Sorry for the late thanx, was out of town for a couple days. Looks like a great set-up. What did you use for the handle? Also do you just sit the pad on top of your shoulder or put it under your arm? I was thinking of maybe some kind of optical aimer/line-up tool, calibrate it on the ground, it might be easier to track with a little more peripheral vision.
Thanx mark
ORIGINAL: RCKen
What Minnflyer said. Both Mike and I have spent plenty of time behind a video camera shooting video for reviews and covering events for RCU.
First off, make a shoulder mount for the camera. You can make one out of a simple aluminum bar and a handle. I did this for my camera and you have no idea how much it helped. I've attached a few pictures of the shoulder mount I made. The total cost for it was less than $10
Like Mike said, the LCD viewscreen is just about worthless in daylight. The only advice I can give here is find a towel or something else that you can make a hood out of that you can put over your head and the LCD viewscreen to block out the light.
Having looked at more video than I care to admit probably the biggest mistake I see being made is that the camera operater tries to zoom in as close to the plane as they can get. When the plane is at a distance this makes for jumpy blurry video that looks like the Blair Witch Project and makes most people sick to their stomach. Try pulling back the zoom a bit and see if you don't get better video.
Another problem I see a lot is that people don't take into account the position of the sun. Try to have the sun behind you whenever possible, because the direct sun can washout your picture.
Hope this helps
Ken