What went wrong to cause this?
 

BACKGROUND OF THE CLIP: I was in Guyana, South America and we took a trip to Kaiteur Falls (the worlds largest single-drop waterfall). In the 10-seater plane I was sitting next to the pilot, and he popped open the passenger window as we made the pass over the falls. So I was partially out of the window of the airplane shooting this clip. When watching the clip on vimeo, try to focus on one spot and watch for the image-shake. The footage is shaky because it's handheld from an airplane but thats not what i'm worried about.

It seems like the image sensors are getting bounced around due to vibrations from the airplane/wind, giving an odd wave blur that basically ruins the clip. I can't see a way to fix this in post, but if anybody knows one, let me know.
Thanks
-Jeff

Video (vimeo, may not show up well): V1u disaster - Kaiteur Falls, Guyana, South America on Vimeo

Still images (higher quality) (in sequence)
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c4...guyana/1-1.jpg
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c4...a/guyana/2.jpg
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c4...a/guyana/3.jpg

If you have FCP 6.x trying applying the SmoothCam filter. It may not fix the wave distortion, but it's worth a try.

Jeff, your basic problem is that you had image stabilization on and the image stabilizer couldn't keep up with the vibration of the airplane, your movements and the buffeting of the wind all at once. Unfortunately, in this case you would have been better off to raise your shutter speed a bit (say 1/100) and turn the stabilizer off.

There is no fix in post as the wave blur is recorded to tape and the result of the stabilizer working to correct the vibration.

thanks rick,
I was wondering if it had something to do with image stabalizer. Thanks for the help

You may also want to search the forum for 'jello' and 'rolling shutter' for further info. Although this is indeed apparently linked to vibrations and shake, there doesn't seem to be a clear statement about when the jello effect will appear. Maybe it's linked to a specific resonance frequency for vibrations, which shifts away when disengaging the OIS. Some posters mentioned other impacting factors such as zoom factor or shutter speed, some others believed not.