Very Nice Camera for Glider...Stills or HD Video

On Jun 14, 11:04*pm, Sandy wrote:
On Jun 10, 2:29*pm, gen wrote:

Thanks for sharing the video! I could even feel the air between you
and the ground.

I recommend to get an extra battery on ebay. It's a very cheap ($10)
insurance. Last summer, my camera's battery died when I was flying
right over Grand Canyon, and I cursed myself all the way back to
Parowan. Don't make the same stupid mistake.

-Gen

I bought this camera a week ago. *It works well in the cockpit, but
there's a couple of gotchas to it.
1. You need at least the equivalent of a Sandisk Extreme III SDHC card
able to write at 30 mb/sec and rated class 6 in order to record more
than one minute's video. At that speed though, the manual says you can
shoot until the card's full or the battery runs out. *Battery is
limited to 150 minutes.
2. The AC adapter can only be used when playing back through the mini
HDMI cable, not when you are uploading to a PC. This is because the
slot for syncing with a PC is the same one used for the AC adapter.
3. The AC adapter needs a special fitting on the end that doesn't come
with it stock. *You have to get that as part of a special set. I'm
still working on that. The special fitting is shown in the manual but
is not listed on the Panasonic site for either the U.S. or Canada at
this time.
4. You need a core 2 duo or better processor to see normal frame rate
movies shot with the AVCHD format on your PC.

Pictures are pretty good so far, though. I've discovered a special
setting for aircraft windows which seems to filter out some
reflections from the canopy, but not all.
Sandy

Sandy,

Re your 1st point I think the camera limits continuous shooting to 2GB
but not certain of this. You do need a class 6 SDHC card. I got the 16
GB Transcend card and it works well.

I have shot several sequences from the glider using "intelligent auto"
and have not had much problem with canopy glare but the aircraft
setting might help. My one year old notebook plays either AVCHD or
Motion JPEG just fine. Have not tried on my old Sony Vaio but it
probably does not have the processor power to keep up.

Where I am baffled right now is what to do with the short clips I have
shot.In some cases I would like to stitch them together but the
software supplied by Panasonic only allows portions of a clip to be
deleted. As far as I can tell there is no other editing ability.

The second question is which mode to shoot in. I do not see any real
difference in HD quality. The trade off seems to be that Motion JPEG
takes a lot more file space and AVCHD Lite is compressed but "harder
to work with" probably because relatively new and not much software
yet. Another gotcha is that the Panasonic software will not upload the
AVCHD clips to YouTube in HD. However, the 46 second clip I have there
in HD mode (shot using Motion JPEG) is over 200MB and took perhaps 90
minutes to upload on our clubs DSL line which is reasonably fast.

Any suggestions for editing either AVCHD Lite or Motion JPEG? At this
time, I simply want to be able to stitch clips together so not
interested in really high powered video editing. My computers probably
are not fast enough anyway. Thoughts anyone?

77

Where I am baffled right now is what to do with the short clips I have
shot.In some cases I would like to stitch them together but the
software supplied by Panasonic only allows portions of a clip to be
deleted. As far as I can tell there is no other editing ability.

You can use Micorosft's MovieMaker to piece together snippets, add
title, etc. It's free and easy to use, but doesn't have all the
features commerical editing software has.

Charlie

On Jun 16, 10:10*am, cfinn wrote:
Where I am baffled right now is what to do with the short clips I have
shot.In some cases I would like to stitch them together but the
software supplied by Panasonic only allows portions of a clip to be
deleted. As far as I can tell there is no other editing ability.

You can use Micorosft's MovieMaker to piece together snippets, add
title, etc. It's free and easy to use, but doesn't have all the
features commerical editing software has.

Charlie

I looked at Movie Maker reviews and it gets blasted pretty hard in the
reviews. I would be willing to pay for something if it worked well.
Frankly all the video editing software for consumers seems to be
pretty weak at least that's what the reviews seem to say. Also, none
of the software mentions Motion JPEG as a valid input format. I'm
still looking.

On Jun 10, 3:36*pm, wrote:
Tom Serkowki had a post on May 14 about this camera. I bought one from
6th St Camera for $373 delivered. *Got a 16 GB SD card from amazon
with a cute little USB reader (Transcend) for $44.

Camera is a Panasonic LUMIX DMC-ZS3. Great features include 12X
optical zoom, VERY wide angle 25mm, image stablization and HD video in
either AVCHD Lite or Movie MPEG. It has a nice quality Leica lens but
it is a pocket camera. I took some JPEG stills with this camera and a
6 year old Sony I have with a much better lens and the old Sony
produces sharper pictures but this little job is great for taking in
the glider. You can hold the camera in one hand while flying and the
image stabilization feature takes care of jumping around around of
image.

Click on this for an example of HD video on You Tube. Be sure to click
the HD button on lower right.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTLogEyqXg4

Regards,

77

very useful info thanks. BUT what stand, clip or attachment did you
use to fix camera to the canopy or cockpit? Any chance of posting a
picture so we can see what it looks like? Otherwise the name of the
gizmo will do.
TIA
George Emsden
Moderator Kestrel401 newsgroup on Yahoo

On Jun 16, 10:44*am, kestrel254 wrote:
On Jun 10, 3:36*pm, wrote:



Tom Serkowki had a post on May 14 about this camera. I bought one from
6th St Camera for $373 delivered. *Got a 16 GB SD card from amazon
with a cute little USB reader (Transcend) for $44.

Camera is a Panasonic LUMIX DMC-ZS3. Great features include 12X
optical zoom, VERY wide angle 25mm, image stablization and HD video in
either AVCHD Lite or Movie MPEG. It has a nice quality Leica lens but
it is a pocket camera. I took some JPEG stills with this camera and a
6 year old Sony I have with a much better lens and the old Sony
produces sharper pictures but this little job is great for taking in
the glider. You can hold the camera in one hand while flying and the
image stabilization feature takes care of jumping around around of
image.

Click on this for an example of HD video on You Tube. Be sure to click
the HD button on lower right.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTLogEyqXg4

Regards,

77

very useful info thanks. BUT what stand, clip or attachment did you
use to fix camera to the canopy or cockpit? Any chance of posting a
picture so we can see what it looks like? Otherwise the name of the
gizmo will do.
TIA
George Emsden
Moderator Kestrel401 newsgroup on Yahoo

George,

This is the good part. I was simply holding the camera in one hand and
and flying with the other. What makes that magic possible is the Image
Stabilization feature the camera has. I usually held the camera with
my left hand, well back by my head. With the wide angle lens and
stabilization the results, as you can see, are very good.

This past weekend I was instructing in the back seat of an ASK21 and
recorded the entire landing pattern including touch down and roll out
on a somewhat bumpy grass field. Results get smoothed out quite
nicely. I have no idea how it works but it does. Some sort of clip or
bracket to hold the camera would be nice bu, after taking the camera
on several flights, I found that holding it in my hand was not a
serious drawback. Camera is so compact that you can easily find
someplace to tuck it away when not using it.

Jim