brentfinley

Members
  • Content

    47
  • Joined

  • Last visited

    Never
  • Feedback

    0%

Everything posted by brentfinley

  1. Here's one of me at the Eloy 300 way. Norman Kent took the photo. www.brentfinley.com [email protected]
  2. My wife Mary and I were remembering Paul and the 4 Stack she did with him (her one and only CRW jump) She had 189 jumps and here is her logbook entry: Jump No: 190 Date: 8/5/95 Location: Eloy, AZ Aircraft: Beech 18 Equipment: Eclipse/Triathalon 135 (CRW team issue) Altitude: 10,500 Delay: 2 sec. Dive: 4- way Stack w/Paul, Loron, Ellie "Rode 1/4 Brakes. Paul Pinned me on top. I held front risers, then built the 4 stack w/me on the bottom. Yee ha!! Broke into 2 - 2 stacks. Released and held half brakes. Paul flew up behind me, but I did not grab his nose cell on time. Really enjoyed the jump. Landed in the peas. Next time, grab nylon and hook feet in the lines, climb down and do side by side w/Paul". She never got to do that next jump with Paul... but will forever have the 4 stack award and one of many memories of Paul. I've ridden the plane soooo many times with the CRW team on jump run. I loved the dramatic flair he always gave as he looked back, just before exiting, hair flying in the wind, wild eyed, and put his hand out to someone in the plane and said "Hey... Come Dance With Us!" Blue skies forever, Paul. www.brentfinley.com [email protected]
  3. Copyright is implicit upon creating the work. Litigating for copyright infringement is made easier by having REGISTERED your copyright soon after publishing the work (when it hits the web). It make a difference between suing for lost revenue (license fees you would have charged) or being able to go straight to Statutory damages (up to 150,000 dollars) if the judge feels the infringement was purposeful. Skyride has recently told me that they bought the images on a Royalty Free CD from "harvester Graphics" that is now defunct. They also told me that they will NOT take the images down because it will cost them money to rework their web pages. AND they said they would not compensate me for the images either. Nice guys. www.brentfinley.com [email protected]
  4. This is where you are VERY wrong. They do NOT bring new jumpers to our sport. They divert people looking to skydive FROM legitimate DZs in the state to a fake one. Then they send the buyer to someone that takes their certificate. To bring new jumpers to the sport, they must ADVERTISE! A web site is NOT advertizing, it is a place the consumer FINDS by searching for it. These people have already made a decision to buy a tandem.... These guys are equivalent to someone sitting in the DZ parking lot selling marked up tandem certificates! Thieves.... not only of my photos, but of legitimate DZ's business. www.brentfinley.com [email protected]
  5. This is a tough one... I don't really have too much data on this. I know that Mike Skeffington shattered one in Monterey on a particularly cold day on high altitude jumps. On the other hand, Willy Boekins has had one of my sights in Belgium and probably jumps in some extreme cold there. I just saw him for the AZ challenge and everything seemed fine. The thing with any extreme temperature shock is you want to do it gradually. If you go from a well Heated plane to standing on the step, it could be disatrous. If you go from 80 degrees to -23 over 30 minutes, like I did on the 300 way in Eloy, you will have no issue. On some level, it's still a crap shoot. There could be an invisible flaw that will propagate more quickly under seemingly no temperature shock. I would have to assume that a lack of feedback on sights becoming destroyed would indicate that they hold up rather well, though. (but I cannot make any guarantees, you understand.) Hope I've reassured you somewhat. Thanks, Brent If you sit by the door www.brentfinley.com [email protected]
  6. Does anyone have a phone number for Cary Quattrocci? AKA owner of Skyride.com. He is using over 100+ copies of my photographs online and will NOT return my phone calls. He gave his "home" phone number to Jan Meyer at a USPA DZ owner meeting over 6 months ago. It was her specific request so that he and I could talk about this issue. I want him to Take down my feature photos which I believe he stole right here off of DZ.com as well as my web site. I know he will claim that he bought them from some "company" who farms images off the internet, but the fact is that he is still responsible for copyright infringement, even if he didn't steal them himself. I have left messages at 1800 skyride. I have called his DZ where they claim to not even know WHO Cary Quattrocci is!!!! If anyone has a phone number for him... or know him personally... have him Call me! 602-550-6103 Thanks, Brent Finley www.brentfinley.com [email protected]
  7. You are not allowed to view any tape before dubbing for the judges according to the rules. SO..... if you think you may have missed part of the exit for some reason and have doubts, then you dub from the extreme wide view. The judges will hate the rest of your video because everyone is so small... But... you'll save the bust. www.brentfinley.com [email protected]
  8. Paul You forgot: Gear Up: Do you have a rig on? :) www.brentfinley.com [email protected]
  9. lewmonst, do you still have the hardware I gave you? Brent www.brentfinley.com [email protected]
  10. Sorry it took me so long to reply to this. Blemishes are like dust or defects in ME putting the polarizer on. These are minor. You can't see them when the sight is close to your eye. Other blems are surface pits due to a defective/poor crystal polish, or mishandling after polishing. You can see these if the sun shines in the sight and you see a small glare from them. The load I had when I wrote the post is GONE. New crystals are in better shape so I'll have less severe blems... just my assembly blems... though... I'm getting better. :) Brent www.brentfinley.com [email protected]
  11. Thanks all for the kudos! The Video Editing Seminar was totally fun. I even learned a thing or two! Lewmonst! You're welcome! Next year I want to get a signup sheet for the .com boogie so everyone can get me to come along on their jump if they want. See ya next year! www.brentfinley.com [email protected]
  12. All, I have looked at most of the sites on the list Jan has assembled and these Skyride people have shamelessly STOLEN many of my photographs to spruce up their sites. They are THIEVES who have no morals or scruples about what they are doing. In fact, they have stolen some pictures from the DROPZONE.com gallery. Brent Finley [email protected] www.brentfinley.com [email protected]
  13. Paul is right, The newton cross has no calcite at all. The "interference" acts in the same manner as above, for the concentric sight. That is, at certain angles, the light is interfering with itself and cancelling out. The first order interference is the darkest, closes to the center fringe (or circle if concentric). The further, more rainbow like lines are interference at angles further from the axial "normal" line that is perpendicular to the glass. Theoretically, if you hold the sight still and move your head behind it, the pattern remains "aimed" at the same spot at infinity (or a spot far away). Unfortunately, the property that makes the cross sight work is not very uniform in the film that you make it with, so there can be some "dancing" of the lines as you view the pattern through different portions of the sight, but the CENTER defined by those fringes does remain constant, so there is no effect on the operation of the sight. There is no distortion with a concentric sight because the calcite crystal that causes the proper interference pattern is perfect. Speaking of calcite crystals... I recently got a shipment of crystals for concentric sights and there was a high number of "blems" in there. I have about 8 concentric sights that are of varying degree of "blemished" from $160 to $200 so if you've been wanting a concentric cheap, now is the time to get the factory seconds! Thanks, Brent www.brentfinley.com [email protected]
  14. The articulating bracket used to mount a sight on a freefly helmet comes with Nylon screws. It's meant to come off in an emergency. If you're concerned about this type of scenario, I recommend using that to mount a sight as well as attaching something like a breakable string loop that also secures the articulating bracket to the helmet... this way, if someone kicks your mount and it's NOT an emergency, then you won't lose the sight in freefall. If you really do have something snagged, it will break the string too. Brent www.brentfinley.com [email protected]
  15. Actually, there is one more thing that makes mine more expensive. The time and effort made to laminate the internal pieces together. This makes the sight "brighter" or clearer because you lose 4% to internal reflection between every air gap. L&B has 4 pieces (3 air gaps). Mine has 3 pieces (2 air gaps). Brent www.brentfinley.com [email protected]
  16. $45 gap? Where is there a gap that big? The highest retail on mine is $130. Sunshine factory gap Brent-LB = $3 Pier gap = $13. If you don't like the $115 - 130 retail, buy a blem from me for $100... you'll be happy. You can rotate the optics in mine to suit your style. Brent www.brentfinley.com [email protected]
  17. I once did a two way with Eric Asendorf (of AZ Inertia) while 14 planes (one of them short 2 jumpers) full of 300 way jumpers decended on an aborted 300 way attempt. We had done a go around and were right over the top when people started yelling in the plane. They were repeating the "Abort" that the pilot said, but by the time it got to the door, it sounded like "Get the Fuck out!"... so the door went up and I climbed out with Eric following me and the front floater. The front floater was pulled back in and tried to get Eric to come back. I realized that we were out there alone as I saw the other planes. When I thought... "man this is going to be a long wait..." I noticed we were picking up speed and decending. I realized it was an abort but Eric soon got ripped off by the speed and as soon as he was off the wind blew me off too. So I swooped down to Eric and filmed him geeking me from 20,000 feet. We both have been in the tunnel so when he started cracking 180s, I started mimicking him. It was fun. at about 6000 feet we realised we were 1 mile out and should track to land on the DZ. So Eric and I were the only ones on the Unofficial 7th Attempt at the 300 way. :) Brent www.brentfinley.com [email protected]
  18. I use the 645 manual focus. I have no idea about the autofocus version. I like this camera for freefall. The manual focus version has the switches and batteries in the handle. You'll have to remove the handle and make your own triggers. There are 5 pins inputting to the camer from the handle. 1 pos - always on for the lcd display 2 neg - always on 3 switched pos (or switched neg) to turn on the shutter button function. 4 meter 5 shutter release You can order up the handle circuit board that interfaces to the camera and make your own "pigtail". If you do get this one, email me and I'll send you the spec and perhaps loan you my external battery pack and a pigtail to copy. Brent www.brentfinley.com [email protected]
  19. Here's my take for sighting a sight. First, some conceptual stuff. Like Paul said, imagine you have two lines coming out of your head, one from the sight which coincides with the centered pattern (cross or concentric) and one from the camera lens that coincides with the center of the frame. Now, if you sight in on something close (like 15 feet away), the two lines cross at 15 feet, but nowhere else. You don't want to do this because it's confusing to try to remember: 1 - if the subject is closer than 15 feet, then the true center point is above where my sight points. and by how much? 2 - if the subject is further than 15 feet, then ... below where my sight ... etc. What you want to do is get these two imaginary lines parallel by sighting in on something VERY far away. Now, you have a fixed parallax error to deal with (see http://www.photomag.co.uk/Data/Glossary/Pages/Parallax%20error.htm). That is... you know that these two lines are offset by the distance between your sight and your lens. Let's say your sight is 1 foot below your lens. When you are 2 feet away and want someone's nose in the center of the camera lens, you look 1 foot below their nose. When they are 5 feet away, you look 1 foot below their nose. When they are 10 feet away, you look 1 foot below... you get the idea. When it's a 100 way... who cares... center the formation because 1 foot won't matter. BUT if you center your sight on a point on the wall and you are 5 feet from the wall, AND your sight is 1 foot from your lens... At 10 feet, the sight is 1 foot off. At 20 feet, the sight is 2 feet off. At 50 feet, the sight is 5 feet off. . . . Brent ps - Brad Hood told me that they tried HUD displays on one of the world team events when he worked for Tom Sanders and it was a big hassle and hard to deal with the lack of depth perception. www.brentfinley.com [email protected]
  20. Joe's fine... Where did you read about the crash? www.brentfinley.com [email protected]
  21. What a busy weekend. 11/09/02 Left Sat 9am for Kingman for a "Ripley's Believe it or Not" shoot. We were going to throw the World Largest Rubber band ball from a plane. My friend Joe Jennings got me a 2nd camera gig for the shoot. This ball is about 5 feet in diameter and 2600 pounds. My job was to step off of the tailgate a split second behind Joe. He was going to try to grab the ball on the way out and stay with it for a few seconds. Without a "grip" this thing would immediately be "gone" as its terminal velocity would be close to 400 mph. We left Eloy in a nasty headwind and only made 115 mph ground speed. It made for a slow, boring, loud ride in the skyvan. Lucky I brought earplugs. 10 minutes into the flight, I noticed Wayne Snyder, our rigger, messing around in the back of the plane. He had brought an ice chest for “victory” beers after the impact. He was standing oddly in front of it and then dropped his pants and squatted on it. So much for that ice chest…. I did manage enough time for a digital Picture. Blackmail…you know. Although… he does pack my reserve. They don’t call him Weird Wayne for nothing. But I digress.. We flew between cloud layers into Kingman and got bumped around a bit. It was supposed to be a windy rainy day, but clearing up. The Ripleys folks were set up along side of a group of hangars with the "Ripley's Road Trip RV", a couple of Jeeps, and a big red carpet and camera boom for the cool "sweeping" shots. Big studio lights and all. It was a very cool scene. I stepped off the plane with my camera kit and they were rolling tape. I get plenty of face time in this show which is very nice for a change. The hostess for the show was Kelly Packard, well known for her role as "Summer" on Baywatch. What a cutie pie. She was about 100 lbs and 5'4" with 3 inch heels on. She was very nice and smiled a lot off camera as well as on. They shot segments on and off between rain and wind Saturday, but wound up reshooting all of it starting at 5am Sunday since it cleared up. Poor Kelly. She had on a short sleeve shirt and was freezing between takes. The jump plan was to throw a 55 gallon barrel of water for a test drop to dial in the plane, the spotter, the ground cameras and test the "educated guess" trajectory of what the Ball might do. Bryan Burke from Skydive Arizona is always the ground coordinator for "drops". He's very good at it. He's great. He also has a wonderful (albeit morbid) sense of humor. Someone asked a producer when this would air. The guy said "February". Bryan turned and said "Or tonight on the six o'clock news, depending on how things go." You gotta love him. The helicopter pilot showed up Sunday morning with a beautiful A-Star bird with a million dollar "Gyron" camera system. We were sitting around when the production crew left for the landing area at around noon. The RV, jeeps, Hostess, Rubber band ball maker, etc. Took off and the helicopter spooled up to go get some ground shots of them on the highway. Joe Jennings just got up and walked out to the helicopter while were sitting there and we all wondered what he was doing. He popped his head in and spoke to the pilot for a minute and then unzipped and started peeing next to the helicopter (which was pretty funny). He turned to us (100 yards away) raised his hands and then hopped into the helicopter. We all thought... "that bastard is getting a cool ride on the helicopter... Why didn't I think of that first!" Heck, we weren't doing anything for 2 hours, why not. Now I knew why he took a leak.. they’d be back in an hour or so before the test drop. They took off and headed north after the convoy. At that point, Wayne Snyder, the rigger in charge of restraints for the ball in the plane, was going to town with one of the producers to stock up an ice chest with beer for the post impact festivities. He Promised to buy a new ice chest for the beers. He said he cleaned it Out with clorox, but we just couldn’t bear the thought of ingesting Anything that had come from the ice chest turned port-o-potty. They got to the gate of the airport, turned around and came back. Wayne hopped out of the Suburban and the producer took off again. Wayne walked up to us and said something I'll never forget... "The helicopter just crashed." I heard him perfectly, but looked at him with disbelief and asked "what?" That was all he knew. The producer got a cell phone call that said the helicopter crashed. We had no other details. Within a minute, we heard emergency vehicles driving up the highway near the airport. We looked north and saw no smoke. That was good. Now we speculated. As a skydiver, I'm used to non-trained personnel saying things completely out of proportion when describing an "incident", so I wasn't jumping to any conclusions. A helicopter that loses an engine will "glide" as well as an airplane and set down without incident. Someone might describe that as a crash. Well before I describe what really happened, let me first say that everyone walked away with bumps and bruises. Pilot, Cameraman, and Joe. OK? OK. Here’s what happened… The helicopter crashed. The pilot was following the RV from the side as it went down the highway. Flying sideways at 40mph, 40 feet off the ground. Joe said he saw a glint out of the side of his eye and looked up. He yelled to the pilot "look out". The pilot looked over, started to dive down, and hooked a suspension cable. They immediatly spun around, slammed into the ground, flipped over (which sheared all 3 rotor blades), broke the tail boom off, smashed the Gyron Camera ball off, broke the landing skids off, and broke windows. Two million dollars worth of crashed up junk. They'll probably salvage plenty, but all I can say is "Ouch!" The producers were about to call it off when Bryan Burke said "Why? We just used all our bad luck, and Brent's got all the same equipment as Joe, let's go do this thing while were all here and the money's spent." Bryan is great. Did I mention that before? Meanwhile at the hospital, Joe was pleading with Jack (one of the Ripley’s higher ups) to not cancel the drop. That his crew was solid and what could possibly go wrong. The helicopter crash was unrelated to the operation. He was doing this while pacing around his gurney with an IV plugged into his arm. The staffers looked at him like he was a lunatic. Although Joe's neck x-ray showed nothing and he was ready to jump, the producers wouldn't let him go. They asked me how I felt about doing the shot. I said "let's go." Jason Peters was promoted from Ball pusher to 2nd cameraman and now I was the only one rolling high speed film (16mm) out the door with this baby. The barrel drop went great at 2:45 and we got off the ground at 4:40 for the ball drop. We were supposed to circle twice for a dry run and then the real shot. We circled 6 or 7 times. I was getting concerned that the light would be gone soon and the camera settings I metered on the ground at 4pm would be a little underexposed if we pushed the sunset into the shot. We finally got the ball off at 10 minutes before sunset. Stepping off with a 2600 lb ball rolling at you is not any different than with a car (I've done 4 of them) or a living room set (done that twice), except that when I got off the plane and my forward throw was slowing down in the wind, the ball did not slow down with the wind. We fell at the same rate, but the ball was racing away from me, level with the horizon, at an amazing rate. I got the exit shot I wanted. Jason never hung on, but he got a cool shot too. The ball made an impact crater 4 feet deep in the soft dirt, bounced another 75 feet, and sluffed off about 1 foot of it's diameter that lay in a heap about 10 feet from the remaining ball. The heap was warm... And smelled like burned rubber. What glorious carnage. The ball guy had everyone sign this 1/2 inch wide, large rubber band, that he attached around the entire ball before we loaded it. He did find it in there. It was broken in one spot... Right on Joe Jenning's signature. Very eerie. Bryan burke drove up with the Rental truck for our gear. First thing's first... Where's the Beer? "I got you covered he said" as he reached into the bed and popped open a Pale Ale for me. Next... Why did we circle for so long? Turns out the producer wanted Bryan to drive Kelly and the ball guy out to the impact as soon as it went. They pointed to the red jeep and Bryan said "You're in luck... I can drive a stick...", but when he got in, the keys were missing and they spent 15 minutes looking for the stupid keys. "Believe it, or not" :) We took impact photos with the crew, gathered our stuff and drove back to the airport. We had a nice tailwind on the way back and made 219 mph ground speed back to Eloy... We got in at 9pm. After another 45 minutes on the road, I was back home.... Now I'm back at work... And finally get to shift back into a lower gear for a bit. Oh, yes.. I almost forgot… Here are the pics: http://www.brentfinley.com/images/ripleys/ www.brentfinley.com [email protected]
  22. Surely you mean GAFFERS tape, right? Blue ones. www.brentfinley.com [email protected]
  23. Dude... I must object to that paper circle... :) www.brentfinley.com [email protected]
  24. I use a cam-eye. Love it. ps - I used to manufacture and sell "Brent's Video Light" through Square one, et al. Simple slave sensor switching circuit with remote LED for power and record. They obsoleted my product and it was about time for a change. www.brentfinley.com [email protected]