Viewfinders for outside shooting in bright conditions

[John Nantz]

Paul - The experience you went through makes good point, that is, safety is another reason for getting one’s head out.

In the case of a sailboat there’s this thing called a boom and it’s not called that for nothing. What one really has to be careful of is getting hit by the boom ‘cuz it can cause severe head and cerebral damage. Heck, getting hit by it is a concern even when not being distracted by something like shooting video.

There are numerous situations that can cause unannounced surprises. Every wave is different and trying to hold the cam steady is extremely difficult because the boat surges.
Wakes from other boats can easily be overlooked and like the boom, they don’t call them wakes for nothing. Wind gusts cause sudden changes in heal/deck angle so while fixating on something with the cam the boat suddenly jerks. Bottom line: looking outside and away from the cam at what is happening is important for safety sake.

[Steven Digges]

A Jib? Wow, your obviously much better at it than I am. I would not even think about a 360 shot without a known repeatable pattern like your motorcycle track. I have covered a lot of motorsports. Like you said, it is easy if it does not kill you, you know where the subject is "supposed" to be. Your tracking a fast moving human hanging from strings with a bedsheet over his head and you don't know where he is going.....That's hard!

I completely understand you want the beauty and stability a tripod provides. But your trying to do the impossible here. You do not have position or predictable movement working for you. Three shots forward an BAM, some guy flys around behind you! Have you at least tried or considered shoulder mount? My eye would be glued to the viewfinder (like Doug said) and my body position would be set up to "unwind" in the most likely follow direction and anticipating a pivot on the ball of one foot. Tough shot, but maybe? You already know blue sky is very forgiving of movement if you keep the subject reasonably framed. Once they break the horizon line for landing is when handheld will really show. Does it have to be a beauty shot or are you more concerned with documenting it no matter what? Is there an end client that needs broadcast footage and expects one guy to get it? We both know thats not going to happen. Or is it bragging rights video the jumpers can buy? For the later I would definitely go shoulder.

Paul, if I'm not mistaken you have been in the business for a long time like I have? I'm guessing your good with that JVC on your shoulder. When I was trained to shoot with 35 pound Beta cams the first thing I was taught is that it is not about your shoulder. We were trained that getting smooth shots was all about how you controlled your body movements. In other words, I was doing the duck walk before I ever even knew what a steady cam was!

John, Sailboats are why GoPros were invented. Don't drown out there. I probably can't remember all of the times I have been injured doing event coverage.

Kind Regards,

Steve

[Paul R Johnson]

Shoulder mount is impossible sadly - here's the full 1920x1080 frame of the exit - this is with a B4 on a ⅓" chip, with 2X converter in. Even touching the pan bar does a big move at that kind of zoom - so I go from this, down to the ground.

The jib is small only 1.2 to the mounting plate, but my idea to try (and probably discard in the first five minutes) is that left/right movement would be the jib, leaving tilt on the pan bar. I could position the jib arm as a replacement for the tripod, and use pan and tilt, but then walking backwards on clear ground could be a full rotation. Can't tell till I try it. Clearly, I simply cannot do a 360 around the tripod glued to the side, but I might be able to do it with the jib - I really don't know.

Steven - yep, and the lens is off one of the two betacams I still have. I can't actually believe I was ever fit enough to shoulder those. The video is for evidence of competence, hence why top to bottom is important and the wobbles really don't matter too much as the stuff is never going to see light of day - more personal pride I think. Pretty well all my paid work never gets shown to anyone. I do theatre archive stuff mainly - so it's complete shows, stuck into a dusty cupboard and pulled out when a producer says - I'm sure we did that before at X theatre with 'insert star name' - and they pull them out and rehash them, or see how a technical issue was solved, that kind thing. Those require very little other than what a standard lens can grab. The parachute thing is long end of the lens stuff to head to feet at about 6m or so, rarely wider - so stability is quite tricky. I can't keep it even in the viewfinder at that focal length. Probably the hardest I've done - bar one attempt at following cricket balls in flight - which I simply could not get the hang of at all. I always got the wide shots! I got the feeling I just don't have the dexterity,

[Steven Digges]

Well, I am certainly out of ideas for you. Your photo of the drop gave me a "are you kidding me?" reaction. From the plane to the ground with the 2X engaged I would be shooting a lot of pretty blue sky!

I started in this business as a still shooter specializing in sports. Many years ago I had the honor of covering the Olympic games in Albertville, France. When shooting goal type sports it is common to take a position behind one of the goals and shoot with two cameras. One with a long fast lens for the far goal side (300mm f2.8 or 600mm f4) and one with a shorter lens for the near goal end. One night I had to cover a big hockey game between the USA and France. It was my first hockey game. Foolish young me started the game with the 600mm f4 screwed on imagining I was going to get dramatic close ups of a goal with the goalie's eyes in the shot as the puck goes between his legs in defeat. Ha! What a fast lesson I learned! By the end of the first period the long lenses were off and I was sitting on the case one of them goes in. Best use possible for a 600mm at a hockey game. I have covered a lot of fast moving sports but I was completely humbled that night. I did not get a single hero shot. I have never covered anything as difficult and fast as hockey. That was when I learned my lessons about unpredictable movement and long lenses. It was a tough puck to swallow.

Good luck Paul. Keeping those guys in frame from the plane to the ground 6M in front of you sounds like an impossible shot to me. By the time they got close to the ground I would be a lot wider than head to feet.

Please let us know how it goes.

Steve

[Paul R Johnson]

I know it's rather stupid. It was actually started by our friend Ryan when he started talking about long lens wildlife stuff - so I bought an adaptor for my old B4 lenses, and while the images are not remotely amazingly sharp, the 2x and the 1.8x magnification for the sensor size mismatch give a great effective focal length.

I went to the local parachute centre and asked if they minded me trying the lens out and they were interested in what I got so I've been back to do some extra bits. That image was 6000 ft - about 4 minutes in the air. There's no real money in it of course - parachuting is maybe a wheels up to feet down of maybe 10 minutes, but then a long wait - so you spend all day for not huge amounts of material.

I've got the monitor on order, but the good weather will be diving soon. I'll try the jib idea to try out the 360 capability, but I agree with you - unlikely to work. Worth a try though.

[John Nantz]

Too bad you couldn't find a way to get a B-roll shot at the start of the dive as they jump out of the open door like this one:
https://www.avemco.com
In the lower right corner of the web page picture [with the bird] there are 4 white dots ... click on the third dot.

Then follow it [the B-roll video shot out the door] up with the telephoto [shot] on the ground.

[Paul R Johnson]

Love it!
Same plane - with my son just on his way down - first freefall.

Somewhere in my archive I've got some Red Devils in plane stuff I shot years ago, and it's what started me and then later my son doing this cray stuff - however, back when I did it, there was no accelerated free fall - it was 3000ft and static lines till you got good enough to be trusted and safe. Now, they do a days training, then shove you out at 10,000 and two others come down with you in case you panic, or mess up. Didn't do that in 1980! I'm far, far too old now!

[John Nantz]

Paul - I never heard of the Red Devils until your post #22 and today I read a news article that mentioned them and would have had no clue about them without your post.

There is a guy (Mr Cortmann from Aberdeen) who is 97 years old who participated in this 75th anniversary parachute drop (you read that right, 9…7… y.o.) commemorating a WW II parachute drop event. He had participated in the original event back then when he was 22 years old. This time, though, he jumped with a member of the Red Devils parachute team.

The jump this time turned out good but back then he wasn’t so lucky. Out of 35,000 who parachuted in the original drop (the biggest number in history up to that time), there were 6,500 who were captured as POWs … and he was one of them.

His comment about the jump this time: It was “Thoroughly terrifying”

Personally, for someone who is 97 I’d be very concerned about possible bone breakage but I'm sure this was medically checked and the landings are probably softer now. Its really good it ended well.

[Paul R Johnson]

Yes - the bridge too far WW2 action has been mangled a bit in recent years and the numbers have gone down. The Red Devils parachute team have been very prominent on the circuit here certainly since I was aware of them growing up in the 60s/70s. The UK news have covered the parachute drops pretty well. The tandem jumps they now do are quite common with elderly people, and the rules here just require a doctors note to say they're basically healthy, and the landings are quite gentle, as they land 'on' the partner. I used to parachute in my 20s - but while I consider myself healthy I didn't take up the offer of some jumps as I've now got a temperamental back and my wife banned me! Seeing the old guys still wearing their Red Berets goes down very well here. For the first time in a long time, the schools are doing things properly, and they often get the old soldiers in to pass along the history and the story. This was NOT popular in the 90s/00s for some crazy reason. I was adopted at birth, and I've discovered only recently that my dad was a USAF guy, stationed here in England, and I have a full brother somewhere in the States, but my attempts to find him have failed. The US forces were really helpful, they found my dads death records and where he is buried within 20 minutes! Amazing - and totally different to over here where it's weeks and weeks for anything.

I suppose WW2 will soon be just history when all these folk have passed on, nice to hear you saw some of it.

[Paul R Johnson]

I've had a chance to try out the high Briteness monitor I bought - a Feelworld P7S 7". Metal box, SDI and HDMI ins and outs and it's pretty useful. One day to try outside and while it's better than the camera viewfinder because it's bigger, it's not a good way to keep focus in sunlight. I'm not disappointed as I wasn't really expecting it to work well - but the focus assist does work on some subjects. It came with a handy D tap cable, and SDI cable so easy to hook up, and the embedded audio feature works well too with on screen meters. Three preset buttons - so you can programme these to do your favourite things. Focus assist and a focus helping zoom function, or example.

Pretty neat device and can also run from Sony batteries as many things nowadays can.