JWilsonphoto
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Hi Jason,
Welcome, glad you're enjoying our thread. Thanks for your insight on the stabilizer, I've changed my thinking on that subject in the past few weeks. Paul Bowen loaned me his Gyro last year and I fiddled with it a bit. The resulting shots really didn't convince me I needed to spend three grand. A month or so ago two things happened, I got the Canon XH/A1 HD cam and I had several air to air and air to ground assignments where the air was unusually choppy. The video, as you point out, really needs to be stabilized. You can't capture in between the jolts with tape like you can with the still image. I began to wonder how significantly my sharp to unsharp ratio would change when tougher conditions prevail. Paul had warned me that his gyro was three decades old and had been beat up during that time period, so not to make a final decision based on the results from my tests with it. I decided to look into it a bit further. My search always seems to lead back to Kenyon Labs, Mr. Kenyon invented the stabilizer and the first autopilot, so they know their stuff. Oddly enough, I had some quiet time Easter Sunday afternoon and I was Googleing info on gyros. I can now make 42 types of Greek sandwiches, just kidding. Kenyon's website has some client testimonials that are very helpful and informative. Still, $3,000 is a chunk for something I've been able to live without for all these years. I e-mailed several of the photographers who's stories were on the site and I cc:'d Kenyon with a handful of air to air images attached. Basically my question was, if I'm always able to come home with the shot, regardless of air conditions, why do I need a Kenyon Gyro? Much to my surprise, a few minutes later a delightful lady named Bobbie Kenyon responded to my query, as many of us know, having your own business means never having to say your closed, and Bobbie was obviously tending the store on Easter. We had a lively exchange for about 30 minutes at which point I decided to try a new KS-6 and see how it affected my kill ratio. Bobbie recommended I rent it for a month, saying she'd send out a new one instead of one from the rental fleet, and she'd apply 100% of the rent to the purchase price, if I decided to do that at the end of the thirty days. I had her overnight it and by 10 o'clock Tuesday morning I was up putting it to work. I had real estate and air to air work most of the week and the first day was the acid test. Tuesday was one of those days, winds were 22 G 35 and the jolts were causing items to levitate periodically in the aircraft. I shot 800 + images air to ground and deliberately dropped the shutter speeds below anything reasonable given the conditions. I was pretty curious, but not optimistic, about the results. Back at my Mac that night I began to pour through the shots of the day. It didn't take long to realize that my kill ratio was ridiculoulsy high, in fact, 90% of the shots were still tack sharp at 200%, even the ones captured at 125th of a second. Experience tells me I would have gotten one in five, maybe, as rough as the air was.
Well, this turned out to be the week to really find out what Kenyon's product could do. Friday evening one of the country's largest residential developers called me, apologizing for the short notice, he asked if I could shoot air to ground with him first thing in the morning. I reminded him that tornado sirens were going off in the metroplex at that very moment and tomorrow was supposed to be horrible as well. He reassured me that "if it's not safe, we won't do it", I reaffirmed that sentiment and we set our time to rendezvous. The next morning, driving to the clubhouse for our meeting, I tuned in the ASOS (current weather) at Mckinney airport, ceiling 1,500' overcast, winds 35 G 47, gee, perfect! As I pulled into the parking lot a new Bell 407 was attempting to get a grip on earth again next to one of the greens, the handwriting was on the wall. I walked over to meet the pilot and get a feel for his good vs. just crazy status, in a few minutes I gleaned that while definitely crazy, he was probably also very, very good. I bolted the Kenyon to my 1DS MKII, promised the Good Lord I'd never do this again (unless someone was waving money around) if he'd let me live this one time, and we lifted off. Without a doubt the most challenging conditions I've ever shot in, but this guy was outstanding and the Kenyon did it's job again. Turns out that my pilot flies all over the world for TV and movie work, was in Dallas earlier in the week shooting an episode of "Prison Break" where he flew the 407 through a tunnel, soooo, my assessment of skill to crazy proved to be pretty accurate, maybe slightly underestimating the crazy. Anyway, 1,500 images with a sharp to slightly soft ratio of around 90%, never would have happened without the gyro.
Sunday of this same week had me finishing up with three air to air assignments, two T-6's and a Waco Taperwing, all posted here. I'm hooked on the Kenyon and this week alone it's been worth it's weight in gold.
I appreciate your offer on the video side. Just when I'm riding the leading edge of the digital/Photoshop learning curve, I have to bite off another technolgy intensive medium! I spent six hours yesterday with minimal success, trying to get Final Cut to recognize that my A1 was attached. I finally shut everything off and walked away before there were expensive projectiles whizzing across the room. As I was falling alseep last night, it occured to me that I was worried about the learning curve in Final Cut, not really a problem if you can't even get the program to see the camera! I've been reading and researching frame rates and presets until it's all a jumble, I think I'll set it on auto!! My mother regularly accused me of biting off more than I could chew, seems she was right!
JW
P.S. I'll see what I've got of the B-1.
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Dust specks all over the place. 
