canon 350d rebel

[yardart 0]

How to set up cam for freefall. Thanks in advance

[freefalle 0]

well, what exatcly are you asking, what settings to use, or how to mount the camera on the helmet, either way you need to do one of 2 things, or both, give us more information about what you need to know, or forgive me for saying the "Do a search"

[yardart 0]

Think I got the mounting down. I was just wondering about camera settings. sport maybe?

[Icon134 0]

I believe some people have had good results with sports mode...

but you might be better off learning a bit about how the camera works on the ground and use the settings you find most successful.

there are some that only shoot in RAW format, some swear by keeping the lenses in Manual focus, many recommend using a polarizer... of coures I say this but only because I've done searches not because I've actually jumped my SLR yet.

Livin' on the Edge... sleeping with my rigger's wife...

[snafuhere 0]

I have experimented with differents settings and here are the results (350D with 18-55 kit lens and tounge switch):
1. I do not use sports mode
AF was no good, backfocusing on exits etc.
due to the AF/AE lock overexposure on exit was tipical
ISO 400 not the best quality

2. I use S priority (at 500) with CF4 set to 3
on the ground or in the plane I point at something located at the distance of 5-6 ft and set the cocus there
once the focus is set it remains set for the whole session
CF4 set to 3 means that the shutter release does not activate focus and it does not lock exposure
every shot has it's own metering
I use ISO 200 (400 when it's realy cloudy)
wb set to sun/clouds
metering mode set to center weighter avg
AF mode one shot (efectively I use manual-locked focus at 5-6 ft)
drive mode - continous
image quality L (jpg)

this is the best one can get from kit lens IMHO
-

https://www.facebook.com/1skydive/

[vdschoor 0]

I shoot mostly fully manual.

400 F8, at ISO 100 for the "normal" bright day

If I shoot in auto, I go to Tv 320 (shutter priority) at ISO 100

The reason I go with the lowest ISO speeds possible is for obvious reasons.. enlargements, but also the big white area right at the horizon.. the higher your ISO speed, the bigger that white area is..

For most jumps though I shoot fully manual and I set my camera at about 10K, I meter off the wing of the airplane or something and make sure that the sun is in the position where I want it during the skydive..

Iwan

[bmcd308 0]

fantastic composition. I love it.

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www.jumpelvis.com

[steveorino 7]

I am not a photographer who skydives. (I wish I was) I am a skydiver who shoots photographs. I have not understood why guys set their manual focus for a set distance. Say I set it for 5-6 feet -- a nice distance for tandems. On exit, I could be more than that easily for a good shot that includes tandem and plane. I get closer than 5-6 feet at times too. Then when they deploy and I flip on my back the separation gets larger. That is why I use auto focus. Am I missing something?

steveOrino

[snafuhere 0]

Am I missing something?

yes: hyperfocal distance

focus set at 6 ft with aperture at 11 (or more)
means subjects at 3 ft up to infinity are in focus

basics of photography - my father told me about that some 30 years ago

https://www.facebook.com/1skydive/

[bmcd308 0]

>> I have not understood why guys set their manual focus for a set distance.<<

You do, too, your camera just picks it for you. If you use a small aperture (big number) and a short focal length (small number), the camera can have everything from about 1/2 the distance "focused on" to infinity in reasonably sharp focus. If the camera picks infinity as the distance on which to focus, you lose this neat little photographic trick.

Ever wonder how landscape photogs get those pix that have really sharp foreground flowers and really sharp background mountains? They do it by shooting through a small hole (aperture) and by focusing at the lens's hyperfocal distance - which will always be well short of infinity.

Brent

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www.jumpelvis.com

[jmidgley 0]

There's a great depth of field calculator at http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html. Feed in the camera, lens and settings and it will calculate the depth of field. Frinstance:

Canon 350D, 12mm lens, f/8. Focus on a subject at 3.15' and everything from 1.57' to infinity will be within the range of acceptable sharpness.

Exercise for the reader: pick f/5.6 and see what happens to the depth of field! Change the ISO, not the aperture, to get the shutter speed you need!

John

[Costyn 1]

Quote

Exercise for the reader: pick f/5.6 and see what happens to the depth of field! Change the ISO, not the aperture, to get the shutter speed you need!

John

Cool, that was really educational, thanks!
I took my first freefall pictures with my 350D with kit lens in sports mode, and I wasn't really happy with the result. A lot of out of focus pictures, so this hyperfocal distance is really useful to know. I have had my camera for about a week now, and it's been a lot of fun learning all this photography stuff and experimenting.

What shutter speed do you recommend aiming for? (nudging the ISO around?) I see people recommending from 350 to 500 ?

Cheers

Costyn van Dongen - http://www.flylikebrick.com/ - World Wide Wingsuit News

[The111 1]

Quote

Change the ISO, not the aperture, to get the shutter speed you need!

Hmm, this made me think of something interesting.

On my XT...

We have "AV" mode in which aperture (and ISO) are fixed, while shutterspeed is automatically determined.

We have "TV" mode in which shutterspeed (and ISO) are fixed, while aperture is automatically determined.

What we need (is there such a thing?) is a mode where both aperture and shutterspeed are fixed, but ISO is determined automatically. Would that be useful, does anybody think?

www.WingsuitPhotos.com

[vdschoor 0]

Quote

What we need (is there such a thing?) is a mode where both aperture and shutterspeed are fixed, but ISO is determined automatically. Would that be useful, does anybody think?

That would be the worst feature ever.. all it takes is a couple of seconds right around 10K to set your camera up right.
Having the ISO change can severly impact your photos, and I cant think of ANY way that this could be useful.

Every step in ISO means twice as sensitive, which is an enormous step.

ISO 200 is twice as sensitive to light as ISO 100
ISO 400 is twice as sensitive to light as ISO 400

and the quality of the shot is impacted too.. an ISO 800 photo is not as easily enlarged as a ISO 100 photo.

[The111 1]

I posted the same question on a serious digital photography forum and at least one person not only thought it was a decent idea, but also mentioned that some DSLR's in the near future will offer this feature.

I agree that it is easy to set ISO manually, but I am not sure that an "auto-ISO" would be as horrible as you think. Heck, the fully auto modes already do just that, "auto-ISO" (and "auto-everything-else"). Granted, the photos I've taken from fully auto mode are not the best, but they are not unbearably bad either.

What I am suggesting is "auto-ISO" with simultaneous AV/TV priority, which is somewhere between fully manual and fully auto, just like the current AV and TV modes. Only this mode does not exist yet.

EDIT: An example of "where it might be useful". For some reason or another, you really want DOF/aperture AND shutterspeed rigidly controlled. You know that most likely, the lighting conditions of your shooting environment will warrant an ISO 100 setting. However, due to dispersed cloud cover or your desire for shots from various angles, there are a few cases where ISO 200 would have worked better, with your fixed shutter settings. Now it's possible to get both in the same jump. Even in one jump lighting conditions can vary greatly based on the shot/angle. When I shoot in TV mode, the aperture settings (auto-determined) from one jump can vary from 3.5 to 11, for example. This could be due to the imperfection of the autodetection, but when the shots at both end of the scale look equally well-lit, I would think perhaps the auto-detect did a good job.

www.WingsuitPhotos.com

[bmcd308 0]

I'm with the111 on this. If you think of ISO as picture quality, shutter speed as ability to stop action, and aperture as depth of field, this new mode will allow me to pick depth of field and ability to freeze action while I let quality slide. There are situations where a really noisy shot with adequate dof and no motion blur would be better than the alternatives currently available.

You are correct that a person could choose an ISO and go with it for skydiving, but I am thinking more of a street photog setup or a PJ setup where you might be in bright streets at one moment and in dim alleys the next.

Brent

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www.jumpelvis.com

[Fast 0]

Quote

I'm with the111 on this. If you think of ISO as picture quality, shutter speed as ability to stop action, and aperture as depth of field, this new mode will allow me to pick depth of field and ability to freeze action while I let quality slide. There are situations where a really noisy shot with adequate dof and no motion blur would be better than the alternatives currently available.

You are correct that a person could choose an ISO and go with it for skydiving, but I am thinking more of a street photog setup or a PJ setup where you might be in bright streets at one moment and in dim alleys the next.

Brent

The purist in me thinks that having a setting that auto-changes ISO is overkill in an already over done point and shoot SLR world. I personally can't think of a time where I would want the ISO to change on its own while skydiving or shooting pictures on the street.

~D
Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me.
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