Has anyone found a solution to shooting outside viewfinders? I did a job and a few others rolled in on the wave of that one - I'm shooting aircraft and parachutists from the ground on a shoulder mount type camera with a side eyepiece type viewfinder and a hinge out LCD panel. The eyepiece type works best, but for some shots I need to pan quite rapidly and cannot keep my eye to the eyepiece rubber and pan that large range without falling over the tripod legs. I'm thinking about something I can use that comes with a sun shield. however, while I could fit a focus remote to the lens as well as the zoom demand, this makes manual focus from the side impossible. Does anyone have any tips for how to see a decent image when the sun is shining?

Paul - shooting in bright light is the same problem I have. The LCD screens just aren’t bright enough and shooting with an aftermarket slip-on shade helps but just doesn’t cut it.

While your effort is to track moving objects while standing on terrafirma, my effort is to stand on a moving platform (sailboat) while tracking objects, some stationary (trying to keep them stationary) and some moving objects. Therefor essentially the same scenario. Trying to hold the cam with one hand (instead of two) and shield the sun (even with the sun shade) is difficult. Using the viewfinder is really not an option because one can’t track what is going on outside the frame and because on a shifting boat one can easily loose balance.

One thing I’ve seriously considered is going with an Atomos system and their sunshade. The Atomos screen is much brighter than the LCD and the sunshade with its peephole would be really effective; however, for use in the field it would be pretty ungainly but everything is a tradeoff. The entire system isn’t cheap, either, but there are some other plusses besides just the viewing part so if those are useful than that would be a plus. Unfortunately, the AX700 doesn’t output 10-bit color so that particular option isn’t one of them for me.

Atomos has a 5-inch model but that isn’t much larger than the LCD screen. One very import thing is to be able to see what is going on outside the viewfinder or LCD screen and not have the head buried. Remember the old pictures from the 1800s with the photographer looking at his camera under a black blanket?

A relatively cheap solution I found was the FeelWorld FW279 monitor. It's 2200nits, which is bright enough to use outdoors. Add a sunshield if you want even better viewing, but it might not be necessary based on my tests.

Thanks for that oren - I'd not heard of this, but review comments are all pretty positive and as you say - the price is great. Does it really not need a hood in bright outside light, that's a but of a tough one?

This 1200 Nit monitor is getting some pretty decent reviews for bright outdoor use.

Chris Young

PortKeys HS7T Monitor: 1200 Nit HDMI & SDI 4K On-Camera 7" Monitor - YouTube

Some really interesting products. This review did ring alarm bells for some of the others. Latency will be a killer for me if its bad. I really cannot hack latency in viewfinders. Music videos with drums is just horrible. Like fingernails on a blackboard!

I live in one of the brightest and hottest environments in the USA. The desert around Phoenix, AZ poses many challenges for video shooting.

To deal with the constantly bright sun I have to bite the bullet and pay for SmallHD monitors. My go to for outside work is the 702 Bright. The original MSRP was around $1,200.00. It has come down to currently $800.00 at B&H. Thats a lot of cash but it is a "you get what you pay for thing".

I can see my image outside, I have a sun shade for it too I can use depending on the position of the sun. A monitor like this comes with many benefits besides being bright. The most important one is the quality of the image under any condition. I have learned to love this thing. The image is truly amazing. It is as valuable in the studio as it is in the desert. With a high quality monitor like this what you see is what you get. I trust it completely for everything a monitor should be telling me. It has a full featured software set of tools I like. The SDI and HDMI inputs will also pass through and convert to each other ie: SDI in can give you HDMI or SDI out.

Bottom line-your not just paying for it to be bright, you are paying for it to be an excellent image and it does that. I have had many monitors of all types, nothing else is in the same ballpark.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1186278-REG/smallhd_mon_702_702_bright_7_daylight.html/BI/2855/KBID/3801


Kind Regards,

Steve

Thanks Steve, I really didn't;t know there was this much choice?

I shall have a bit of a research session - thanks.
p

Thanks for that oren - I'd not heard of this, but review comments are all pretty positive and as you say - the price is great. Does it really not need a hood in bright outside light, that's a but of a tough one?

Regardless of the brightness (and this unit is nice and bright), I'd still recommend a sun hood. It's a very cheap way of improving your viewing conditions. But the fact that I was able to see it well enough at high-noon was enough to convince me to keep it. I have a SmallHD 701 (not the high-bright), and it's a much MUCH better interface by a long shot. It's not bright enough for outdoor use, even with a sunshade. So I took a chance on the FW279, and it's the better tool for outdoor use (at a price I could afford).

The eyepiece type works best, but for some shots I need to pan quite rapidly and cannot keep my eye to the eyepiece rubber and pan that large range without falling over the tripod legs.

My advice is to work on your shooting technique. Tripping over the tripod during a pan should not be an issue. You must be doing something wrong. And you're never going to find a better method of tracking focus, maintaining nice framing, judging exposure, and blocking out ambient light than from having your eyeball pressed to the viewfinder. There is no substitute and you just need to work on yourshooting technique. I shoot airshows, sports, wildlife, etc. all the time and I would never, ever, ever, consider doing it from an LCD panel no matter how good or how bright it was. You must use the viewfinder. And a nice bonus is that you don't have to spend any extra money, you don't have to power another device, and you haven't added any extra baggage to the rig.

Always willing to accept tips on technique, but how do you do a 360 degree turn around your point that maybe requires the comple spin to last a count of maybe two seconds, while maintaining framing and focus on somebody dropping from around a hundred feet to ground level? Physically being glued to the side of the camera and having to step over the tripod legs? I cannot do it, so must be doing it wrong. How do you do it?
http://www.limelight.org.uk/paracam1.JPG
http://www.limelight.org.uk/paracam2.JPG

I am a huge proponent of tripods whenever possible, thats a given. But...there comes a time when it just cant be done and you just described one of those scenarios. Once a fast moving subject has the potential to break the vertical plane in front of me and over my head for 2 seconds of footage I must get that camera is going on my shoulder.

Your trying to capture a multi camera shot with a single camera. One camera on a tripod and one on a shoulder is the only way to be sure you can continuously cover such a difficult shot. Some guy dropping out of the sky over your head and flying a circle around you for the last two seconds is not a viewfinder, monitor, or technique issue, it is a camera issue. If the subject must be tracked all the way to the ground and the flight pattern is that unpredictable it is not a one camera tripod shot.

If it has to be one camera I have to ask why are you in a position during landing where the subject can fly behind you? I have shot a lot of sports. Not once was the range of coverage I was responsible for ever behind me when working from sticks. Paul, you have been shooting for years. There must be a reason your not keeping the subject in front of you I don't understand? I know the subject is flying a unpredictable pattern but how big is the LZ? Can you work from the side of it and zoom in as they land?

Steve

The problem is as you guessed. Realistically, the ideal place for the camera is probably 50m downwind from the landing point, but there's a couple of issues with that location. First is it's an active runway so while with high viz, I'm able to be there, to actually go there and back needs permission. Second problem is just a practical one - too far to find out the things about to happen. The location near the LZ is outside the hangar, and while the arc for most drops is probably a maximum of 60 degrees, and the actual drop point downwind, this means that the alternative location wouldn't have a clear view of the exit. Where I was allows the drop to be shot, and the canopy followed down to ground in one shot (with one cameraman). If I went top to two, the other position to shoot the exit would be best upwind, but of course that camera would be useless on landings because they land into wind. So two shooters would be good but the budget won't cover it. The position, to the side of the LZ covers everything, but the occasional less skilled parachutist who delays their turn, requires that awkward 360. As it was, I simply didn't use any of these 'stray' drops - but can't hop the legs!

I do have a plan B to try next session. I have a heavy duty short jib I'm wondering if I lock the pan, can I walk the jib around for the pan. I'll perhaps drag it out and see if this works. Inertia and mass would make the pan quite steady, as changes in speed are resisted. I could lock off the tilt on the jib. I wonder if this would work. The monitor could mount to the jib once it arrives? Never seen this done before, but it could be a way of doing unplanned 360's?? What do you think?

There is an issue with having one’s eyes concentrating on something while at the same time, simultaneously, trying to be aware of what is happening in the surroundings and out of frame. There may be something out there that one want’s to quickly grab a shot of or re-frame and the decision time is a fraction of.a second. This is not Hollywood, there is no script, only a general idea of a plan of action, and there is no “Take 2”. The greymatter between the ears is really, really busy and very stressed. On top of all that, there is the sense of balance that must be maintained while moving the head around and that’s no small item.

For one, I can really relate to Paul’s situation. While mine is different there is a lot of similarities and one big one is knowing what is going on outside the frame. That monitor that Oren mentioned is probably gong to be my next kit purchase unless something else pops up. Not excited about sticking a monitor on the cam but the viewfinder with it’s great eyecup just doesn’t cut it, and as with many things in life there are tradeoffs. This is one of ‘em. Nothings perfect and you only go around once.

Read John McCully’s post #1. For one who has been around on this earth long enough, that’s me, I can relate. John’s post (https://www.dvinfo.net/forum/tripod-sticks-heads/537004-time-bite-bullet-again.html) speaks volumes. As I write this I’m going to pull the trigger on Oren’s monitor and ask questions later.

Brightness rules!

And besides, as Cher of Sony & Cher fame said, “Money is meant to be kept in circulation”.
Note: wrote this before Paul’s post #13.

I smiled when I read John's comment on being glued to the V/F When I used to do sports OBs with box lenses I once got a nasty hit, and came close to breaking my nose. I was shooting speedway - do you have this in the US? a sand based track in an oval and motor cycles that have a footrest on one side and they use their foot to keep balance as the bikes go mad around the track. They often flip and crash into each other. My shot was at the bikes coming towards me with a gradual zoom pull back to keep them the same size in the frame, and then as soon as they cut away from me, it would be a crash zoom back to the othe end and do it again, and again. You kind of get a bit numb to what is actually happening until somebody falls off or theres a change, when you reframe to whatever the new action is. One circuit the leader came towards me getting closer and closer, but I didn't notice he wasn't turning and it was only when the zoom bottomed out I realised he was close then bang - he piled into the rail about a couple of feet from the lens. I'm sure if he'd hit me I'd have got the hood in the nose, or worse, but despite seeing him in the viewfinder, no alarm bell rang till the bang! My mind was working out I think if the lens had jammed or the demand broken till the thump!

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.

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

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,

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

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.