DSE

nothing wider than a 180/.5 that I'm aware of, but there may be something out there. it would be big/heavy though. I've got Royal's .175 and it is reasonably good for belly cam. It has the highest resolution of any of the ultra wide lenses I've seen, but it still only resolves around 400 lines.

yes, there are significant issues, but those don't seem to bother skydivers all that much. You're putting a standard def wide angle on a high def camera, cutting the optical resolution by more than half. So, it's a better picture in HD, but it's still not really HD. You'll have distortion of image no matter what, that's what super wides/fisheyes do. It's what allows them to be close and yet still get more picture than your eye can see. Chromatic abberation? Yes...there is some of that with these low-cost lenses, it's expected and usually accepted. Image quality isn't at all bad. Stuff that same image into DV, and it's too soft for my taste, but I'm not the one doing the tasting. If your customers have been fine with hand-cam before, they'll likely be happy with HD hand-cam.

Yes, the Black Eye .25 or Royal .175 will work in terms of width. Dunno about either of those cams for hand-cam on a tandem tho, I'm not a tandem instructor.

yup. Even left it in the sun for an hour. Has the local rigger baffled too. She looked at the data card and said "This can't be right."

they barely lasted a year, rig has only left the DZ a couple of times, been to Eloy and Perris, otherwise hasn't been moved (it's my second rig, so maybe 250 jumps tops) and not shut off after jumps, just let go at end of day. Now, it counts down, gives error code, and shuts off. Eloy nights been in the high 20's.

Try "NEXT" by John Grisham. His first decent book in a long time, no lawyers in the book...based on some very real fundamentals, although some of them are very stretched. Kept me fairly tied to the chair...

Anyone heard of Cypres batteries dying at just over a year old? Working one day, now getting code 8998/dead battery. Two days ago, battery showed fine. Any one experienced battery failure in cold weather?

I guess FOX, ESPN & ABC are in deep trouble then. What in the world does THAT have to do with anything in this thread, Scott???? Did you think that Fox, ESPN, and ABC use only 720 cams? Ummm, the biggest purchasers of XDCAM HD have been ESPN and ABC. Ever heard of "downconverting?" Ever heard of "upconverting?" It's done every day by hundreds of broadcasters worldwide. By far, until a couple years ago, the majority of non-filmed television commercials were shot with DVCProHD in 24p which has imagers of varying resolutions, recorded frame size of 960 x 720, upsampled to 1280 x 720 at broadcast, or downconverted to 640 x 480 at broadcast. Now upsampled to 1440 x 1080 at broadcast. 1080 cams are now the predominant HD acquisition format, downsampled to 1440 x 1080 for broadcast/cable, or in the case of 5 particular broadcasters (who are exploring changing their formatting) the signal is downconverted to 1280 x 720, unless it's for SD, in which case it's downconverted to 640 x 480 for broadcast if it's not dual cast.

And a piece of clothing that requires you practically remove prior to landing, not to mention a different deployment technique. Two arm zippers, two leg zippers can be sometimes problematic once you figure in dealing with line twists or total malfunction. I'm sure there are a lot of very talented guys able to fly a wingsuit at lower jump numbers. The question is whether they're able to deal with the difficulties that might come up in a bad situation.

Gawd, this is so BORING!

I agree. Good videographer in "real world" makes 75.00 per hour plus gear rental, for DV figure roughly 400.00 per day if they Xport a light kit. That 75.00 per hour doesn't come close to the roughly 10-15.00 per hour paid to elementary/cuts-only editors. A-Skydiving is specialized, but not specialized enough to take a 15 minute edit plus 10 minute shoot and turn it into 200.00 B-Quality of the work and quality of the camcorder don't remotely warrant 200.00 per jump, IMO. But I sure wish we could make that much. However, at 50.00 per jump, the DZ is short-changing everyone involved, IMO. I also disagree that "if you put out a killer product at an affordable price" etc. This whole thread seems to be about flying the camera, which is of course, *very* important, but overall is less than half the delivered video product. It's about good editing, interview, etc. It's not about the length of the video, it's about how well the final product tells the story, and helps the student remember the experience. It's not even about whether it's handcam or outside cam. It's about the story and the memory. Most only give a damn about whether they can see themselves in the air or not. IMO, the cameraman that can fly silly circles around the student is as bad as the guy that sticks the camera in their face for the entire skydive. It's about helping them relive their experience. And there are a lot of ways to achieve that memory without being a great camera operator, IMO. As skydivers, we look at the videos with a critical eye to the skydive, but rarely look at the story and the memory it creates. *That* is where the return customer/friends/family and subsequent $$ come from, IMO. It's always about the story whether it's skydiving or vacation videos, MOW's, or feature-length films. Fancy camera work can't change that small fact.

last for the night. Word to the wise...take care of your stuff; if it gets left around Eloy for too long without care, Larry will burn it (witness the house).

A few more

more pix from today

A 3 year old child would not dererve to die, you are correct. A 17 year old who is on the verge of being an adult, has developed enough to make rational decisions, and understands what is right and wrong deserves to suffer any repercussions that are a direct result of their actions. Sadly, in this case it was their death. They however, knew that what they were doing was wrong. I'm sorry. Caged or not. YOU DONT FUCK WITH A 300LB TIGER. That is just stupid, no matter how you slice it. Exactly. And the zoo f***ed with the tiger by not having an enclosure that would protect the tiger from humans, and humans from the tiger. IMO, it's equally stupid to suggest it's okay for a 3 year old to taunt a tiger but not okay for the 17 y/o to do the same. The tiger likely isn't predisposed towards one or the other other than perhaps seeing one as a meal and the other as a snack. Either way, NO ONE "deserves to die" for teasing an animal in a zoo. In the wild, you'll get no argument from me at all.

~humans are animals. ~people that visit a zoo expect a certain amount of protection, even if from themselves and their own actions. Humans have been taunting animals in the zoo for at least a century. ~No person "deserves to die" for doing what is somewhat natural to the child, any more than the tiger should have the opportunity to do what comes naturally to the tiger. Inane though it may be, the supposition that someone deserves to die because they taunted something else in a controlled environment is more ridiculous. No matter how it's sliced, the zoo has a responsibility to protect the humans from the animals and protect the animals from the humans. They failed in this case, more than once. If anyone is "served right," it's the zoo. They're directly responsible for the death of a human being and a beautiful animal, IMO. Either way, it's a tragedy.

No. Just the idiots who taunt and tease the animals. So do you believe that Klebold and Harris were justified in their actions at Columbine? After all, they were relentlessly teased and taunted too. In any event, IMO the kid didn't deserve to die for it, any more than the zoo keeper who was torn up by this same cat last December "deserved what she got" when feeding the animal through the feeding bars.

Yup. Pending hotel/lodging nightmares, I'll be here til the 2nd. Hope to see ya here!

Can I play?

There are some brands and types of discs that aren't compatible with HD DVD players. You may need to burn to a different brand. This used to be an extremely common problem in the early days of both CD's and DVDs. It's likely that we're going to see more and more incompatibilities, particularly on the HD DVD front due to how specific those machines are. Some of the BD players aren't much better, none of my desktop-burned vids would play on the BDA 300 until the 2.6 update.

Hop in the Explorer, Faris....we're only 10 hours away. Bring your wingsuits (besides, I need another one). Jumping a wingsuit from the tailgate is a ball. It's warmer here, no snow. Plenty of free space for the baby to run around, shade for the family is plentiful. So are baby sitters if you need one.

Loved it. Ken Follett at his best, IMO.

re: switches, if the 10D is the same as one of the ladies on our DZ owns, then the connection is the same as a Canon. I used my tongue switch on her camera when she first brought it in. Didn't pay attention to the camera model # as wasn't interested in Pentax, but it seemed like a decent camera.

Some cams will pass PAL and others won't. Your easiest bet is likely to find a PAL camcorder and Xfer it that way, or find an NTSC camcorder that can pass the PAL over firewire. Any editing app (other than Avid) should be able to correctly see it if the camcorder can pass it. NLE's don't care about PAL vs NTSC. However, some NLE's require that you set up a PAL project first, prior to capture of PAL streams.

You're welcome. Glad you enjoyed it.