HYPOXIC! Providers of the HYPEYE camcorder controller and indication system for action sports
Sony HDR-CX100/ HDR-CX105 for Action Sports
Wednesday, 20 May 2009 22:04
Purpose
To create a synopsis of all the posts found on dropzone.com's photography forum on the Sony HDR-CX100/ Sony HDR-CX105 post. There are tons of photos and videoon that post, mainly starting at page 20 and going up. If you are looking at mounting ideas, please scroll through those pages!
Use a ¼" mounting screw and bolt the camera to the top of the helmet. Add some sort of strap and rubber or cork foot to prevent it from spinning off.
Note: Try to mount the lens against the helmet with rubber and/or some sort of restraint. This will reduce shake. Again check out this post for photos of various helmet mounting examples.
Lenses
For most of these you'll need an adapter from 37mm to 30mm. The Century lenses come with metal adapters. The Raynox come with plastic adapters that should be replaced with metal ones at the discretion of the skydiver.
If you have one, hold on to it but think about upgrading. Good for 4:3 setups and for those wanting a .3 low profiles lens
Note: Multi-element lenses allow for zoom through the lens. This is good for grabbing landing footage, scenes from the airplane, and footage while under canopy. I personally set my zoom and focus once and never touch it but your situation may vary.
Archiving
Use the software provided with the camera and connect the camera up via USB to the PC
Manually: Using a card adapter and card reader copy the following files into your own archiving scheme:
HD footage MTS extension (AVCHD footage)
SD footage MPG extension (MPEG 2 footage)
Pictures JPG extension
Playing
Note: AVCHD is meant as a transport therefore on most machines it does not play very fluidly. You may want to get in the habit of rendering to a more computer friendly format before viewing.
Apple's Final Cut Express 4, Final Cut Pro 6.0.1, and iMovie '08-'09 (iMovie is bundled with all new Apple computers; Final Cut Express and Pro are sold separately) do not support editing of AVCHD clips directly. Imported AVCHD clips are automatically converted into the Apple Intermediate Codec format, which requires more hard disk space (40GB per hour as opposed to 13.5GB per hour for Standard Definition DV), a more powerful machine (an Intel-based Mac), and a more recent OS (Mac OS X 10.5). Final Cut Pro 6.0.5 "logs and transfers" the footage from AVCHD to AppleProRes by default and also gives the option of converting to the Apple Intermediate Codec. It does not allow native transferring of the *.m2ts clips nor directly editing them. iMovie does not currently support AVCHD Lite used by some later model Panasonic still cameras.[31]
Cyberlink Power Director 7, which also supports GPU offloading for both ATI and NVidia graphics cards in the latest patch.
Nero 7 Ultra Edition Enhanced and Nero 8 Ultra Edition are software suites which contains the AVCHD editor, found in Nero Vision. Also included in this suite is Nero Showtime, which plays AVCHD files natively. Edited video can also be burned to DVD discs in AVCHD format for playback on hardware players or in Blu-ray format.
Shoot for the edit. But luckily if you mess up, play the footage back, press divide and split the footage in two. Then delete the half that is bad.
No longer use fades but tricks like pan to the sky at the end of the shot then pan from the sky to the next shot.
Slow motion: It stalls for a tad so you may not want to use this camera on Cessna Dropzones where you try to elongate the jump by replaying the exit and slow motioning it. Plus there is no remote control so you'll need the display open. Look at upgrading to an NLE workflow.
You can no longer firewire to the master tape for evening website uploads. Work with your webmaster for an easier workflow.
Typical latency from when you press the button to the shot is around 1.5seconds and up to 3 seconds.
Test by recording and pressing the Photo button on your camera, this is how the photo kit will work.
Last Updated on Thursday, 21 May 2009 09:33
HYPEYE D PRO
Sunday, 22 March 2009 21:47
This is a short commercial for the Hypeye D Pro camera controller, featuring Mark Kirschenbaum. This product is awesome for controlling Sony camcorders used in action sports. Biking, motocross, kayaking, BASE, Mountain biking, ATVs, horseback, skydiving, skiing, snowboarding, skateboarding, rollerblading, and other high-speed, hands-free sport photographers will want one of these.
Last Updated on Sunday, 22 March 2009 21:53
HDR-CX100 Test Skydives
Monday, 23 February 2009 10:57
A few jumps from Skydive Arizona's (Eloy) Freefly money meet was captured with Sony's latest AVCHD camcorder. A standard def .3x lens was used during most of the jumps since the closeness of the subject and I did not have access to a .3 high def lens at the time. There are a few .5x HD lens scenes. Thanks go out to Cynthia Currie and Steve Curtis for some great video. All jumps used the HYPEYE D PRO from Hypoxic for control
Last Updated on Monday, 23 February 2009 11:00
Sony HDR-CX100
Wednesday, 18 February 2009 13:01
We just had the opportunity to play around with Sony's latest High Definition AVCHD based camcorder the HDR-CX100 and are super stoked about it for skydiving. If you have not heard, this camera has EIS so it will not have flutter in sitfly and high burble positions. Its smaller than a PC1000 and can easily be side mounted. This thing is tiny... take a look at this picture of the cx100 on a cookie composites helmet. BH Photo Video also now sells the HYPEYE D PRO!
One note, so that you do not require to have the display open and still control the camera with the HYPEYE D PRO there is a setting in the third menu to not shut down the camera with the display closed. Here is a picture I stole from DSE
Get Hypoxic LLC released the new HYPEYE D MINI. The HYPEYE D MINI is a status indicator for most Sony Camcorders equipped with the AV/R (half moon, 'D') connector. It's simplistic design, super bright indicators and robust construction make it perfect for action sports videographers. Product is now available here online or from one of our many distributors.