Welcome to Boomtown!

aLAcrity Boomerangs is a group of boomerang enthusiasts from Los Angeles. At the moment, it is comprised of three people: Manny (a.k.a. v12aero), phnxhawk and Charles (a.k.a. hey_kuya).

Manny and I (phnxhawk) started this blog to share our interest in boomerangs--throwing and tuning, making our own rangs, as well as unraveling the science behind them. As we continue our journey into the world of boomerangs, we hope to make new friends and to expand our horizons. In this blog, we will post such things as videos from our regular throwing sessions, musings and lessons learned from throwing, and thoughts on making our own rangs.

Manny and I started throwing boomerangs since Spring 2009. It has been a long road as we developed a semblance of technique for throwing 'rangs. Nevertheless, after many a bruised hand or windy day, our fascination with these returning throwing sticks remains undimmed. We most certainly have more to learn about boomerangs, but we'll keep at it as long as we continue to have many happy returns.

--phnxhawk--

Friday, December 31, 2010

New Camera for Video

--by phnxhawk--

Manny and I recently switched over to a new camera for taking video while out throwing. We had previously been using our personal point-and-shoot cameras, which were capable of taking video at 640x480 and (at least in my case) at 20 frames per second.

Well, we both grew tired of getting sand in what were otherwise great photo-taking cameras. (Sand has a way of finding its way into everything, even if were to leave the cameras in our bags.) A couple months back, we came across a sale on woot.com for the Sanyo Xacti VPC-PD1 pocket HD camera.

We did some quick checking and decided to take a chance on buying a pair of these cameras to replace our point-and-shoots in this capacity. This week, I uploaded our first video using footage from our new cameras. I recorded it in 1280x720 at 60 frames per second. A link to the Youtube version is included below:



As for immediate reactions, I am satisfied with the result overall. On the extreme left and right, I feel as if the picture is somehow...distorted or blurry. Playing back the original footage also gives me a sense that the video is "too smooth." Manny described it as the feeling that the video is playing back at too fast of a speed. Whether this is a problem, we're not sure.

On the bright side, the video does seem to have better quality. Details are less blurry, and we hope that our boomerangs will be a little more visible in flight in future videos. (Of course, if we have difficulty seeing them with our human eyes, we don't expect the video to offer a much better experience.)

We'll keep working out the kinks with this new tool, but we hope you enjoy the upgrade. Now you can view all our imperfections in glorious HD.


"Putting my spin on boomerangs..."
Posted by phnxhawk at 2:24 AM

1 comment:

  1. hey_kuyaJanuary 8, 2011 at 9:02 PM

    Wow, nice video! I can actually see the boomerang now.

    ReplyDelete

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