Incidents involving video and experience for beginners

[FrancoR 0]

Hi,

all over the place there is the question on how much experience someone should have before starting video. All experienced jumpers mention that there is a lot of experience an very good control of you body in freefall required. This, for sure, is the most important part if you want to shot perfect video.Concerning safety it is worth to take a look at the incident reports.
http://www.skydivingfatalities.info
A search for the word video in all fatalaties shows you this page.
Video incidents
Not all of them involve the Cameraflyer, here are the numbers that (possibly) do:
1 cause: Canopy Collision/Low turn Experience 387 jumps
3 cause: Malfunction Experience 400 jumps
7 cause: Malfunction Experience 780 jumps
in all three cases video was possibly or part of the problem

4 cause: CRW jump, Slider entaglement on the camera Experience 2000 jumps
23 cause: Entaglement with Eyepiece Experience: 323 jumps
24 cause: Entaglement mit Front mounted still Camera
Experience: 3000 jumps
In all these 3 cases the camera was the problem.

Experience doesn't save you, if you call someone experienced with 500 jumps, then there is no real tendency for inexperienced cameraflyers to get killed more often. From reading all the incident reports things that can save you are probably:

-Snag free Helmet, no Suspensionlinehooks (Ringssights), no gaps, no lenses sticking out, nothing.
-a good cutaway system
-Nothing in your sight, Ringsights should flip up, reinforcements for paper holes should be transparent
-an audible is highly recomended
-a certain amount of experience
-skydive like you normaly would, don't care much about what is going to be on your Video, that will keep you from getting distracted.

I guess this is the advice that should be given to someone like me who has just a little more than 200 jumps and that started Video. I know thats not the recepie for great video, but i am not jumping camera for profit, just for fun. Great Video will develop with more experience and routine that keeps me from getting distracted.

Ok, thats my opinion, what do you think about it?

FrancoR