartridges $?
bunch of paper $?
adobe photoshop 7 $?
breezebrowser $35

Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch.
The biggest eye opener for me was how much more camera there is in the 10D/20mm compared to the Rebel G/28mm lens combo. Big difference. I bet it is easily twice the weight of what I've been using.

I've just finished building a new mount for the new still camera. Looks like it will work well. Now I just need to learn how to work this camera.

Quade, maybe you could share a bit about your workflow with regard to getting the pictures off of the camera and into the customers hands.

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Quade, maybe you could share a bit about your workflow with regard to getting the pictures off of the camera and into the customers hands.



Well, for starters, I do not do AFF, tandem or any other "school" work, so I'm almost certain you'd have to modify things slightly for that. For the most part what I do is special event related and even at that I generally do not print on site. I have printed on site for a number of very large special events where I knew there was going to be a lot of interest and impulse buys, but that's maybe 3 or 4 events over the last 12 months.

For an on site event I'll go up, shoot, drop off my rig to a packer, dub video and then head off to my laptop to download photos.

I have a Firewire card reader so downloading is MUCH faster than dealing with the incredibly slow USB connection from the camera. Why Canon didn't upgrade the connection on the 10D is baffling. A full 256 card takes FOREVER to download via the USB.

I could just use iPhoto to download the photos and in the beginning that's exactly what I did, but I soon realized that I could streamline some other parts of the workflow if I used a piece of third party software to manage the photos AND make web pages (more on that later). The piece of software I use is called iView. For importing, it's basically the same deal as iPhoto, but it gets much more powerful from there. I highly recommend it for digital archives, web sites, et al.

From iView, I then start culling the wheat from the chaff. I usually just do one pass of this on site and only ditch the really obviously f'ed up stuff.

Because it's digital and I'm shooting special event stuff, I'm kind fanatical about making sure everything is working before I climb out. As a result I take a lot of test shots; when I first put my helmet on, as we turn on jumprun, as the door opens, just before climb out. All these pictures are usually thrown away because all I really wanted was to hear that little reassuring click of the shutter. I also do the same sort of thing under canopy to make sure the camera is still working just for a little reassurance.

Once the photos are downloaded I usually head back out to hop on the next load, but if there's something really worth printing up (like a completion shot or maybe an exceptionally cool exit shot) then I'll open the photo in PhotoShop and take a detailed look at it, crop it and print out and 8x10 of it on an 8.5x11 sheet of photo paper. This is faster and uses less ink (on my printer) than a full bleed 8x10. It also leaves a bit of room on the borders to write the file name using a Sharpie so that when people see how cool it is, they can fill out an order form. ;)

As cool as it is to make a video slide show and put it up in the bar (or where ever), people really like to walk up and see all the detail and sharpness of the print. This will definately cut into your supplies and profit margin if you do this too much, so only put up the stuff that is really worth a sale.

For the rest of the stuff or if I'm not printing on site (which really is usually the case) I tell people to refer to my web site. HERE is a typical page covering a special event. iView handles the web page creation process from templates and is very quick and very easy to use. Just as a side note -- I used to do the same sort of thing with 35mm film and scan the negs. This took at least an entire night to create a nice web page. With iView, it can be a fairly simple process, the longest part of which is editing the shots and maybe captioning them.

Obviously, if people have to order stuff and you have to ship it . . . well, that's going to cost more.

In a small "school" operation, I think I might be tempted to just have a couple of typical shots that people can see the quality of the output, but try to sell the photos just off the laptop. I can't imagine dealing with the excess cost and time needed to even print out a proof sheet for the "students" let alone 5x7s of the entire jump. As for selling a CD-Rom with ALL the shots on it, well, I think that also takes up a lot of time and effort and you'd want to price that right so that you didn't screw yourself out of a nice profit.

Anybody out there selling "school" digital stuff to "students"? I'd be interested in hearing their comments on their operation.
quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

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Nobody ever said camera flying got you "free" jumps.

You're just spending the money in other ways. I definatley didn't make a profit last year. As a matter of fact, I didn't come anywhere close to breaking even. There's a LOT of reasons for this, but that's another discussion altogether.
quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

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I looked up the weights of these camera components on the Canon web site.

Canon rebel = 382 g
Canon 28mm =185 g
------------------------
Total = 567 g
Converts to 1.25 lbs

Canon DSLR 10D = 790 g
Canon 20mm USM= 405 g
----------------------------
Total = 1195 g
Converts to 2.63 lbs.

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