BMFin

the G12 is a nice camera, but since Im drunk, I wanna contribute some more to thish thread. I just want so say that I concur what Videofly said that the G12 doesnt have enough high burst rate for good freefall photography. Some people might tell you that they are such ninjas they can decide when to pull the trigger and that they never spray and pray However the fact is that no one is quick enough to capture the few ecxact moments that stands out from the whole set. Frefall photography is exactly where you need a fast burst rate. This is what all professional sport photographers rely on. They dont need full frame bodies, they need more fps !!

Looks like motion blur caused by camera movement. Normally 1/500 should be fast enough to eliminate motion blur in skydiving, but if your camera is shaking much, this will happen. (make sure your camera mount is secure and not shaking) Also the wider the FOV, the less likely you are going to get motion blur caused by camera movement. Maby try to shoot AV mode, set the camera for a large aperture which is still reasonably sharp. (e.g. 3.5) and set ISO 200. This way you will have higher shutterspeeds on a clear day and much less motion blur. I always shoot either aperture priority or full manual. This is because every lens has an optimal aperture where it performs the best. e.g. Canon 10-22 is sharpest at 5.6. Therefore in everyday use I prefer shooting at 5.6 usually and maby raise the ISO if there isnt much light availeable. A few test shots will give me an idea in which shutter speeds Im going to get. Unless im shooting flash, I try to avoid going below 1/500.

One solution is to dock on the customer go slightly lower and fly sideways for a vertical composition. http://a6.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/260263_10150224618431880_573006879_7170430_2621418_n.jpg Example was taken with 8mm (APS-C body), but it can be done with 10mm also.

At the moment we have made small handles out of rope. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MC5uPbwnank You can see them on the video @ 3:54 The TI usually wants to place his foot at the rear corner of the door to push the tandem out. Therefore I have been placing my other foot in front of the tandem and other inside as you can also see in the video. I tried front floating, but I couldnt figure out how to do it and ended up funneling the exit. The plane has a "wind deflector" (or what ever the real term is) at the door which makes front exits really difficult. I have been thinking of placing a long rope between the 3 connection points on top of the door inside. (see vid @ 3:54)

I believe the biggest problem is to find good wide angle optics for the compact models. The angles you are looking to shoot (toe cam, belly cam) demands a 8mm (for cropped sensor) or 15mm (for full frame) camera.

Does anyone have experience on operating a Cessna caravan that doesnt have a jump kit ? Were leasing a plane that doesnt have steps or handles and nothing that doesnt come off easy can not be installed. We have installed some small but acceptable solutions, but I would be interested to improve our design if someone has delt with the same issue. EDIT: forgot to mention that were operating mostly just tandems + video from this plane.

I have experienced something that felt like turbulence during a relatively fast track dive. I was the lowest backflier on this 4way and i could see the other 3 above me, so turbulence from another tracker wasnt possible. The effect however was very mild, and didnt really affect my speed/flight at all. However it IMO was noticable enough that I also begun wondering this question. Basically i dont see a reason why couldnt you experience turbulence in freefall, since we know turbulence isnt a rare phenominom in aviation. However i think that most likely one would be to experience any turbulence during tracking, because as far as I have understood most trubulence is caused by variance on horizontal windspeeds and not as much by vertical winds.

Yes... "Video not available in your country" I wonder why? Any music along? If yes, the royalty fee grabbing authority is behind this. Anyone knows an alternative source? A good Workaround for this problem is to use a proxy. For example in firefox, install an add on called stealthy and you can then contact youtube via proxy from a country of your choice.

Why is there no info on the scirocco on Skylarks website? Have they taken it out from their selection ?

And you think that would force them to stop?

The gear manufacturer is very unlikely to succeed in any legal remedies for a seizure of someones personal property in another country. Also, lots of tandem gear are bought used, therefore the 2nd hand owner wouldnt even be a participant in such a contract. Im not saying tandem jumping without a mfg rating would be wise, Im just saying that theres not much the mfg can do about it.

Just remember that a removable slider that fails for some reason can cause a hard opening which may kill you. If it werent for that risk, I dont see why every canopy mfg wouldnt offer it as an option.

This one http://www.suunto.com/us/en/products/Outdoor_Sports_Instruments/suunto-core/Suunto-Core-All-Black I have had 3 visos earlier. Two of them were broken by itself. (though L&B has great customer support and they replaced those units) The last one was lost in freefall once the velcro wristband came undone. I then decided not to get a fourth one and decided to go another route. IMO the suunto may not be perfect in freefall, but under canopy i find it excellent. I never use my alti in freefall anyways.

I use Suunto Core. Works great.

Nice commercial, though I was suprised how you chose to shoot the skydiving scene in such a poor light. Tight schedule?

Ouch.. Glad you are alive! Btw. How much for that JVX of yours ?

My experience is that spandex is simply more elastic than cordura. If the PC is folded too thick, the cordura pouch wont expand as easily as the spandex one and therefore it might require more force to extract the PC out from the pouch. From what I have seen, low time jumpers are often indoctrinated to fold their PC in a specific manner. While this manner may be perfect for their student gear, it might be unfit with some other container. This is why I found the theory plausible.

IMO the theory sounds plausible. I can definetly imagine how a tightly packed ball of a PC suddenly erupts from the non elastic Cordura pouch after a hard pull. Obviously this "erupting" kinetic energy could result into a turning motion of the jumper. Surely something needs to be done if the PC packs too tight on the pouch. It is much easier to get your PC stuck on a cordura pouch than on the spandex one. This is why I dont like the cordura pouch. Infact I dont like Wings as a whole.

In a way yes, but they still have the luxury of parking their gear next to a Box and shoot on a stand thru the viewfinder. Very few photos are taken while the photographer is skiing at the same time. Videos though are often shot this way.

True. Actually I have been trying to come up with other genres of sport photography where the photographer himself is taking part in the activity. Are there any others? Some might say scubadiving, but IMO underwater photographers arent really sport photographers. They are nature photographers.

Its interesting how you are requiring more DOF from the body. Almost all pro sport photographers want to stay away from FF because they are obsolete in sport photography in general. However, I admire how you want to walk against the flow here. Many interesting photos are possible..

http://youtu.be/IKzJ7adXz7A here is one with two cameras. CX115 and Go pro HD. Adding some stills to the end of the video makes it even better IMO, but takes a bit more time. Maby next season I will start adding stills to all of the videos too.

The DZ I work for offers two types of video. All tandems include gopro handcam video. If you pay some extra you get handcam + outside video + stills. IMO good go pro handcam footage looks great. One big advantage is the footage you get under canopy. Obviously this is impossible with outside video. On the otherhand the passanger gets more out from the experience when there is a videographer in the air flying in front of him/her. Personally I have seen a lot of bad outside videos. Though handcam also demands some degree of skill, I think it is much harder to screw up completely.

What exactly does this mean ?

1. I did thank the man 2. I never started a fight (or a pissing contest)