pilotdave

Can you post a picture or two cropped to 100%? I'm hoping my new flat top camera helmet and new super-stiff really right stuff mount will help, but I can't consistently get good pictures at such low shutter speeds. I don't do a lot of tandems where the subject is right in your face though, so that might be a difference. I'm just curious to see some pictures shot at 1/320 or 1/250 (zoomed in) to see if I just suck or if maybe we just have different ideas of what is acceptable "shake" blur. I'd prefer to see RW pictures than tandem pictures if you happen to have any. I typically use 1/500 to 1/800, shutter priority. If autofocus is playing nice, I don't care much about depth of field. I'd rather get some nice blurry background but that doesn't work too well with wide lenses. I try not to have my aperture wide open because the lenses aren't as sharp at their max apertures. I've gone down to 1/250 for night jumps with flash... and 1/40 on a sunset load once by accident (sport mode gone bad). But I tend to need a bit more shutter speed than that to get really crisp pictures. Dave

Way too narrow for handcam though, which is his intended use. Dave

Not me. I mean it may very well be intentional. But we also know that under a snivelling main, a cypres will tend to fire high. If the activation speed is just 29 mph with an activation altitude of 750', it would likely fire at ~1000 feet if the jumper was doing say 50 mph. So I'm just suggesting that it's possible that the cypres logic doesn't really have split activation altitudes... maybe it would work the same with an activation altitude of 750' and 29 mph. I don't know that airtec ever shares their actual activation logic, so I don't know if it can be confirmed one way or the other. But you could just as easily say that an expert cypres has split firing altitudes. It'll fire at ~1000 feet if the jumper is under a sniveling canopy at greater than 78 mph, or at 750' if in freefall. The fact that they use two different activation speeds for the student cypres may be meaningless... it fires above 29 mph. If I understand it correctly, there's no need to reach 78 mph to fire at 750 feet. If you are going through 750 feet at 31 mph, it'll fire, right? I wonder if the split activation altitude is more of a warning in the manual that the student cypres can fire high, under a malfunctioning main or a spiralling student. Dave

I'm not sure, but my guess is that a big part of the reason why the low speed activation altitude is higher is the same reason an expert cypres can fire as high as 1200 feet. In the case of a low speed malfunction, the burble behind the jumper is gone. The cypres will fire at a higher altitude when a jumper is upright rather than belly-to-earth. The chances are pretty good that if a jumper is descending somewhere between 29 and 78 mph, they are probably not in a belly-to-earth body position. So the cypres will fire at a higher altitude. So I wonder if the student cypres is really designed with dual activation altitudes, or if a 29 mph activation speed simply fires higher because the altitude calculation is calibrated for belly-to-earth freefall. Dave

Nope. Dave

Unfortunately my ultimate switch arrived non-functional. I plugged in the wires, plugged it into the camera, and nothing. I tried turning the adjustment screw... nothing. Then one of the tiny wires pulled out of the tubing. See attached photo. I don't know if that wire ever had a good connection. The red wire was always showing... I assume it was broken from the beginning. I was not pulling on it when it came out. Will I have to send the wire back to get a replacement? I hope the problem is with the wire and not with the switch itself. I assume I could test the switch with a multimeter? Thanks, Dave

No offense intended... it took me 5 years to reach 100 jumps... but I have a feeling your definition of "good and current" may be different than mine. Nobody jumping sporadically should be complicating their skydives with extra stuff like cameras or wingsuits, etc. I know there's no stopping someone that's done it before with far less than the recommended jump numbers or currency, but I'd advise you that making 20 or 30 jumps after a long break is not "current enough." Again, I understand you've done it already and haven't been bit yet. That's what pushes people to keep doing things against the recommendations of others. But it doesn't make those recommendations wrong. Add the camera when you're making a couple hundred jumps per year and can meet USPA's recommendations for camera flying from the SIM. On the original topic, I did a recurrency jump with a guy with ~100 jumps who was out of the sport for 14 years. He had a little video camera ready to jump within a week. I recommended against it. Unfortunately (IMO), there's no rule against it. I believe that there should be a BSR, and I believe that eventually there will be a BSR. There's just no reason to allow it. But I've seen videos from big name DZs like Perris shot by jumpers with as few as 17 jumps. I waited until I had 700 jumps to add a camera. I firmly believe that it made me a better flyer. I got REALLY rusty when I was doing mostly 4-way videos a couple years ago. Dave

Cheap is relative of course... but I have a Tamron 17-50 which is $460 right now on amazon. I read review after review before I bought it that said how sharp it was. It's often recommended (on forums) for wedding photography... on a budget. The autofocus is fairly slow and makes a lot of noise compared to an expensive lens. I think the closest Canon L lens, for comparison, is the 16-35 which goes for over $1500. EDIT: Just to be clear, I don't jump with the 17-50. I considered taking it on a high pull once because I wanted more zoom than the 10-22. But when I held the 10-22 in one hand and the 17-50 in the other hand, I decided it was way too heavy to jump and I'd rather use the 18-55. Dave

I haven't seen it yet, but I'm told there's a photo of mine in the latest issue. That makes 7 months in a row for me. Dave

Tandem, meeker, and breakoff were the kit lens. 4-way was the 10-22. I have serious doubts too many people could tell the difference between L-glass and a sigma lens at web sizes like these, unless the pictures show the specific weaknesses of the particular lens. But in general, the differences barely affect image quality... build quality, weatherproofing, autofocus speed and accuracy, etc. On a full frame camera, the difference in sharpness at the corners may become really apparent. And in high contrast areas, there might be more chromatic aberration on a cheaper lens. But there are plenty of very sharp, cheap lenses. The reality is that if I applied more display sharpening to the kit lens photos, they would look shaper at web sizes. There's really no appreciable difference in sharpness between the kit lens and the 10-22. I'm sure a focus chart would tell another story, but even at 100% zoom, i can't say that i would instantly be able to differenciate pictures from one lens or the other. Maybe 100% crops will be the next challenge. Dave

Our DZ had a mix of older Vector 2 student rigs and telesis student rigs. We got demos of Student Vector 3 and Telesis 3 rigs and the staff preferred the telesis 3. They are really nice. They are both nice, but it came down to the MLW adjustment. It was just easier on the Telesis. Of course I liked the Vectors because of the skyhook, but we've proven that the Telesis 3 RSL/reserve system works just fine too. It's great having some new student rigs that fit smaller students well (belly bands seem to help) and that have flaps that stay closed! Dave

Maybe I am blind. How about you? Let's play "NAME THAT LENS!" All these images were shot with either the 10-22 or the 18-55, and all are between 18 and 22 mm, so you can't tell based on focal length. Breakoff 4-way on the hill Tandem exit 4-way I pulled these pretty quickly and randomly... I'm sure I could find my best 18-55 pics and my worst 10-22 pics if I wanted to really stack the odds. And yes, I know you're going to say they're small and it would be obvious with larger versions. But if there's such an obvious difference between the lenses, please show me. Dave

Thanks! The local camera guys at that DZ mainly had trouble catching the pull sequences... the DZ has very few outs and they weren't used to pulling so low. Especially at the beginning of the course, they were turning away and pulling by 4000. I was glad I got to shoot a lot of video at the course... I always let my friend go first so I could see what was going to happen to me next!

The adjustment brush in lightroom lets you choose from a bunch of types of adjustment. Everything from exposure to skin smoothing. Nowhere near as powerful as the masking tools in photoshop, but it's quick and easy. And all changes are non-destructive, so you can always modify/undo. I tried DPP for about a day and realized that I needed something much much faster for the volume of pictures I take. Dave

I only added category quizzes because that was not marked up on the proposed card. I was assuming nobody asked for that change. But anyway, nice job to those that helped put this together. I fully believe that if we give coaches the ability to teach, jump with, and critique students, they should have the ability to sign the card. Dave

What program are you using? In photoshop, I'd probably use an adjustment layer. You can pretty much "paint on" the adjustment you want. Lightroom lets you do the same thing with adjustment brushes. Dave

If they weren't blurry they would. That's the point of large format. If the pictures are blurry, you might as well shoot them with a point and shoot camera, right? Guess it depends on what they mean by "subtle blur." I guess it's art because it was hard and he only took one picture per jump. I took 400 on one jump on saturday. I am no artist! (It was a CRW jump, by the way

I guess it's kinda cool but... Huge camera to get crappy pictures? No thanks... Dave

Just heard this morning that "C" will be added to almost every line of the card for Cat F-H. Canopy training will still be "I" only, as well as category quizes from what I could tell. According to my regional director, the change is effective immediately. Dave

And one more real AFF jump. I loved the way she kinda popped out of the mess with a big smile... Dave

Here are some "fake" ones... from my friend's practice jumps during our AFFI course. Hopefully I'll never get a shot of a real student looking like these. Dave

Some winter CRW from Saturday. The pilot mentioned it was -20 degrees before exit. I'm assuming celcius.

I don't know the coolest way, but I know this is NOT the coolest way. Dave

Just curious... what kinds of issues are you talking about? I personally can't tell the difference between images I shot with my 10-22 vs. my 18-55. The 10-22 is a better lens for a variety of reasons, but I've always found the complaints about the kit lens to be a little exaggerated. Dave

Don't know yet, but I will soon. My new vapor wes pro is almost done. I was worried how the cup over the mouth would interfere with using a tongue switch, and I think I was right to worry. I don't see how ut can work without cutting up the helmet. So I decided to order an ultimate switch and see how that works. Its been shipped, just waiting for it to arrive. I wish they had US dealers. Doesn't seem like business has been great... my order number was under 40. We'll see how it works... Dave