hoym

Members
  • Content

    144
  • Joined

  • Last visited

    Never
  • Feedback

    0%

Everything posted by hoym

  1. On our DZ wall, I've got two 20" x 30" prints hanging up, one above the other. One taken with my film camera and one taken with my Canon 10D. The print taken with the digital camera is soooo much more clear and bright and sharp everyone can notice the difference and better quality of the digital print. Both were developed at the same lab. Now, it is really not a fair comparison as I used consumer grade film and a different lens. But neither was a Canon 'L' series lens. I thought that the images from the 10D were sized at somewhere around 11" x 14" straight out of the camera without any enlargement process and that if you want the print made smaller then you need to downsize it. For upsizing digital images there are heaps of debates and software options/tools for doing this besides the three options available in Photoshop. I've read good things about S-Spline that was mentioned before, and there is also the Genuine Fractals that many people think is very good, and Fred Miranda's Stair Interpolation seems to get some good feed back. For the time being, I've been using Photoshop's bicubic in 10% increments. Seems to do well enough for me for now.
  2. You might also do a search for the Canon 300D. It is the exact same camera as the Digital Rebel and you should be able to find some reviews about it under that name. (I think) it was originally released as the 300D but Canon is marketing it in the US as the digital rebel.
  3. hoym

    IQ test

    We did this test a couple years ago. Then we started making up an addendum to the list of our own. See if you can get any of these. See if you can make up any of your own that will stump everyone else. 2001 A S O 3 S on a T 50 S in the U 100 S in the S 8 P in a G 5280 F in a M 29035 H in F of M E 118 E in the P T 8 M for S to R the E 186,000 M L T per S 1 M O the E 10 E in a D 8 B in a B
  4. I've been experimenting a little bit with this program (scenalyzer) for capturing videos from my camera. It works fair enough. http://scenalyzer.com/
  5. I don't know about recovery time but the continuous shooting mode is configurable for low-speed (3fps). At a burst of 21 frames this will last for 7 seconds. (Maybe you can use this time limit to motivate your students to get off the strut
  6. Another option to consider might be the Canon EOS 1D (not the 1Ds). http://www.usa.canon.com/EOS-1D/features_perf.html 8 frames per second for a burst of 21 frames. It is bigger and heavier than you would want to mount on a helmet but given the application that you are considering, it might be an option worth considering. From their specs page... "High-Speed Image Storage With a generous buffer memory, the EOS-1D can fire up to 21 consecutive frames (at up to 8 fps) in its full-resolution, best-quality JPEG mode. That's at four million pixels per image."
  7. There is a lot of information about cleaning your digital camera CCD in this recent thread on dpreview. http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1019&message=6183907 Regards, -mh.
  8. I had this experience last year (pre-digital days). I took a negative in to have duplicates and enlargements made and the results came back with these big long scratches across the prints. The scratches were not on the original proofs. I took the negatives to a professional lab. They scanned the negative and digitally repaired the damage. The resulting prints came out great. To their credit, the first lab paid for the damage repair and the reprints (5 @ 20x30). The cost for the repair work wasn't that bad. Around $30 to $50 I think but I don't remember exactly. Also, they put the repaired image onto a CD so that I could get additional reprints if needed. Good luck.
  9. I had the same experience just this last weekend. I had never maxed out a 512 card until this last Saturday. With a clear card, the camera says I can store 199 images. I discovered that I had about 215 when I downloaded it and at the time I pulled it from the camera, it said there was capacity for about 30 more. On a related note... be careful of what you ask for. I've been grumbling a bit that I don't get to do enough camera work because I get asked to do mostly tandems. This last weekend my numbers were 8 camera 3 tandem 1 fun jump. I shot over 240 images. Woohoo.
  10. Very cool setup. Okay, I know nothing about flash photography so here's my question. Does the front of the flash need to be exposed to and facing the subject? Is there some sensor on the front of the flash that needs to 'see' how much light there is? Is that needed for the camera / flash to compute correct exposure or anything like that? I wanted to set mine up so that the flash is behind the camera kind of 'looking over the shoulder' of the camera so to speak. I don't know if that makes sense or not but for as much as I know about flash photography, maybe that won't even work. Any ideas?
  11. I expect there is a real photograph name for the sun spots that sometimes appear on some of the pictures that I take. See the attached picture. It would have been a decent exit shot except for the hexagonal shaped sun spots. So... does anyone know... What are they really called? What causes them? How can I avoid getting them? Thanks!
  12. Okay, if you don't mind, could you tell me what autofocus settings you use? 1. One Shot, AI Servo, or AI Focus. (I would guess AI Servo) 2. Which of the 7 selectable autofocus points do you use? (I'd guess all seven.) 3. Does your remote shutter release that you built have a two part switch that makes use of the stereo jack for activating the autofocus independant of the shutter release? Or did you wire both together when you built your switch? I think this is how the switch from Canon worked before I hacked it apart. Half a push to activate the Autofocus and push the rest of the way to release the shutter. I hard wired them together when I built my remote switch. I guess I just haven't tried it on the ground yet to see what it does when the lens is set to autofocus. I've been meaning to try it but just haven't taken the time yet.
  13. hoym

    name that plane

    Very good RiggerRob. I also saw an Angel 1 in person but I haven't been able to find a picture of it.
  14. Ebay is always an option. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2952580753&category=20333
  15. The 20mm is a fixed focal length lens (no zoom). The USM is a Canon thing that stands for Ultra Sonic Motor. It's supposed to mean that the lens will autofocus quickly and quietly. I haven't experimented with autofocus in freefall photography yet. This is a link to Canon's site for lens information. http://www.usa.canon.com/eflenses/lineup/wideangle/index.html Deuce, GREAT exit shot of the skyvan. Just a thought... there are all these photographers here, I think they should all post more pics.
  16. Diablo 135 @ 1.4 (primary rig) Triathlon 160 @ 1.2 (second rig for doing back to back when needed)
  17. Thanks. Canon 10D, Canon 20mm USM lens. I'm still not sure what size / resolution to save these pics prior to posting in order for them to look as good as possible here. I think we are limited to an image size of 60k. Is that correct? Any advice out there? How do you all save your jpegs prior to upload? I've been using 72 dpi for the resolution and then photoshop prompts for a quality of 1 to 12 or something like that. I usually pick between 4 and 6 in order to get the image below the 60k size. Any advice is appreciated. -mh.
  18. As far as I know, Cliff (the tandem instructor in these pics) and I are the only TI's at our DZ who actually coach the passengers to stay fetal during the front loop. Most TI's that I've observed don't do this. I've taught this technique recently to some new TI's that were working on their phase II. The way I do it... I'll usually tell the passenger that we are going to do one front loop. "Ready, set go", Front loop then at the top/end of the loop, yell "Arch" in their ear, and two taps on their shoulders to signal to them to come out of the front flip position and go into the arch. They have been coached to expect this from me and I've coached them on how I want them to stay fetal and then respond with a good arch when I give them the signal. If they want want more than one front flip, I'll yell a count at the top of each rotation ("One"... "Two"... "Three"... "Arch") and then two taps on their shoulder to come out of the front flip and into an arch. It really works quite well.
  19. hoym

    name that plane

    Here is one that I actually got to go for a ride in. See if you can guess what it is...
  20. The IS lens is really useful in low light situations. The directions that come with the lens are quite specific for describing the situation where it is useful. I'll try to find the guide that came from the lens and edit this post tomorrow but from memory it says something like... to be used in low light, low shutter speed, stationary subject, hand held/no tripod. I haven't experimented much with it yet. I've attached one picture that shows one example where the IS was helpful. It's a picture of my son. This shot was hand held, at 1/15 of a second, at night, with no flash. I've done no post processing to it other than to make it small enough to upload here. 2003:07:25 09:47:46 41.0mm 1/15 sec, f/4.0 Metering: Partial Exp comp: +1/3 ISO: 3200 Flash: Off File size: 8,471KB Image size: 3000 x 4500 Color profile: IEC 61966-2.1 Default RGB colour space - sRGB
  21. Your list includes almost every thing that I bought this spring when the 10D came out and I switched from film to digital. Some other things that I bought as well. The one thing that I don't see on your list that I really like is a flash card reader. They are not too expensive. I think I paid around $20 for mine. It's a Dazzle brand but I think any brand would work fine. I bought two 512 flash cards. I'd pay more attention to the speed of the flash card if I had it to do over again. There are 45x cards available now. I wouldn't get smaller than 512 and if I had it to do over again, I might even go for two of the 1 gig cards. I can store almost 200 high res jpegs on a 512 card. I'd like to shoot in RAW but the transfer of that much data to the card makes it too slow so for freefall I don't shoot in RAW format. I bought a second RS-80NS cable as a backup in case the first one breaks. (Ask Deuce) I bought the 28-135 Canon IS USM lens. I wish I had bought a longer one though for ground stuff. Maybe at least a 200. I bought a new computer to go along with this. 2.6ghz, 1.5gig RAM, 80GB HD and then added a second 80GB HD. I bought an 18inch flat screen LCD monitor to go with it but I don't think the LCD screens are quite there yet. I bought an OptiCAL Spyder to calibrate the monitor and I've had a hard time getting it to calibrate as exactly as I think it should. I think the CRT type of monitors will still calibrate more accurately. My older CRT is easier to calibrate and I think it is more accurate. I am very much NOT an expert in this but have learned a lot this year. Also bought Photoshop 7.0 but again, for the entry level that I am at, I think that the Photoshop Elements that came with the 10D would have worked fine. So I don't think I'd buy that (at least for now) if I had it to do again. From BreezeSystems, I bought both their Downloader Pro and BreezeBrowser software. http://www.breezesys.com/ I learned about these from spending a lot of time in the very early spring reading on www.dpreview.com. There is a lot of good digital camera information there. There is a ton of software out there and I've downloaded some of the trial version but I haven't had time to try it out yet. Another thing that I'm planning to buy is a book or two on Photoshop for photographers. Oh yeah, I also bought a new Bonehead FTPro and top mounted the 10D. It was too much camera for my old helmet. Another thing I did was just keep telling my wife, "It's okay, it will pay for itself. It'll make money, really. It's an investment. You have to spend money to make money right?" yada, yada, yada... Good luck. You will fall in love with the camera.
  22. Here is a site with more Porter Pictures. http://mypage.bluewin.ch/aviationworld/pc6/gallery/1porterg.htm
  23. I just thought the shot was interesting because you don't often see a freeflyer face to face (kind-of) with a tandem passenger. I never really gave any thought to the de-arch of the student in this shot because I got to see the entire sequence of photos and the video. They are just at the end of a coordinated front loop exit and both instructor and student come out of the front loop and both go into an arch. Some students manage this type of exit better than others but most do pretty good with the coaching that we give them. Since you both noticed that right away, I've posted the entire exit series. Edited to add: I don't know why the pictures are not listed in the order that I uploaded the attachment. Follow the number of the image to see them in order.
  24. The one that had been for sale is sold and gone. The replacement is a newer H2B4.