So what setting do you shoot your stills at ?

[sky-pimp 0]

So what setting do you shoot your stills at ?
just post your cam, len's and what you like to set on your camera and if you know why just jot a little down.

e.g.
canon eos350d 28mm canon f2.8 prime lens no flash
manual f22 speed180 iso100

YeHaaaaaaaaaaa

[PhreeZone 14]

The 28mm is a different choice for a lens for jumping...

I change my settings on every jump depending on what the light is doing, there is no set format I always use but I'll tend to use TV mode and speeds around 320 with the ISO at 200 for most shots and then will change the ISO and speeds around as the sun comes or goes with clouds. I'll use either the Kit lens or the Canon 10-22

Yesterday is history
And tomorrow is a mystery

Parachutemanuals.com

[freeflye73 0]

Canon EOS 350, Kit lens, widest setting, TV mode ISO 100 and shutter 1/600 to 1/1000 depending on how much cloudes (freefall only) on ground shooting landing i use sports mode and in plane fully automatic the green beginner setting :-)
//JF

[lilchief 0]

I use a 15mm prime, much better then 28. 28 on a 1.6x crop format DLSR will be equal to the center portion of what you see with your eyes. Very much like a 50mm on a fullframe body(Canon 1D, 5D, and Nikon D3, D700).

Read this thread here:

http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=3225357#3225357

there you'll see some shots taken with a kitlens at 18mm. as for the lens, I higly recomend you to get something with a focal length between 10-22 for normal skydiving. 15mm preferably ;)

as for settings..um.. My standard is:

ISO: 100
apperatur: f7.1
shutter 500 or 640
fokusdistande 2m
Full manual.

But as phreezone mentioned, it's all about the conditions for what you may do, like and prefer. Whenever we jump through clouds, I choose Tv or Av-mode, with AF, bu may also choose manual focus, but thats risktaking.

I found out that I had problems with my AF on my 40D and Sigma 15mm. I've kind of concluded with that it may be the lens, and will be upgrading(with the 4th time... =/ ) to a canon 15mm to get sharper glass.

f22 is HIIIIIIIGH!

"Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and there you long to return." - Da Vinci
www.lilchief.no

[PhreeZone 14]

Only reason to ever shoot with an F stop at 22 is trying to get a depth of field that is equal to infinity and in Skydiving that's just not needed. Stop it down to the sweet spot on the lens (around f8-12) and stay there since it will give you good DOF still but lets you speed the shutter up a lot to lost the motion blur that slower shutters will bring with them.

Its annoying to see a nicely composed photo and to have the jumpsuit a massive blur from flapping and when you look at the properties the shutter is really slow because they had set the aperture way too small. Some people like that from the artistic side but I'm not one of those people.

Yesterday is history
And tomorrow is a mystery

Parachutemanuals.com

[kai3fly 0]

My Setup Canon Rebel T1i with Tokina 10-17mm

Start off on Sports, learn what settings are used on the good photos.

Set the focal plane on the ground for eyes of the subject, at the distance you like to fly at.

TV mode 1/500sec a very common setting but your depth of field will vary.

but i just switched to

AV mode F8-F11 with ISO400, Exp -2/3

I also calibrated my laptop screen and have the brightness on 50%

cool Iphone app and web site : DOF master
http://www.dofmaster.com/

Kai
Wishes Apple and Sony would be friends

[davepend 0]

"f/8 and be there."
--Allen Hopkins

[Laszloimage 0]

"So what setting do you shoot your stills at ?"

What gear are you using when you drive a car?
...all of them. It would be pretty hard to start moving forward after a STOP sign in 5th gear (most likely burning the clutch). Or it would be pretty silly to drive in 1st gear on the interstate.
Same with photography you change your settings accordingly with the light, the intention, and nature of the subject.

[4dbill 0]

I shoot almost exclusively in shuttle priority mode of 1/400 or so because I want a guarantee of having no unnecessary blur and a decent dept of field. Two biggest criteria for the settings I choose are amount of available light and the brightness of background compared to the subject.
When I am shooting against the sky, I open up the lens to +1 step, because the sky is almost always brighter than the subject. If shooting against the ground, around +1/3 since Canon Xti tents to shoot a bit dark anyway.
If it’s sunny, I keep the ISO around 100-200; cloudy,400.
Here are some fist test shots with XTi. It shows all settings I’ve used.
I think you have to be a Facebook account holder to view them, though.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=14797&id=100000044890285

4DBill

[dragon2 0]

Quote

When I am shooting against the sky, I open up the lens to +1 step, because the sky is almost always brighter than the subject.

What exposure metering setting are you using? I know I had to overexpose my old EOS 30D (yes the OLD one) quite a bit to get a decently exposed skydiver against a blue sky, and shoot in spotmetering (I also almost always used spot metering for a few of the follow-up models like the 300D), but I thought more recent models had that improved on, a lot.

If you use a nikon this problem is much less if not non-existant, always has been. Even when using the matrix metring mode nikon usually gets the exposure against blue sky right (or pretty much right) on it's own, which at the time was one of the reasons for me to switch brands. But like I said, I thought canon had caught up in the meantime

ciel bleu,
Saskia

[BMFin 0]

I guess you mean Canon D 30 and not 30 D ?

The 300 D doesnt have spot metering either.

What helps with exposure metering is to cover the viewfinder in order to block light entering through it.

[dragon2 0]

Yeah I meant the camera I got in 2002... Stupid Canon, naming 2 cameras so similar

Didn't the 300D have spot metering though? I could've sworn I used it, must've used partial or center-weigted then... But I did switch to a Nikon D70 fairly quick because the 300D had an awful lot of problems skydiving.

I must say I never block the viewfinder myself, on my helmet is it kinda blocked by the way the camera is mounted anyway.

ciel bleu,
Saskia

[PhreeZone 14]

None of the consumer bodies like XXXD from Canon have Spot metering unless you hack the firmware to unlock the feature. Spot metering was introduced on their Pro-sumer side with the XXD series of cameras.

Yesterday is history
And tomorrow is a mystery

Parachutemanuals.com

[dragon2 0]

Pity that, as spotmetering would be especially useful for tandemphotography.

So do you guys use partial metering then or what?

ciel bleu,
Saskia

[BMFin 0]

Why do you think spot metering would be usefull ?

I have hacked my 400D and I have spotmetering, but I wont use it since using it will result into great variance on the exposures. For example results will differ when the spot is metered on the subjects helmet (which can be black) or from one exact zit on the subjects face which most of the times is white (no pun intended) Therefore I think you will be better off when not when the metering area is not too limited.

[4dbill 0]

Quote

What exposure metering setting are you using?

Canon XTi has 3 metering modes: Evaluative, partial and center weighed. After taking hundreds, if not thousands, of simulated skydiving shots against different kind of backgrounds on the ground, I found Evaluative metering seems to be more useful on an average shot, but I didn't have the camera for that long, so I'll keep experimenting. One thing for sure though. XTi sucks when it comes to auto setting outdoors. It's way too dark.

[dragon2 0]

I base that on my experiences with the EOS D30 a long time ago, and how I film tandems today. I spot metering would work for me still, better than the old evaluative on the D30 anyway which sucked for any kind of backlighted conditions. But I use evaluative on all of my nikons since it *works* so if canon has caught up now, sure why not use that

ciel bleu,
Saskia

[davelepka 4]

Quote

Canon EOS 350, Kit lens, widest setting, TV mode ISO 100 and shutter 1/600 to 1/1000 depending on how much cloudes (freefall only)

That shutter speed is really high. I have the same set-up and use TV with the shutter set at 320, and if it's really dark out I'll even drop it to 250, and haven't had any blur.

Try to notch that shutter speed down a little, and you'll get a wider depth of field.

[dragon2 0]

I just switched from 1/400 to 1/500 (when the weather/time of day allows anyway), and my pics are crisper now. 1/320 or 1/400 was sharp no blur, but 1/500 is sharper and looks nicer
1/1000 is quite nice for swooping (waterdragging) though

ciel bleu,
Saskia

[pilotdave 0]

Can you post a picture or two cropped to 100%? I'm hoping my new flat top camera helmet and new super-stiff really right stuff mount will help, but I can't consistently get good pictures at such low shutter speeds. I don't do a lot of tandems where the subject is right in your face though, so that might be a difference. I'm just curious to see some pictures shot at 1/320 or 1/250 (zoomed in) to see if I just suck or if maybe we just have different ideas of what is acceptable "shake" blur. I'd prefer to see RW pictures than tandem pictures if you happen to have any.

I typically use 1/500 to 1/800, shutter priority. If autofocus is playing nice, I don't care much about depth of field. I'd rather get some nice blurry background but that doesn't work too well with wide lenses. I try not to have my aperture wide open because the lenses aren't as sharp at their max apertures.

I've gone down to 1/250 for night jumps with flash... and 1/40 on a sunset load once by accident (sport mode gone bad). But I tend to need a bit more shutter speed than that to get really crisp pictures.

Dave

[davelepka 4]

Quote

Can you post a picture or two cropped to 100%?

I'd be happy to if you could tell me how to do that. I always have to shrink pics to post them here, but I think you're asking me to post a little part of one pic at full rez, right?

Either way, I looked at a couple of pics I have on my computer, and I can clearly see the baggy parts of the jumpsuits are 'frozen'. My guess is that they would be a source of blur, but they're clear.

What's odd is that I would think that it would be more of an issue on a tight tandem shot than a backed-off RW shot. Between the jumpsuit, hands, hair, and sometimes cheeks, there's all sorts of up close details that would tend to blur if the shutter speed was too low.

On an RW pic, you couldn't make out those fine details anyway, and the movement of the jumpers would be much slower then the flap of a jumpsuit or the turkey neck of a fat tandem pax.

I'm a MUCH better skydiver than computer operator, so hook me up with some instructions, and I'll post whatever you want. I'm working with Win XP with the Office Suite, and that's about it. I do have a Photobucket account if that helps.

In terms of your aperture, you know that it opens wider the higher your shutter speed, right? The lower speeds let's close down a little, and should widen the DOF.

[pilotdave 0]

Can you upload (and let us view) a full-res picture to photobucket?

I'm on my work computer trying to figure out how to do the same thing... I can crop using microsoft office picture manager. But I can't get the file size low enough without cropping down to an eyeball or something.

Here's a non-cropped, web-size version of one of my recent tandem pics from a month ago (for some reason they can't find another video guy that'll do tandem videos when there's still snow on the ground
This one was shot at 1/640, f/7.1, 16mm. I'll try to post a cropped version later. But close up, the TI's sleeve is fairly blurred, even at 1/640th. It's what I think of as "sharp enough," but it could be better. I was STRUGGLING with the slow fall rate on that one though, so I probably wasn't sitting very still.
EDIT: 100% crop attached. Just compressed a little...

Dave

[skyjumpenfool 2]

Keep in mind, from a photo composition point of view, we use the blurred image to give us the illusion of motion.

Maybe, a jumpsuit sleeve that is slightly blurred will add to the shot by implying speed and movement. I think that a shot with some blurred aspects is not all bad. In fact, I think if done correctly, it is preferred. Freezing the frame is good, but not the entire shot needs to be frozen. IMHO as always.

Birdshit & Fools Productions

"Son, only two things fall from the sky."

[skyjumpenfool 2]

Quote

[
In terms of your aperture, you know that it opens wider the higher your shutter speed, right? The lower speeds let's close down a little, and should widen the DOF.

Kodak.com used to have a great tutorial on the relationship between Shutter Speed, Aperature, and Depth of Field. Check it out if you get a chance.

Birdshit & Fools Productions

"Son, only two things fall from the sky."

[pilotdave 0]

No I don't mind a little blur like that. Just pointing out that even 1/640 isn't enough to stop all that jumpsuit flapping, so I don't see how 1/320 is... unless it's a tight jumpsuit!

But I do think it can get excessive at slow shutter speeds.

Dave