goobersnuftda

"Best" is subjective. Sure there are cameras that are full sensor, there are also cameras that do not have a built in flash. The built in flash is one feature has made my model of Canon a truly universal camera for me. There are 16 mp cameras, there are also cameras that shoot at 2 shots/sec. On exits and very fast action shots, 5 shots/sec gives you the option to choose the best picture. The world is a compromise. Make a decision on what is best for you.

I really don't understand 2K Composites. They are based in one of the MOST EXPENSIVE countries in the world. Just check out their exchange rate for their currency. A smart business man would do the following. Don't move to some place like China or Bangledish for cheap labor, stay in a 1st world country. Move to USA or CANADA. Bring your helmet molds with you (your international patents stay protected you know) and your helmets can sell at an absolutlely fantastic price or keep the same price and put the extra $$$ into manufacturing for a 2 week turn around and blow away any competition. I'm pretty sure the UK doesn't hold all the worlds supply of plastic resin and dremmel trimming tools. Past history of people in the UK from book publishers to pop music stars (even the Spice girls) left the UK for a more tax friendly country. Even the Beatles were completely hosed in the UK in the end at a 85% tax rate when all was said and done. Suggestion, move to the United States. Tons of fabricating plants just waiting to be occupied, tons of raw materials and by far with stupid UPS, the cheapest shipping on the planet. Oh, and it's the #1 power economy in the world as well. Oh well, I guess that's why my business isn't in skydiving helmet making

I must agree. Shoot your video on the weekends then edit it later at home on a POWERFULL desktop computer. In one day I can shoot 8 tandem videos. I have no time to do editing at the DZ and if I did, the quality would really suck. Taking 30min to do a real quality job is well worth it. Even have a $79 color printer to do the disk labels. BTW, it costs $1.65 to mail out the DVD case in an envelope. Done it many times and know the exact cost. Tuesday always take the dog for a walk and mail out all the videos at the corner mail box. The thrill of watching them watch the DVD isn't that great. It will take the normal tandem student 6 hours to come down from their high anyways. You want the lasting memory of a quality product especially when they show 50 of their friends your DVD. You want an awesome stand alone product not some 3rd rate video edit to show your video talents and try to recruit more tandem jumpers. Send me a PM and I will give you a link to my server and you can see what one of my finished videos looks like. We can discuss your missgotten path of going down the Apple road in a later discussion:)

I was flipping through a magazine and I came across a new tongue switch for Canon Digital SLR's. The beauty is that since Canon basically dominates our sport, they are finally making switches with the Canon plug instead of the stupid 2.5mm ends. CLICKY -=>Silly rant mode ON

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Herc boogies are very few and seem to be getting more scarce. Can anyone add to this list if you know of places in the world that have one. http://www.exoticskyadventures.com/ Galapos Islands this year http://www.herculesboogie.com/ Herc Boogie Sweden (Skipped last year and may skip more as per funding/work for military) http://www.espace-boogie.com/ One time event in France this year http://www.thaiskyfestival.com/ The fabulos boogie in Thailand for 2 weeks. Changing those few numbers from my home DZ of a C-182 to a C-130 is quite the change :) I'm not a lawn dart and I love big RW. There always seems to be awesome loag organizing and the price in those countries cant be beat for a Herc (Thailand, 20 jumps included in package then $26.50 / jump ticket)

Cant help you with the 1994 one but I have one from 2005. I would love to see yours, please post when you get a copy of it. North Pole 2005

I always forget to dig out my manual and on the ride up in the plane it always happens to me. Just what the heck is going on when my PC1000 with my Cam eye II sits in standby mode for too long. Nice blue lite then the Cam Eye starts blinking and flashing red and will not stop until I turn the camera off, then on again. I set my still for 30 min before auto shut off and I have no problem with that. I have even had my camera for normal hand shots outside my helmet and it doesn't care how long it is in standby mode. Quick glance through my manual and I didn't see anything that references this issue. Does anyone know more about whats going on? Thanks.

Yup, thats the one. Thanks muchly.

I searched though my video clip collection and have failed to find a small video clip I had. It is a video of a 4way team doing a complete 4way jump but they were all on their backs. It was done without mistakes and it looked awesome. Does anyone know of where to see this video again?

I'm am trying to solve this problem and I am desperatly trying to track down a technique I saw that might acomplish it. I was watching a computer GEEK photoshop show on TV. The one trick the guy did in CS was open 2 pictures to the work space. One was of an oil painting of a seascape and the other was a completely different scene, a digital picture. He choose a few settings the equivelant to "copy attributes" of the oil painting and applied them to the 2nd picture, the digital photo. The end product was that the digital photo was changed into what looked like the exact (and I mean exact) style of the oil painting as well as all the colors, hues and shading. It was incrediable, right down to the brush strokes. I can not duplicate what he did and not for lack of trying. If you could find an awesome picture with deep blues and vibrant greens for the gound, this same effect could be accomplished with a minimal amount of effort. It was from an older show but I was able to track it down as far as here CLICKY

Can you be more specific on the software Tiffen has. I did a search and could not find the name of the program nor examples of its use except for one from 1996.

I absolutely agree. To completely turn the WFFC around, they really need to CONFIRM and GUARANTEE the Boeing 727 again. That would be the 6 month advertising blitz that would bring people back there again. The inverted biplane and the HALO are good but if the WFFC goes away, they will just move to SKYFEST where everyone will go to next. You have to be different, unique, a draw that makes you want to go there instead of staying in your own state to jump your local turbine at the same price with no regestration fee. I loved the WFFC in 2003 (and spent lots of money there) but it looks like it is not even close today to what it used to look like. The vendors were awesome but as someone who went to trade shows regulary for my own company, $200 was fine but at $1,400 I said enough. We realize there is an advertising budget to get our name out there and pay for travel/accomodation and staff is fine but anything close to $1,000 and that was the last bit of adjetation. Realise, no more venders, no more customers. It is human nature really. Stupid cities still charge lots of money to plug the stupid parking meter downtown and hand out parking tickets. People stay away and park for free in the "big box" stores and yet city officials whine that the down town core is dying. Which makes more business sence and which one is prospering? Figure it out. WFFC should be something special that comes around once a year. People should schedule their holidays around it so "the family" can meet at the reunion. Having a boogie with free beer, twin Otters, Casas and Skyvans doesn't cut it as the Olympic event it should be and used to be. Good luck WFFC. I hope you keep going for many, many years to come as long as you see the problems coming and deal with them before they are on your door step.

I ordered my latest Tony Suit on April 10th. I got it May 11th. Sounds like it is a current issue on being back logged. Have never had an issue with Tony Suits but then again, I usually place my equipment orders in the middle of winter and not the very start of the season :)

Interesting. This is a funny topic that seems to be different depending on who you ask. I really thought that the Sony Store in Calgary would know of these things. Does anyone else have first hand knowledge to back up the 1hr capacity on miniDV tape for a HD camera? I am curious on how a HD camera can record so much more video info and still be the same as the "old" camera records. Doesn't hurt in asking. I'm always learning something new when it comes to video.

I was talking to someone who had just purchased one and he told me that with the huge amount of extra video data that the high definition camera records, it chews up more tape. Same miniDV tape just faster speed in order to store the data. Someone correct me if I'm wrong but from a techo-geek point of view, the physics made sence to me. EDITED: Yup, I just called the SONY store and they told me that the HD cameras go through an INSANE amount of tape. Tech recommended that when you shoot HD, you should have backup HD media to record to and not use the internal tape. I didn't tell him that this would be for skydiving so the general info is what he gave me. The Sony camera in their store that a normal 45 min miniDV tape would only last 5 min on high end HD mode. Everything in the world is a compromise. Choose what works best for you.

If you go the PC-1000 route, pick up a battery charger CLICKY $39 and you can charge your spare battery without having to take your camera out and put it in its stupid docking station. Can still use your camer on jumps this way while the 2nd battery charges.

I agree with you that the HD has higher resolution and a better picture but in a performance/cost ratio, it is waaay out of wack for me. The other thing is that the human mind can be accustom to just about everything. Every time I go over to my parents home and watch thier HDTV with thier image processor to fill the screen, everyones head is a weird shape. After an hour or two you don't notice it true, but it is just a bit wrong compared to how true head/body shape should be when I come home and see how it should be. To each their own.

And thats not be best part. There are millions of HDTV sets sold and out there in homes that do not have a DVI or HDMI input. That means the new HD DVD [blu ray]players won't work on them. They use that format for the copy protection scheme that goes along with the blu ray disks as well as giving you true high defintion pictures (no RCA jacks from DVD player to your HDTV). CNet explanation I see the new HDTV as OK but I'm not peeing in my pants to go buy a Sony HC3 (which has a ferocious 20 min tape life). I set up my partents HD dish and their plasma TVs. Sure it looks good but please, there are too many people suckered into these market schemes. Just like bulls being lead by the ring in their noses to buy HDTV. Ex. Purchase a 3 Ghz processor for $500. Buy a 3.2 Ghz Processor for $1,200. Wooooo, what performance. Yes it is faster but the price for the increase in performance sure is not worth the added expense. I have a 45 inch Sony 1990 rear projection TV. I keep it in tune and clean. It is in awesome shape. The video I shoot on my PC1000, burn to DVD then play on the TV looks absolutely awesome. I would be a fool to get rid of this sytem and pay $5,000 for the upgrade from 3.0 Ghz to 3.2 Ghz. I also have the added bonus of no stupid black bars on the TV screen I watch. Most satellite feed, cable, networks is what is broadcast and I don't want to loose 1/3 of my viewing area because I got suckerd into the widescreen version TV. Every time my wife goes to rent a DVD of a movie she must see, the very last version left on the shelf is always the stupid widescreen/letterbox version which we reluctantly get because all other options are gone and picked over. When it comes to my money, I don't throw it around foolishly. Movie companies are saying they will go one way on formats, make it compatable, maybe not but who really knows. Until the fallout of the nuclear blast settles and I see the single victor left standing on the battlefield, my money stays in skydiving instead of the speculative equipment inventory of blue ray/HDTV.

That doesn't seem to be a great deal B&H Photo Price works out to 725 after the currancy conversion.

Yes Premiere Elements v2.0 is the way to go. If you are starting out in the video editing field, the ADOBE products are #1. If you get good at it, you can graduate up to the "toys the big boys play with" because you are already playing in the same sand box :) No other product has more training videos, books, plug ins, add ons or 3rd party programs. Compeition and a open market is the only way to go. For now, $99 is a small investment for what you want to do. You can stay with the free stuff but as in life, you eventually get what you pay for. PS. Stay away from that Pinnacle 10 piece of crap. Huge piece of dung when they upgraded from previous versions. Buy an eariler version if you must go down the Pinnacle path. WARNING

So thats all the orginized HERC boogies there are in the world? Sweden Thailand Exotic Adventures France (for this year) I thought there might be more.

The ones I know about are: Herc Boogie - Sweden (2007 not 2006) Sky Thai Festeval- Thailand (yearly) Exotic Sky Adventures- Changes yearly (2006 SRI LANKA cancelled)

The European air market is vastly different than the North American one. We are so spoiled here. Going off memory, here we can take a carry on and 2 checked baggage. The carry on easily carries a rig (with pilot chute removed) and the checked luggage can weigh 40 lbs....EACH. I went on a trip a while back to Northern Europe. The airline I flew with didn't care if you brough 86 pieces of luggage just as long as the total weight was not more than 20 KG (that is 44 lbs for it ALL). Those restrictions were waived if you were transfering from a North American carrier onward. European air travel from point to point, and you were slammed with HUGE charges for each KG you were over. The expidtion I was on mandated you had a lot of winter protection gear as well as your normal skydiving stuff. In Norway, I had 1 carry on and 2 checked pieces. I was over in weight and they were going to charge me $145. There was no one in the airport at 3:30 AM and since the continuing flight was only half full, my bedazzling story, whit & Charm as well as my killer good looks, I talked my way out of what the pretty blonde girl was going to charge me :) This will be the way of the future. Airlines are having a difficult time making ends meet. North West is charging an additional $15 if you want to choose the exit or bulkhead seats for the leg room. It is all about the money. Mother in law flew back from Arizona to Canada last month and was overwieght in what she brought back. $25 charge from North West. The last trip I went on, my buddy and I were talking about all the crap PEOPLE THINK THEY ABSOLUTELY NEED to take with them. If they can have intrusive security at the gates, they should have someone going through your luggage taking all the crap out you dont need. I would serisouly like that. Dip shit in seat beside me brough so much crap, it was too heavy for them to even lift it to stow it in the overhead compartment right above my head. On wheels they look great zipping by the ticket agents being all regulation size and all but heavy as bricks. I'm sure that regular holiday travelers do not need half the crap they think they do. *** Married XX type people stop reading here. This is for the XY people only *** This is how to train your wife. The first 2 trips my wife and I went on I packed as usual. Single 3/4 size suit case and a backpack (carry on for camera, sunglasses etc). Wife ran the limit. x2 suit cases scaling in at the atomic weight of lead, carry on @ 23 lbs (no crap, I weighed it) and a huge purse. I being the light nimble one and chivalrous, I helped her through the airports. After the 2nd trip I noticed that nothing was changing so I implimented a new policy. YOU PACK IT, YOU TOTE IT. Sure the 3rd trip was an ornery one but no different than taking the soother away from the 2 year old for the first time. It gets better with time. Low and behold, every trip after that she has packed like a normal person should. The #1 rule in life is MONEY. Never count on the general good of human nature. You could be the dumbest wanker on the face of the planet but if some how you lose money, you become instantly smart. Charge for every pound over a strickly enforced limit and people instantly become as bright as rocket scientists. If you can reduce the cargo weight by 1/3, the airline will not raise ticket prices so soon.

QuoteAnyone know of any really good websites? I have been messing around with my new 20D (