pcalandra

Any good lens is going to cost you. Just remember you can have the most megapixels in the world and if you use a shitty lens your pictures are going to look like shit. There is no getting around that, the lens itself is as important if not more so than anything else besides knowledge. For all you "newbies" to photography I highly recomend that you find out what an "F-Stop" and all the other important "basic" terms mean. By the way to answer the question above an F1.8 lens will let more light in than an F3.5 for example, however the wider that apeture is "F number" the less depth of field you will have. I'm lucky, I grew up living and working in a family photography business so this comes easy for me, I understand how foreign it can be, but it really isn't that difficult "technically speaking" to take a good picture, it's the creative ability or having an eye for it that sets the best apart from the average, and that in my opinion really can't be taught! Pat

For what it's worth this is my recommendation. L1365 SCHUMACHER ARTICULATING RING SIGHT BRACKET

If I were you I'd at least take a look at the Canon EF-S10-22mm before I purchased anything. It's a sweet lens that weighs 13.6 oz. Has a 77mm thread on the front allowing the addition of a filter if you want and has "0" barrel distortion in my humble opinion. It's an expensive lens compared to the Sigma 15 (which I've also owned by the way and is a nice lens, but too much distorition for my liking) $650'ish vs. about 469 but personally I think it's worth it. You may want to check some lens reviews out here also http://www.photozone.de/active/news/index.jsp

You might want to check out Bev Suits also, I've had a couple of Tony suits. I Purchased a Bev Suit last year, I prefer the Bev suit personally. http://www.bevsuit.com/photos.html Pat

Save your cash and get the Canon 10-22mm, it's superior to the Sigma 18mm, I used the sigma last year and although it's a good lens, you'll get that "fish-eye" type of distortion around the edges. If you pair it with a Sony HC-42 and a stealth .05 lens at 22mm it will be slightly wider than what your camcorder sees, which suits me just fine! Pat

For what it's worth I work for a company that sells professional AV products from Sony Broadcast on down to the consumer level. I can tell you from experience that Sony in general and especially on the consumer side are not very responsive to requests or suggestions to their products features. They really could care less about our Skydiving business, it's minuscule in the big picture. As mentioned above the consumer products design are driven by Japan, Sony US is simply a separate company that buys product from Sony Japan. We could write letters, send e-mails and request that keep the LANC feature be kept on all models but I doubt that they will change their product plan based on the sale of a few hundred camcorders at best! It's unfortunate that it appears that the Lanc feature is going the way of the external buttons we all miss. I'm hoping that before I need to replace my HC-42 that their will be a viable MPEG-2 camcorder that uses some type of flash memory, lanc or no-lanc, as much as I love my CamEye I could live with the Radio Shack remote emitter/LED combination if I have to

I've picked up on the pointers to memory stick -> CD toys and will look at them. Keep those helpful messages coming. Meanwhile, check out Jumptown's web site: www.jumptown.com and you can download the brochure there, with current pricing. The brochure (and pricing) are being redone for the new season. HW

We are really mixed at Frontier Skydivers, we are a club and don't have a strict "format" policy in place and some ot our video people don't shoot stills either. Last season was my 2nd season shooting digital stills by the way. Our club offers video at 2 different prices, one of VHS and a higher one for DVD. If a customer wants stills we are charging $25.00 more and 100% of that goes to the photographer. If I get a "Paying" stills customer I burn them a CD when I and while I'm editing there video. Unless we are really backed up and short of video people our customers always leave with there finished product. Now, that being said I always jump my still camera and take photos of every student even if they don't pay and offer them to them on ShutterFly. For me I've sold enough to pay for my Pro account and then some each year so far but I'm not making what I thought I would . Heres a link http://www.shutterfly.com/progal/gallery.jsp?gid=768a5498ce7c30afb713 if you care to check it out. I don't bother photoshopping anything prior to uploading, the most I'll do is set the shutterfly crop feature. With each video I give them them an sheet of paper with the link and a very soft sell sales pitch about sendig all their friends & family there to see "their skydive for free" I get tons of hits, but again fewer sales than I would like. This year I'm working on either a business card and/or a way to print one quick 4x6 photo of them with that info on it. I haven't figured that part out yet and of course it means you need a PC I really like the idea of the stand alone burner for 2 reasons, one is no PC required, 2nd save a step or 2 at the DZ and 2nd you can burn a CD for your customer and then keep a running archive for your self at the same time. I saw 2 units I had an interest in: http://www.aleratec.com/diphcocrdifl.html http://www.lexmark.com/uncomplicate/product/home/50/0,7044,204816596_238081727_550954930_en_0_1,00.html What I'm concerned with on that Lexmark product is the single color cartridge and it's cost compared to a photo printer that uses 6 separate cartridges. Sorry for the long response, but hope it helps you!

I don't remember where I picked this up so I can't take credit for it but, "There are old skydivers and there are bold skydivers but there aren't any or many old bold skydivers" Arvel

My personal opinion is you should never be directly under a tandem pair! What would happen if you had a premature opening????????? Nobody ever thinks it can happen to them, but I've seen a lot of shit happen in this sport over 25 years and I don't want to be the one repsonsible for taking 2 others off this earth.........not to mention myself. Safety should always be #1.

Bonehead makes a custom FTP plate 1" wider on each side, ask Linda at Bonehead about it. I just ordered one so I can move my D350, HC-42 & flash on top and get the still off the front, it's around $60.00. I'm pretty sure that will work fine for me. You could also just go to your favorite local metal shop with your stock plate and ask the to make you one of whatever size you ned out of aluminum too or if your really resourceful make our own.

For a cost effective price/performance ratio I chose to purchase and HC-42 last year and am satisifed with it. My only real complaint is the lack of an external microphone input (other than the Sony model that mounts to the hot shoe) I really wanted to add a wireless mic to my system. If money wasn't an issue I'd probably go for the HC-90, I don't think the video quality is noticeably better than the HC-42 but it does have the mic jack. Another camera person at our DZ has the 330 and I really don't think it looks any better in good lighting conditons either.

I don't have any problems with the transitions from belly to sit to back and have been doing that & similar transition including a kind of belly/back/barrel roll for openings, I just can't seem to slow down enough once that drogue is out.

On my few tries this past year I found it almost impossible to stay on level, I kept sinking out. I wish we had a tunnel near by ANd I also refuse to practice on paying customers. I'm sure there must be something fairly simple that I'm missing to enable me to catrch enough air to stay up. Shit I can belly fly with tandems less than 100 lbs to over 240 on my belly! Pat

It does't lool like it's aqucik release, am I missing something? This would be really great if it had a quick release plate too that was secure! Pat

Let me throw my .02 cents worth too! Think about some kind of external CD/DVD burner that will burn a disc directly from your CF card. There are several out there, the advantage to me is then you have an immediate safe archive of your digital photos. Personally I've experienced too many hard drive failures to trust them. At some point your going to have to do it anyway. If your going to do tandems and offer CD's before the customer leaves it's going to b e much faster than transferring the images to your computer, then burning a CD. That item is on my "buy" list prior to our season starting her in the frigid north!

Nice & informative post the way MrHips! I've actually found that autofocus worked pretty well for me in most situations using the standard kit lens a 300 in TV setting, 1/500 of a second, ISO 200 or 400 depending on the light. Pretty much the same with the Sigam 18mm I had. When I use manual focus I find using a rubber band to around the lens to hold my focus setting works well for me. By the way I did the same thing for focal length on the zoom. Even gaffers tape will eventually leave some residue on the lens. As far as the AF/MF switch goes I never had a problem with it, it's hard to move by accident in my opinion, howhever you could tape it, or again add another ruber band. I just received my new 350D today with the Canon 10-22mm USM and I'm anxious to see hwat works best with that combo.

Stay away frpm Best Price Cameras, they are a total scam. I just placed an order with BuyDig.com, they were great to deal with on the phone, the order shipped thet same day, I'll re-post when my order gets here. I've also purchased from Butterfly photo and they were ok to deal with, the only reason I didn't this time was to avoid the NY state taxes.

Let me add my .02 cents worth. I have never used anything but a 1/4" 20 thread bolt with an allen head and I have never had a problem. I keep an allenhead wrench with all my video stuff and I keep a small screwdriver with inerchangeable bits in my jumpsuit pocket along with a spare tongue switch, battery, tape & of course a bolt or two in case I loose one! It literally takes less than 30 seconds to take the camera off and put it back on. Front mounted to the plate on the bonehead it won't move back and forth. I've had a few openings hard enough to rip the helmet off the head (luckily I caught it) yet there wasn't any issue or failure associated with the bolt. It's really a personal choice, I can get to everything I need to except the battery without taking it off. Now having said that I'm thinking about putting my new Digital Rebel XT on top next to my camcorder and I haven't figured out how to get around the idea of a quick release for that setup, but I haven't given up yet! Sorry for the long post Pat Next time I'll use spell check apparently my typing skills suck tonight

Nice job Steverino I like it! Pat

***In Reply To -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you do a search here (you lazy SOB, LOL) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You know me so well I was really refrring to Skydork, but hey if the shoe fits

For what it's worth the Canon 10-22mm USM AF lens seems to be the best way to go. Chuck I had the Sigma 15 and it was nice and sharp but has more distortion than I really liked. My new XT will be purchased with this the 10-22. If you do a search here (you lazy SOB, LOL) you will find an example of some pictures taken with it, they look amazing. The other benefit is being able to match the field of view of your video camera

Either would be fine in my opinion, if you like Nikon buy the Nikon D70, if you prefer Canon buy the Canon. They are both great cameras for the money!

I'd try to keep it all inside your helmet and D box if possible, I'll try to post a pick of what I did later tonight. Pat

1st off I wouldn't recommend a JVC ANYTHING, but beyond that hard drives and opening shock probably won't get along too well for any length of time even if you get past the altitude problems. When FLASH memory get cheap enough and someone makes a high quality MPEG2 camcorder (thats under $1,50.00) that will be the cats ass, but until then I'd stick with the tried and true DV tape format, and preferably stay with Sony. I strayed once and bought a Canon, didn't last for shit! The picture quality and optics were good but it couldn't take the beating that skydiving hands out! Pat