Laszloimage

IMO the lighter is better. Keep it mind tandem is a mass production, you'll make lot of jumps. I can tell you that your body and especially your neck will feel lot better on the end of the day if you're jumping something light. So the kit lens isn't a bad option. In the other hand all those 15, 14, 10-20, and 10-22mm lenses recommended by others are great for quality photography. (I assuming you're talking about digital Rebel). Also I agree with Phil to have a bit wider lens for stills than the video. Unfortunately the 18-55mm kit lens won't really do that unless if you're using a 0.7 wide angle lens (on PC or HC cameras). In this case the solution is fly a bit farther and keep your head steadier. But over all try multiple options (if you have a chance) and make decision based on your experince. ...it will take a few jumps to figure it out anyway. -Laszlo-

Thank you Spot! Now I have to credit Tony Hathaway. He started to give me advices about the business and copy right aspect of photography. Of course I learnd some stuff the hard way too when I got screwd more than once over the years Anyway thank you for educating people here at DZ.com of the "dirty" financial and legal angle of the job we're doing. ...if everybody knew in the sport about these issues probably nobody would bitch about not to have enough money to buy another lens or camera, 'cause they would get paid for their work. -Laszlo- I've been called greedy too. Now some of those hireing me for even more. Intersting...

It's a very nice piece of glass. At this focal lenght you don't need IS at all. Matter the fact is you probably would have a same problem like the Sony HC-7's (they have a built in optical IS). As others said already IS works great on longer lenses on the ground to correct hand shake. Also this Canon 14mm is expensive and pretty heavy. You can only take advantage of it if you are an experinced photographer and camera flyer already. Sigma has a same lens for half the price though... -Laszlo- the attached pictures were taken with this Canon 14mm mounted on the Rebel XT.

If that shakey jerky issue happens on the slow motion which was created on a computer the problem is most likely coming from the software settings. I'm 99% sure when you render your slow motion your field order setting is incorrect. There shold be three options Field order A, Field order B, or Frame based. I would recommend to check on it. The HC30 outputs field order A interlaced video. When you render your project make sure your settings are Field order A, NTSC at 29.97 fps frame rate. It should be set on any editig soft ware. ...DSE will probably tell you lot more though -Laszlo-

Yes it's manageable. Lot harder though. You can even zoom in a bit. I think it's a cool look to have the back ground moving faster and maybe even blured out a bit too. Not an easy task for sure, but possible. -Laszlo-

Zee is 100% right. You can save a few bucks at the purchase, but you'll be sorry when you miss the shot because the flash "wasn't ready" yet. I just bought my 2nd 580EX so I can use them together with less power each but resulting the same total output. This way the recycle time is lot faster. Of course in this case the helmet gets heavier though... but I don't always have to use both of them together. -Laszlo-

Canon really does sock doesn't it? You just plug any 2.5mm mouth switch, bite switch, tounge switch, or anything and ready to go. Sorry being sarcastic... Anyway, if there's enough demand I can start making the Nikon version of the Pro Mouth Switch. Does anyone interested? -Laszlo-

It's hard to answer... Yes I would give the high res files to my buddies because they're my buddies. But one they I saw my photo used for an advertisement which was given to my buddy for personal use. Also he din't give the file away purposely, he just didn't understand the copy right and business side of photography. When I knoked on the door of the company which used my photo to sell their product not even giving me a credit the owner of the company was pretty rude with me. His answer was (I'm not joking here) "it so easy to press the button on the camera and take a picture, so it really doesn't worth anything". Well I explained to him this "worthless" image which is my product somehow sells his product. We ended up settleing the problem, but I try to avoid these "inconvenient meetings" with others. Similar cases happend more than ones with me. So now I give to my buddies prints for free rather than files. Or if they want to e-mail it somwhere I give them a small water marked file. (a quiet few of my small but non watermarked photos of mine were used on web sites for ADVERTISMENT!!!). By the way... I see so many photos here at the forum for example at the thread "pictures while you working". How many of those are crediting the photographer who took them??? I guess we should credit our buddys when they taking picturs of us while we're taking pictures of others. -Laszlo-

Those pictures are at landing. But the harness is adjusted same during the deployment too. As long as the opening goes relatively normal people will stay in the harness. But the chance to lose a costumer highly incrased if there's a super hard opening when the passenger kick him/her self in the forehead with his/her own knees.

Those TM instructors normally can't give you a stable exit either and they're "potato chip" over the entire skydive. After jump -of course- they say the student didn't arch. The reality is they just never learned to become a TM/I. After their first 10 jumps of the TM course no one ever tells them what to do. Pretty much everybody ignores called the probation period which is at least 15 more jumps with real passengers (or paying cosumers) but those jumps still should be supervised, reviewed and evaluated by a qualifed person. The loose goggles are the least problem. Check ot the attached pics of the loose student harnesess. All of those guys had at least 500!!! TM jumps already at the time. (just look the passengers they are hangin by their chin on the chest strap, half way out off the harness) Sadly this is only a super small selections of these kind of pictures. I guess I don't even have to say that these TM/I's (are they???) think they're bad ass, and when I show them the photos they think I'm just an ass hole who just wants to drill them. Even more scarry, DZ operators have very little to say to these guys because they are the ones never saying no. As long as the pilot takes off with the plane they'll go without worrying about the wind, the size of the passenger, or anything else. But I have to say they are very very lucky, somehow they always get away (in the last moment) getting hurt, killed, or losing a student. -Laszlo- There're good TM/I's too

Sorry guys, we are getting off topic here a bit... I used a flash when I took that shot, so the WB is somewhere 6000-7000K. (I can't remberer the exact temp. but I can look it up) But the colors are screwed up in the whole calendar. Everything is purple. Take a look about Norman's flag shot. I'm pretty sure that American Flag has blue field where the stars are and not purple. It looks like at the printing facility they put too much red into the entire project (more red over blue= purple) At the mean time the digital files I sent out contained ICC profile, obviously they didn't use it. -Laszlo-

...but look at the bright side of it. You got an awesome deal, and most likely the camera won't break for a long long time. By the time you would need to repair it you'll going to update anyway (hopefully). I bit the crap out of my XT, and it still works without any problem. -Laszlo-

I didn't even know I have a photo selected to the USPA calendar. I sent 4-5 pictures but I don't know yet which one has been printed. So thank very much you for letting me know!!! Firs I have to see the print, then I can tell you what's going on. Sometimes just the printing itself changes the colors. For example the whole 2007 calendar is purple. As soon as I see that I'll let you know. -Laszlo-

Thank you for the invitation Spot, but I guess I have to skip that one. I would love to attend though...

Thanks! Maybe one day... I still have a lot to learn about to set up lighting. I need to attend a a few more seminars, and of course practice too.

In that practicular case without a flash I would probably chose the Av setting(f5 or above at 10mm) with ISO 200. This way your manual focus range won't chage since apeture is always going to be same. Also at ISO200 you'll get a descent shutter speed and not too much grain. For example if you're going to focus manually to 3.5feet at 10mm at f5 with your XT (the sensor has the 1.6 factor) everything is going to be sharp from 1.74 feet to infinity. Here's a link for a Depth Of Field calculator: http://photoinf.com/Tools/Don_Fleming/Depth_Of_Filed_Calculator.html For manual focusing most cases you want to keep your apeture or a.k.a. "F stop" at same value. Also I like to use a safety step as well. If I make my calculations, and set the focus ring at f8, after I give an extra step up and shoot at f9. You can always go above but you really don't want to go bellow of the apeture value where you made your calculations. ...and yes I use tape mesaure on the ground to set up manual fucus. Also I select only the centre AF point at one shot mode, I place an object to the calculated distance from the camera lens, press the button half way. After the camera focused the lens I just switch to manual, and fixt the focus ring normally with gaffers tape so it cant turn any more. If you want to use AF again make sure you remove the tape before, so you won't damage the gear inside your lens. (there's very few lens this isn't an issue). -Laszlo-

As you see there's a lot of respond to your question in a very short time. Also as you can see every body told you a bit different thing about camera settings. They all work, but also any of those setting can be NOT the best choice as well. It all depends by the light, the nature of the skydive, and who knows how many more circumstances. So based on that we can keep writing never ending comments since there's so many combinations, and every single possibilty has its own optimum camera setting. So my reccomendation is try all of them and try to have an "intention" with each practicular setting. If one work it dosen't mean it work all the time, or if one dosen't work it won't mean it'll never work. Further more there's another factor to take nice photos of a jump. You can have a best camera gear, you can be a best photographer, if the skydive doesn't go too good it wiil be hard to get nice pictures. (...a bad ass photographer can make it look good anyway) As I said already in my first post, start to learn the very basics of photography (books, magazines, online, experts, and etc...)! Compare your photos to others, and be able to take critisism (constructive critisism when the critic lets you now how can it be done better), and practice a lot. Success comes from knowlege, knowlege comes from experince, to gain experince takes lots of practice, patiente, and time. Would anyone ask "What accord is the best to play music" after buying a new guitar? The answer is just about the same, every single one of them. So just start playing with all the settings on your new camera, and don't be disappointed if you won't always get the greatest shot. It takes awhile to learn it. -Laszlo- Matt, thank you for the compliment about my article!

All of the settings. There's no such a thing or setting wich always will work. Light is different all the time, distance is different all the time, flash or no flash and etc... It all dipends by what do you want to see in your photographs. This "what setting" subject is way to more extended than the capabilty of this thread. I recommend to search some photo sites and get some photo books where you can learn the basics of photography. Also I'm pretty sure there's an experienced photgrapher around your DZ who can help you at the begining. Also you can practice and tweek around on the ground without jumping and find out about your camera. Even the XT's manual has lots of useful information. Good luck! -Laszlo-

No doubt! I see her work all the time. She's great! Congratulations! I don't know her though -Laszlo-

I agree. I own one of those fancy ones what I don't even use. I prefer my ORANGE one. In the other hand no doubt about the need of use of a sight. It's just like using a view finder on any camera. Also it's lot more effective on full face helmets 'cause they always sit on the head the same way (at least they should sit the same way). -Laszlo-

You gotta love this "I love me" thread... Here's two from yesterday (Oct 28th 07) -Laszlo-

Very nice pictures Mike! ...as a camera man you can always jump for free. That's how I made my baloon jumps in Eloy years ago.

It basically a foam. You can get these at medical supply stores. Normally the doctor prescribes these after a whip flash from a car accident or something loke that.

I do some YOGA strech and I wear a neck brace as a protection. The second one makes a huge difference when you have a harder opening, gives lot of extra support to your neck. I should have started to use one from the very begining... -Laszlo-

Yes, For the size and the money the performance is out standing. But the still quality can't even come close to any DSLR when you compare it. But to shoot tandem video&stills 10 times a day with a light camera like this is priceless...