Impressive. But what was lucky was that it didn't land on someone's head. Because then we'd be talking about how much time in jail the instructor would have to do, instead of the benefits of plastic cameras on home-made mounting plates.
Oosty wrote:
I don't think the relative mass makes any difference at all. Gravity acts equally on all bodies irrespective of mass which is why a brick and a penny dropped from the same height will hit the ground simultaneously.
This is true but ONLY in a vacuum. Wind resisitence has a very dramatic effect...hense why a feather falls so slowly compared to a brick. Also, relative mass (regardless of wind resistance) definately has an effect on impact...I'd rather be hit with a feather at 120mph than a brick at half that speed!
sav1977 wrote:
Please tell me the 1/4-20 tripod screw isn't the only thing holding onto the camera in a 140mph dive...
That's a good question...I used to do some sky-diving and the master divers that did photography used (in addition to the tripod screw) a super heavy duty 'velcro' type material by 3M (called Dual Lock) to secure the camera.
This wasn't his first jump with this rig. It must have been a rougher opening of the chute or he didn't check all the links properly. He felt the whole helmet was going loose, he grabed it but the cameras just went flying. He saw them going down, tried to estimate the approximate area (any object just falls vertically and you have to add a correction for wind, if any) and he searched the area after landing. Took him around 15-20 minutes to find them, 20 ft apart to each other.
