CTSkydiver

I've just been inserting simple transitions between scenes as shot in camera and bracketing the footage with fades from / to short clips of professional looking pre-rendered logos and contact info. Using a fast laptop with lots of memory and a high-end gaming graphics card; its a simple drag & drop to a pre-set template taking less than 30 seconds of editor time, and maybe 2 minutes of PC time to render an (up-to) 8 minute 1080p/30 .mp4. The slowest part of the entire process is copying the video and stills to the USB stick (when using slower, but cheaper USB 2 sticks). I gotten so I can dump the data from the memory cards, archive it on my laptop, clean the cards (prepare them for the next jump by moving the data to an archive folder on the cards), edit the video, archive the rendered video, and dump the photos and rendered video to the customer USB in under ten minutes — which as a TI, is usually good enough to still make a 20 minute turn-around. Anything shorter than 15 or 20 (such as back-to-backs) I'll either need to use an editor or upload the footage to the internets at the end of the day. For handcam video, I don't bother with music, for five reasons: (1) Handcam is always close enough to capture people's screams in freefall, and, of course, their voices under canopy. (2) People rather here their own voices and TI than music tracks someone else picks for them which probably don't match their tastes in music. (3) Use of copyrighted music makes posting videos to social media needlessly difficult or impossible. (4) It takes too long to mix the audio levels. (5) No one misses it. Ever. I started doing handcam in a place that doesn't edit AT ALL. They just give the customers the raw footage -- and don't even combine the 6 or so shots (a brief intro interview, the takeoff, a brief half-way up interview, the skydive, some of the canopy ride, and a brief post-landing interview) into a single file. It worked. No one complained about that, either. Personally, I feel it looks waaay better to take the time to combine the clips and add some nice DZ logos and such. But even that is beyond what most people want these days. I started doing outside video in the mid-nineties. I still find it hard to accept that people no longer have the patience for "fluff". I LOVED telling a complete story with all the fluff I shot. But all people want to see today is their silly faces in freefall and some cool canopy shots. Sad, but true. We live in a media saturated time where everyone has exceptionally short attention spans, and it's simply a selfie-addicted generation that wants something short and sweet to post on social media.

I've yet to put mine to good use, unfortunately, but I can attest that the customer service from SkySwitches is second to none. Great guy to work with. Don't expect any issues with my switches when I finally assemble my new cameras.

Got a copy of that small print?

Seems rather odd and unnecessary. I've done many hundreds of tandems from 182s (also King Airs, DC-3s, Porters, and Twin Otters with and without benches) and I've never seen an instructor do this. I would want to know why they felt that was required, and school them on other ways of dealing with whatever their issue is. Clearly it is not showing proper respect to their passenger/customer. As for 182's, I've only ever had and witnessed students ride on the floor between the legs of their instructor with lower laterals connected until time to hook up. With just three jumpers in a 182, often the student can sit back against the rear cabin wall, facing forward. With two tandems onboard, the first instructor (sitting by the door) may hook up either sitting or kneeling — the student respectively doing the same. Behind the pilot, I usually hook up seated for lack of headroom (I'm 6'2", 200lbs). It is on occasion necessary for me to have a student either sit on my lap or raise themselves up by pushing off my knees with their hands at hook-up time in order to properly tighten the lower laterals, but this option is only used when needed. Examples being, (a) when there are three tandems in a Porter and you are the one stuck on the back bench, (b) a student is rather heavy set with the student harness hip junctions placed wide and you don't have good leverage to tighten the laterals with them between your legs, and (c) when I have a rather petite student who's hips are much lower than mine when seated and I need to straighten the laterals out to remove the kinks in order to properly tighten them. As soon as the laterals are tightened, and belly-band comfortably adjusted, however, I have the student drop back between my legs and sit back on the floor (or sit in their leg straps hanging from my harness if they don't quite reach the floor.) Tandem harnesses are awkward enough; no need to make it even more awkward. If this specific TI is doing this for reasons not related to safety ... is he cold, and using his students as a warm blanket? ... it certainly CAN be downright creepy. If he is doing this because he likes abusing his students/customers vulnerability and getting off on his position of power and their easy compliance to his instructions ... or just getting off sexually ... well, ick.

Rotated. Because, OCD.

Record attempt of some sort. Shots I took at the Smithsonian:

Figures, as I just bought an FDR-X1000V.

I've been jumping a Comp Velo 103 @ 2.3 with the PD RDS Slider, almost always to terminal, with lots of cameras, and with no issues to date. I pack neatly. That might help. Or the larger size Velo might make the difference (though I'm not sure why, as the one-size-fits-all PD slider is proportionally smaller on the larger canopies). Knowing PD recommends against it, I started with hop & pops and moved on to progressively longer delays till I established that I had no issues going to full terminal with the arrangement.

Jesus. I thought you were joking. From their website: Wow. They claim they use USPA rated instructors, but if they DON'T teach this stuff to all students, and for the sole reason that the student didn't pay enough; I'm not sure those guys are fulfilling the duty of their ratings. Tandem skydiving can be commercialized, for sure — and one look at their prices made my head spin at how aggressively they think they can do that ... ... but this is about one step removed from charging extra for seatbelts (and refusing to buckle them for the cheapskates) or RSLs. One wonders if this dropzone even provides goggles, or do they only sell them?

Is this a typo? Hopefully not many skydivers will still be in freefall at 1200 feet. If you have a four digit display, would it not make sense to show altitude to four digits, in thousands of feet increments? 13,500 ft (typical turbine exit altitude) could be represented as 13.50; 12,150 ft as 12.15; 8760 ft as 8.760 .... No, actually I guess three digits is more than enough for freefall. 13.5, 12.2, 8.76 Three digits are all you need for canopy flight, too -- since you only resolve to 10 ft increments, the fourth digit will always be zero, no?

What TK said. Damn.

Use some dense adhesive foam and gaffer's tape to build protective walls around the camera's ports to protect them and the cables from bumps and wind. That's what I've done with my old cameras, anyway. Expect to do the same with my new ones.

airtec press release: I'm also very curious what these might be; and if pre-2016 models get the same mysterious upgrades at their next factory service check — thereby allowing owners of pre-2016 models doing four-year checks to choose to skip their eight-year check? Given the scant information provided to date, and their rather suspect reasons for justifying the change, I imagine I'm not alone in concluding the only thing to really change at airtec this year was management's eagerness to slow the erosion of their market share to competition which doesn't require scheduled maintenance. It'd have been great to hear them say they've decided to make 4 and 8 year tests optional because they've concluded that __% (say, >99%) of all units returned for four-year tests and __ % (say, >98.5%) of all units returned for eight-year tests passed all of airtec's qualifications on the first try, and required no factory maintenance at all to remain airworthy... But then they'd have to admit how long they've been seeing such results, and people might be upset they didn't make this decision sooner. On the other hand, if they DON'T see such high levels of success with returned units, how can they possibly justify no longer requiring factory service? Which leads to other questions .... what percentage of units returned are actually failing their tests? Does this mean they might not have worked as designed, if needed? Is this something we (as cypres owners and users) should be concerned about? Have to admit, I'm on the fence. I'll be needing a new AAD next year, as my current cypres II is close to its EOL. (I also hope to purchase a complete 2nd rig this fall, so I might actually be needing two.) If I buy a new cypres, will I send the new one back for maintenance if it isn't required? Probably not! But ... will I even consider buying a new cypres without further explanation of why they've dropped the requirement? Definitely not. Either they've discovered that the regular maintenance wasn't necessary — meaning, they've found ZERO faults at the factory effecting a unit's ability to function as designed that weren't first detected by the unit's own start-up self test; or they've indeed made significant hardware and/or software changes they probably should disclose; or they've just cynically concluded the risk of liability incurred from no longer requiring maintenance they still believe to be technically necessary is outweighed by the continued erosion of their market share to competition which doesn't require scheduled factory maintenance. :-\

Small cameras are cool, for sure ... I went with a dual GoPro Hero 4 Session Pivot Pad glove ... but be advised the smaller the cameras, and closer they are to your hand, the more your arm will show up in your shot. I modified my glove to raise the cameras about four inches above my hand, which made a huge difference in the quality of the shots. I personally prefer that option to using bigger cameras (regular Hero models) in a stacked setup, since one camera is still close to your arm that way. Be advised, I only did a few months of handcam work (about 250 jumps) so I'm no seasoned veteran at this. https://flic.kr/p/GsKq9j

I recently bought the A6300; but I could have gotten almost two A6000's for the same price. The A5100 does have easier access to the memory card; but like mentioned, no hot shoe for external flash or microphone, and other performance features lack a bit compared to the A6000. As for the upgrades between the A6000 and A6300 justifying the incredibly significant price difference; there may not be enough, depending on what you want to do with it. The most significant upgrade I think is probably the all-metal body of the A6300 compared to the plastic of the A6000. Am hoping that means it should take a bit more abuse. The video upgrades are significant (adding 4K at 30p and 100mbps) and perhaps worth the price if you intend to use it as a video shooter often, but it's yet to be seen how much video I'll ever wind up shooting with the thing (since I also bought a AX-53 Handycam). It's got an an improved sensor, improved image stabilization, and an even crazier-faster autofocus system that more than keeps up with its exceptionally fast burst rate of 11 frames per second. Finally, the bigger pixels on the new sensor are supposedly good for about 1-stop better performance in low-light. Nothing to compare to the A7IIS (which does an amazing job in just moonlight), but hopefully I'll see some really nice results on sunset loads.

A ND filter forces the camera to use a slower shutter speed since less light is being allowed into the lens. I'll let someone else explain why a slower shutter speed reduces the jelly-cam effect. I'm still a bit fuzzy on that.

This seems almost obligatory:

Those are all good questions I can't answer yet, as I haven't purchased (or jumped) the cameras yet. I'd love to know the answers, too! According to published specs, the AX-53 has a 35mm equivalent field of view of 26.8 mm in 16:9 4K mode (at widest zoom setting). The 16mm pancake when used with an APC sized sensor like the A6300 has a 35mm equivalent field of view of 24 mm. Seems a good enough fit for me.

Will do. Thanks.

Thank you.

Anyone have quick-release recommendations for these two cameras? Thanks!

Looking to spend some of my winter earnings on (what for me will be) a couple of significant camera upgrades. Understand these cameras are just now coming to market but looking for any info from others who have used the preceding Sony models to which these are upgrades; specifically with regard to remote tongue switch adapters (I have Conceptus tongue switch currently for Canon) for the mirrorless and HypeEye/CamEye compatibility/limitations/workarounds for the Handycam. All comments / suggestions appreciated. Thanks!

Brief update: (Now 149 tandems into brief handcam career. Haven't yet updated any of the sample pictures at the link above, though.) For all its potential drawbacks, one thing the Hero 4 Session clearly has going for it is amazing battery life relative to the bigger Hero 3+B and 4B. Noticed yesterday after 17 jumps in two days, my Hero 4 set up for stills (~85/jump) still had a nearly full battery charge; and the one used for video just down-ticked to indicating half-full at the end of the 2nd day. Can see no foreseeable case where I can possibly jump enough in a single day to worry about running out of juice. They recharge very quickly, too, using (in my case) USB from a couple 10W Apple iPad charging bricks. Fwiw.

Spot Assist (http://www.spotassist.com/) is a cool phone app with useful features (for some).

No problem. Added some more photos to the flickr gallery (showing the parts I used to build the extension, and a subsequent modification I made to add a Viso altimeter in the extra space now available under the cameras). Still early in my handcam career, but am very much liking the results do date. The higher position of the cameras, plus aiming the cameras further forward (counter-clockwise) and flying with more bend in my elbow, is doing wonders compared to the results of my first few jumps. https://flic.kr/s/aHskq67AtH