MrHips

Hi bofh. I received your PM but your dropzone.com account doesn't allow me to PM you. Turn that function on or send me your email address and I will send you the details.

Hey mate I've had 3 Neos canopies and had the hard openings on two of them. Sent the first back and got a second that was great but wrong size then the 3rd started with the hard openings from the 4th jump. I got sick of trying to get Icarus Service to take the canopy back for testing again so I started trying to analyze the problem myself. PM me if you want the details of what I did to mine. Had the openings they advertise from the Neos since I made the change.

Does anyone know if you need to have the screen open (or flipped out and folded back in) to be able to record like the Panasonic sd9?

I have set up my 400d using the L plate and the B2 LLR II. I used a right angle 2.5mm stereo jack I bought here (sorry couldn't work out the clicky thing - http://jaycar.com.au/productView.asp?ID=PP0104&CATID=&keywords=2%2E5+angle+plug&SPECIAL=&form=KEYWORD&ProdCodeOnly=&Keyword1=&Keyword2=&pageNumber=&priceMin=&priceMax=&SUBCATID= I have no trouble at all in putting the camera in either orientation. I can post pics if anyone wants to see them. Cameron[url]

Thanks heaps to all that have replied. If it's possible while someone's packing one could they get a quick pic of it in the bag before closing the container. I think that will answer my question. I would be very greatful for that. Cheers all.

I am in a bit of a hurry to find out if this will fit. Still waiting on answer from Sunpath so maybe someone can tell me from their experiences. Does a PD Spectre 150 fit into a Javelin Odyssey TJNK ? By that I mean a practical fit, not real tight long closing loop kinda fit if you know what I mean. I have a Neos 119 in it now that is a little on the small/lose side but I want a Spectre for wingsuit jumps and no one has stock of 135 Spectres only 150's. Thanks to anyone that can help out.

I'll be in town (Oslo) before the start of the season. Maybe we can catch up for a beer in town. Good to hear your doing well HC. I'm looking forward to many more canopy flights this year, hopefully plenty of them with you as well. Cameron

I be one of the (Grazy?) Aussies. Lucky you were nice Mathias! Here's a short clip with some more canopy flying in the mountains. Some of the same guys appear in this one too. Including the nice guy himself. Enjoy! Cameron. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2Iplxo13Xo

I have done a handful of jumps on my new Neos 119, and I have to say I love it. I also have a VX 94 that I have jumped for the last 2 years and if only for the openings I will probably take the rig with the Neos in it nearly every time from now on. I load the VX 94 at 2.6 and the Neos at 2.1 so the wing loading accounts for most of the speed difference. The Neos is trimmed steeper than the standard VX trim so the Neos is much easier to keep diving, I have found so far. The openings as most that have jumped it have commented are on heading, soft and predictable. Harness movement during opening seems to have less effect than with a VX. The slider is quite large, probably partly responsible for the softness. Packing bulk is good. I would guess my Neos 119 (the largest size) packs about the same as a VX 104. Well done to the designers. I think they have created a fantastic canopy.

With the standard lens try stick with a maximum of 320 as your shutter speed (using TV - Time Value). Going for a faster shutter speed than this will force your camera to use a larger apperture (F Stop value - the hole that lets the light through). If your using the stock lens this will only be about F3.5 at the wide end - 18mm. This has many negative consequences for what we use these camera's for. Firstly a larger apperture will shorten the depth of field. That will make things not within the focal plane out of focus, such as the background. Most lenses have a sweet F Stop range that quickly deteriorates the closer you go to the widest apperture. Also if things get a little darker, perhaps a shadow on the subject by a cloud or whatever, the lense will not be able to open the Apperture up enough to let enough light in, and your subject will be underexposed. Sometimes you can salvage this if you shoot using RAW format during RAW conversion on you computer, BUT a better alternative is to use a higher ISO. With these Canon Digital camera's up to ISO 400 will yield very little noticeable difference, unless you are enlarging over A2 size (thats 594mm x 420mm). An ISO above 400 will start to produce 'noise' (that grainy appearance) into your image. A shutter speed below 320 might start to blur the flutter of jumpsuits, hair etc. Which sometimes you might also want. However if you can stay above 250 your images will remain sharper. 250 was an option (if you used Film and TV Priority) when you were in the plane on the way to height with a ISO 100 film loaded and things got a little too dark near sunset or whatever, but these days with Digital you have much more versatility by being able to change ISO in the plane. My advice would be to shoot using ISO 100, TV Priority, 320m/s shutter speed, RAW format, which allows you alot of flexibility AFTER you have shot the images using. OR use 320m/s, TV priority, also using ISO 100 for clear bright sunny days but dont be affraid to go up to ISO 400 to keep your lens in the F Stop sweet spot, which is probably around F9 for the standard lens. The only reason I have wanted to used a shutter speed of around 500m/s or higher is the 'freeze' the moving blades of a helictopter or some planes Props. By the way I have had good experience using the 'Partial Metering' for exposure control. I hope this helps.

The link was for the L mount Camera Bracket - http://www.reallyrightstuff.com/tutorials/L_plates/index.html You can use the bracket on one of their (really right stuff) Mounting Plates or any Arca-Swiss style mounting plate. The Arca-Swiss mount is a 'standard' design for camera mounts used on tripods and flash brackets. Here are some Arca-Swiss mounts Really Right Stuff have - http://www.reallyrightstuff.com/clamps/index.html[url] Check out the Lever Release Clamps. They have 50lb of clamping pressure! Or if you are paranoid use the Screw-Knob Clamp

I met a guy last year who used this great mount and bracket system from a company called really right stuff. Here is the link for the canon 350 mount and bracket http://www.reallyrightstuff.com/body_plates/canon/index.html The really neat thing about this system is that you can mount the camera in the portait or landscape orientation with no modification. Also the bracket protects the remote switch plug. They also have conventional mounts like the Bonehead or Stroboframe (which I use, and swear by) that have built in Anti-Twist locating lugs.

Dont bother trying Autofocus. Single element lens's have a focal plane so defined it will hunt almost continually. Use the focus on many subjects in a well lit environment method. That will work fine. Even better find something about the physical length away that your subject would normally be in freefall (something with lots of detail like a brick column or a tree with textured bark) and then make sure you have something behind that a long distance away, something with lots of edge detail like trees or buildings. If your camera is one of the newer Sony's you can use the Manual Focus Touch Screen in the menu to then automatically focus on the closer subject but also take into account the background items also. Once you have done this. Tape the focus ring in place. By the way you should make sure the exposure is set to 'Auto' before doing this. Then you can change back to sports, or beach & Ski or whatever you might normally use.

hey murrays we have been using using iMovie HD 6 here for a week now, and have had to go back to iMovie 5 for two reasons. Firstly the 'Share' feature for exporting a project back to the camera is unuseable. The application shuts down on one guys PB15 and on my IB14 the footage keeps freezing like every 50th frame stalls for a half a second. BUT the real show stopper is when you have adjusted an Audio Files Sound level, eg faded out a track and then started another track, you get 1 second of that last track played at full level in between the tracks. Not good enough to give to our customers unfortunately. So we have gone back to iMovie 5 and stuck with iDVD 6 which we havent faulted YET! Let me know if your experiences are different. Most of the guys I work with use Apple's for the DVD's which we do everyday and they have all had this same problem. Cheers

Hi there AirCanada A couple things you might want to mention before the experts give you their opinions. Firstly, what is the lens you are using? If you are using the standard 18 - 55mm the AF motor is very slow and isn't really useable. However using a lens from Canon with a Ring USM Motor will certainly be fast enough. Assuming you use the 'Servo Mode' for focusing. Generally the shorter the focal length of the lens (EG 15mm as opposed to 50mm) the greater the depth of field. So the focus motor doesn't usually have to move much anyway. You can have a look at the scale on the top of the lens you have to get a rough idea of it's depth of field without having to do a complex calculation to work out the Hyperfocal Length for your lens. Have a look at the Infinity symbol and then look at the number closest to it. It might have a 1 next to it. Thats means that when you set the manual focus to this 1 mark, everything from 1m (or foot depending on the scale you look at) to infinity should be in focus (I mostly use a Canon 10-22mm USM lens for freefall work and this is the figure from it's scale). In reality that method of manual focus setting isnt always perfect but in most cases it works. This will also explain that an AF Motor will only have to fine tune the focus within this range also, again with wide angle lens's only a short movement is req'd and performed quickly with a Canon ring USM lens (or Sigma HSM lens) Secondly if you want to make sure that multiple subjects are in focus (as one person mentioned exit shots) make sure your focus points are set appropriately. Thats the little red dots in the viewfinder that light up before you take the shot. There is no point in having the centre focus point selected as the only focus point if you are framing a diving plane in the right corner and the tandem in the bottom left corner or centred for that matter. Because you are forcing the camera to focus on one point (or focal plane) or another. Hope thats makes sense. I get a 1/100 out of focus failure rate. Considering with these camera's it is easily possible to take over one hundred frames from 14'000ft I dont think your going to have a problem missing too much!