DSE

They didn't have Pawlowski Hair back then. Carbon-fuckin-Fiber makes all the difference.

Since I know you're wanting to match your Opteka .3, the Canon or Sigma 15 is ideal. For inside freeflying, it's pretty good, IMO. The Peleng is extreme, but a very cool lens for an effect. I think it's a "one shot" lens, where the style can become overbearing after a while, because half the cool factor lies in the extreme wide as much as in the shot composition itself.

not a naysay at all, Lurch. I figured he's buyin' the Storm anyway. I have a Sabre 2 150 that I put about 300 jumps on before moving to the Storm. For camera work and wingsuiting both, I like the Storm. Sabre2 is a great canopy as well. I only have a coupla jumps on a Sabre, and that was before I got into wingsuits, so can't comment on them at subterminal. I know Monkey loves em.'

Check your results on an external monitor when you test it. your eyes (or luck) just may be good enough to make it work. If you're using an SD lens on the camera, it'll be soft anyway, so not nearly as critical.

Wingloading choices in any direction won't affect how the wingsuit flies. You'll like the Storm...

my point is this; If you're manually focusing, you're hoping your eye can resolve the contrast points properly. On the very small and low resolution screen, it's not something I'd trust, but I'm not very trusting anyway. Spot focus, on the other hand, will get the contrast point and adjust the focus perfectly, assuming you use it properly. However, any method that works is a good one.

You're welcome, guys. I'm glad it's helped with the learning curve.

That's a good link, but I'm not understanding how trying to visually focus on a small screen is easier (or superior) to using the Spot Focus setting, which is also a manual setting. Point the camera at a high contrast object that is 6-8' away, and touch the screen where the object appears. Ideally, this is center screen. Done. Check your focus against something close up, like a wrist altimeter, you'll find its spot-on.

"Survival Float" "Survival Breathe" "Survival Swimming" are all the same thing, in terms of understanding and research on the web. No point in beating about semantics. You'll see what we did in the video. We did make it a point (a few times) to try to survival float/swim/breathe in two different wingsuits because you'd posted it's the appropriate method. I've got nearly 50 water "jumps" and I'm gonna water-log em. Edited to add:

Can you please elaborate on what you mean by survival swimming? I replicated the illustration you posted. Same stuff we learned in Boy Scouts 30 years ago, same thing the Red Cross calls "Survival Breathing."

I know....t'is why I just bought one.

The guy with the grey hair is definitely older, slower. But he's pretty approachable.

That "little Intro" and the corresponding sized Phoenix-fly Phantom 2 are two of the most under-rated wings out there, IMO. A good body position and an average weight/height ratio will keep up with a lot of the big guys flying dirty in a bigger suit. Look at what the Ill Vision guys can do in a Phantom2...small suit, big skills=sweet stuff.

and if you had a reserve ride and landed in water....? See the third para where I mentioned if you were BASE jumping or had no packed reserve... That's why we went in with both reserve-packed rigs and no-reserve containers. The back-float method still applies. Except that you would no longer have a floation device (For what it's worth, I've learned that reserves do fall into the NTSB's legal definition of a "Flotation Device" but they do not fall into the categories of Type I, II, or III devices). Reserves effectively meet the requirements for a Type II device for a short (20 min) period of time, depending on a few variables such as reserve size, quality of packjob, and container design.

I'm doing a video, and it'll have more title cards, etc. We shot this with 3 cameras, so have some good angles. What we learned was very different than the dogma we've heard before. In a conversation with Jim Crouch, we talked about why some of this dogma is more or less BS, and we both felt it was because the water training content in the SIM is based around gear/methods in 1972, The game changes a lot when a wingsuit comes into play. I've also had conversations with folks who have done intentional and unintentional water landings into rivers, lakes, and oceans. I dont know that what we've learned provides every answer; it raises a few questions. Probably the biggest "answer" of all is the realization that getting away from your rig is entirely likely to contribute to a worse incident. A rig with a reserve floats, and floats VERY well. If you're on your back, the reserve affords you a long, long time to get out of your gear even if you go in fully zipped (you should never, ever do this if at all possible to avoid). If you're BASE jumping/no reserve, the same technique essentially applies. Get on your back, get out of your gear while on your back. It is SO much easier, faster, efficient. If the water is cold, economy of movement is even more important. Staying calm is important. Survival swimming in cold water will help you move closer to drowning. Swimming period, will help get you closer to drowning when the water is really cold. See next month's Parachutist for more info on that topic.

why not use spot focus? Then you're avoiding the issue of the variables lenses introduce.

As an update; We took wingsuits from a high diving board today (with canopy) wearing boots, jeans, helmet, glasses to simulate an unintentional water landing where you couldn't get chest strap, etc off. We also did landings with everything undone as per USPA recommendations. We did a mix. Then we moved to a current pool with the water moving at 1200 gpm, which supposedly translates to about 9 mph (math isn't my thing, so taking someone else' word for it). We did this with canopy out, no reserve so there was no floatation assistance. We tried survival floating. We tried floating on your back. We tried a lot of things. We got entanglements in current. We had a canopy catch on a valve and it accidentally simulated a canopy catching on a tree or rock in a fairly fast current. We learned a lot. We learned that survival swimming in a wingsuit will cause a very bad day. We learned (as we already knew) that attempting to tread water will likely make for a bad day. We learned about how to get out of a suit in a reasonably fast current while wearing boots, jeans, etc. We learned that the canopy can drag you faster than you imagine in a current. Thanks to Justin, Zach, Scotty, Andreea, Robi, Phree, Chuck, Simon, (other names I"m now forgetting) for offering input on a few hypotheticals that we created. And the bellyflop for fun from 15' was a hoot. Video to come. Edited to add pix

Eike, Jose, Aaron are all at Elsinore. Cate might be there, she's easy to find on FB or here. Jim Hickey is there on the weekends only. Week days are pretty hollow.

you can use your main IDE drive as a boot/application drive. once everything is installed, ghost it for future rebuilds and you won't have to worry about reinstalling everything.

Alton, I wouldn't say what you were doing was "wrong" but rather what most people are taught to do. Keeping your elbows above the shoulder level (not behind) and removing the cup your arms/chest were creating is what solved this particular problem. You fixed this problem, now let's work on your tracking. Great docks, BTW!

What are the Danish rules/recommendations? The USPA recommendations are that you have 200 jumps, with a large number of them being RW. The two biggest concerns for jumping with a camera; -Cameras are a significant distraction on the ride up, may be a significant distraction in the air, and may be a distraction under canopy. -Cameras can create snag points that inexperienced skydivers may not know how to clear/deal with. Cameras also create a new task before and during the skydive that may create hazards that if not thought out in advance and without some mentoring, could cause a bad day. The Sticky in the Photo forum answers this with a broad spectrum of past posts.

I skydive because I don't care for how I feel when I don't.

You didn't originally say you needed it to play on Facebook... Even with the VOB name conversion, if WMP wouldn't play it, you didn't/don't have a decoder installed. VLC manages the playback just fine. But it's not a converter tool... Glad you got it going. Welcome back to the sky. No more cross posts, please?

Large aperture often means faster shutterspeed in lit areas unless you filter down (ND, etc). nothing can completely compensate for the jelloing. Even the series "House" has it on their segments shot with the 5DMkII and 7D. Higher shutter speeds aggravate the problem. As far as slo mo, the more frames you have, the greater your quality of slo mo shall be. 25p is hard to slow, 30p less hard, and 60p is very easy. If you're serious about slowmo, are are some terrific tools and techniques that will help you, depending on the app you're using. Some apps resample for interpolated frames (frames created to fill the gaps between slomo frames) and real frames, while others don't. Twixtor and other similar tools do a good job of figuring out the "in-between" frames when doing slo-mo. Shorter answer is to shoot at the highest framerate and shutterspeed possible when planning on slo-mo. Problem is, higher shutter speeds aggravate jello. Somewhere in the middle is a balance. I haven't spent the time to find out if it's a consistent balance point or not.

Sounds like you don't have a software decoder for MPEG on your computer. I'd recommend downloading VLC player for your PC; that should play the DVD on your computer.