DSE

My business makes a living, full-time, shooting video. Standard grade tape, the error correction tha it offers, and the already extremely compromised quality of DV data require (IMO) that we use the best source possible on which to record. Your needs may vary. For critical project work, we also use enterprise-grade drives while many folks would say "Nothing wrong with Costo drives, they work great for me." we don't have that luxury. But heck, I also use UDMA CF cards, too.

Happy Birthday, Ian! I hope it's a slow and pleasant ride.

So Congress and the Senate had nothing to do with it? Weren't House/Senate predominantly conservative under Clinton and Carter? [edit: I don't disagree with that. RE-READ the point I initially responded to. "Everyone" is never innocent. But there are a lot of innocents that get caught up in this sort of whirlwind. I believe "collateral damage" is the correct term. Coincidentally, local news here last night had a story about a mentally handicapped couple that are part of this downfall and are losing their home as well. After seeing that story and my own experience, I applaud the government for making these programs available, and deplore the manner in which unscrupulous investors, banks, Wall Street took advantage of these people, selling money they knew wasn't sustainable.

DNG, DPX J2K are all great (and powerful OZ) formats for the future, no doubt.

Either AVC Upshift or Adobe CS4. Those are your primary options.

I see your point. Flip side to that one is, however... many of the people that bought into these loans were sold on them by unscrupulous banks and offerings that they perhaps lacked the intellect to realize were dangerous/unstable/whatever. I'd say that more or less makes them "innocent" because they lacked the knowledge or ability to understand exactly what they were getting into. Example that hits close to home...I have a mentally handicapped sister and her husband isn't exactly Einstein. They bought a house. They're losing their house, except that my brother and I have likely figured out a bail-out scenario. But not everyone is so lucky. Additionally (and I could be way off base here), I'd bet that the savings of other social services that would come as part of any foreclosure would substandially offset any bailout funds or benefits offered to those facing foreclosure. I'm not an economist...so rip away. hell, I barely passed high school math.

Nicely done whitepaper. Coupla things...post some full-rez footage of the best/worst of the cam. I don't have the fortune of having Cookie's setup, so can't really test it well. I did top mount one on an FTP. I wouldn't do that very many times. Hold a CX or HC series, and the TG in your hand, you'll immediately understand my point. Also bear in mind, the Cookie lens only resolves to about 300 lines, so it's not giving you the full benefit of the resolution the camera offers, and at the same time, doesn't expose some of the warts the camera has. In other words, the SD glass hides some things, which can be a good thing, IMO

I'll put it a different way... We don't trust projects to that grade of tape, DV or HDV. AMEII, always.

I'm on the flip side from Dave. On the business side, we've been tapeless for nearly 4 years, and on the skydiving side, been tapeless for all of this season and a good share of last season. A card can hold as little as 22 mins of footage and as much as 90 mins, and Xfers ridiculously faster to an HDD than tape can. Card may be reformatted in about 7 seconds and ready to fly. No rewinding, and makes debriefing instant. However....there is no archive. You must/have to think about your workflow and how you wish to store. You either always need a 'puter around, or need to have a drive reader/bin. I happen to have both. Drives are cheap, about the cost of a case of good quality tape (I don't shoot the $3.00 crap). You should never reuse tape, although a lot of guys do.

Here ya go Check out the image skew in the past 10-12 frames. Sensor timing can't handle it... Completely understandable, too. To demosaic 21MP, average it, resample to 1920 x 1080, then compress to h.264 is a HUGE amount of processing, making for a hot camera, making for less efficiency, making for all sorts of problems. If you divide the sensor in half, it remaps to 2808x1872 very nicely. This may be what they're doing, because the camera can't shoot in crop mode when working with video. This would easily resample to 1920 x 1080 p30. It's sure a helluva lot closer to reality than the RED Scarlet I'm still chuckling over in another thread, but still won't be a video camera for me. Side note, talked to an audio cat in NYC that is already developing a stereo audio input for this cam. It might spawn a nice cottage industry...

"too biased?" Is that like "a little bit pregnant?" I think it's a good camera that in a Cookie box, should do well. It's built very poorly, IMO. It's not made by Sony's standard line manufacturing, and I *believe* that it's made by a third party that Sony licensed. All that said...Bomb420 has plenty of jumps on his. Ask him about how well it handled abuse.

Contact Sean McLaughlin in Tucson. He makes that drive/ride almost every day.

My logbook. AFF1-Good exit, pulled on time AFF2-nice exit AFF3-good exit AFF4-Exit solid, nice landing AFF7-nice unstable exit. Welcome to the sky! I skipped two jumps because I did turns on AFF3. Paper logbook mostly useless, IMO. I did put my own notes in. I like writing in student's books when I'm part of their jumps. My e-logbook has for some interesting reading. If I ever burn in Ed...ask if you can read my E-log. you're in there too.

Bill, I couldn't find that poll on the ARG website, can you point a link? That's one I'd like to screenshot and share. Neutral unanimity. Nice!

FWIW, don't trust the GPS. In Nagambie, pilot switched it early, nearly ended up in water. At our DZ, newbie pilot missed it by nearly a mile on multiple occasions. _Always_ look before climbing out, particularly if you happen to be the first person going... Spotting is an art. Fortunately, there are a lot of old-time round jumpers that can teach you a lot about getting to where you want to go. Sad that so many folks trust the lights/GPS only.

The camera can't guarantee sustained rates of data. That's critical. The form factor is not conducive to video. YOU'RE the one that brought Panavision into the discussion. Panavision isn't HD, nor is it video, unless you're talking about SR taps. At that level, you're so far out of the skydiving realm, we may as well be talking about IMAX. You're either talking in circles or I'm an idiot, cuz I surely can't' understand what the hell you're trying to say. First, you think it's a great video camera, now you say it might not be a great video camera but the stills section is great. I'm not following your argument. Bottom line from my perspective, you've convinced yourself this is a great camera even though you've not seen it. I think it's a great STILL camera, and I have seen it. I don't think it's a great video camera, and I have seen it. I also am of the opinion that we're a long, long way off of convergence. Be great when we're there, but we're a long ways off. I see the video feature as more of a note-taking feature for photographers than an alternative to a video camera on a helmet. Your opinion may be different, just as your requirements may be. I fully intend to own one, but fully intend to use it as a specialized still camera.

Can't help it, I spit coffee on my monitor this morning when I RED the link below, and originally wasn't gonna share. Been a shitty night, so I want a good chuckle.... RED SCARLET isn't coming on time. Wow. Surprise, surprise, surprise! I'm sure they'll get something out. Somewhere. With Apple plowing a fortune into it....

Altitrack isn't supported. i've written to both L&B and asked, and to Paralog. Apparently L&B prefers to keep it proprietary. Paralog has some featureas I really like. Unfortunately, the Altitrack is the only alti I like for wrist mount.

What lens can be used on a Panavision, Genesis, or Viper that has autofocus? Measure and mark, never autofocus. Panavision isn't HD. Autofocus for moving pictures is different than autofocus for stills. There are other issues as well, but bottom line is, still cameras aren't video cameras. People who shoot stills want as many megapixels as they can get and don't care at all about fps. Those who shoot videowant fps and care nothing about megapixels. We *do* often use still primes on video cameras with devices such as the Letus, RedRock Micro, etc, but the compression, storage, etc of a still camera don't get us there. yet. Having or not having auto-focus doesn't define a professional vs consumer camcorder. It might be a consideration, but by no means is a baseline. Look...if you wanna use it for a video camera, go for it. I wouldn't. It's a very sweet camera tho, one I plan on owning. I can't post footage, because I don't have any. Seeing it at a press event/announcement isn't the same as having one in the field.

Yeah, I remember when purple was in back in the early 80's, too. Donny Osmond donned purple socks and purple was out over night.

I'm told by Xmas season, which is Thanksgiving or sooner

you claimed that the media is separate from the work product. I claim it is not. If you feel that's a red herring, so be it. Yep, everyone in the industry I've worked in for the past 30 years is a moron by your definition. Tape/HDD/Flashcards, whatever are all meaningless without content on them. The content is what gives them value. The content cannot be captured without the mechanical device on which it is recorded. In my industry, the one in which I've spend my entire adult life, "work product" is defined as all parts of any Master. See....not everything is spelled out in Wikipedia or for outsiders in our industry. Just like every other industry, there are some topics that are simply accepted for what they are and how they've always been. You won't find anything that says that Nagra is no longer the standard for field audio any longer, either. Nor will you find a defined answer for the difference between a work print or a daily, most likely. Yet within the industry, all us morons do know what those terms mean, too.

Well....if that's your criteria...I'm a multi-Emmy Award winning producer, Peabody and DuPont recipient...none of those things mean much when it comes to opining on a camera, IMO. I'm just as full of shit as the next guy at times. Just look at Bonfire as one example. I think the 5DMKII is a sweet cam from what I've seen of it. I think it's a great cam for serious skydiving photography. I think only an idiot would use it for tandem and grunt work. Too much camera, too much weight...But that's just me. Ask Norman or Laszlo for their opinion, it's more valid in the realm of skydiving photography. Would NEVER consider using this camera as a video camera. Now you're getting into some weird semantics. Define a "really pro" video camera. You're suggesting for example, that HDCAM or XDCAM HD aren't "really pro?" Mneal is correct in his assertion about autofocus and video. We're a LONG way off still, from video and stll cameras being one unit.

Everyone loves those "Pee-wee Herman" moments... "I meant to do that..." Nice pic!