3000 foot fall and still working

Ya, people survive freefalls after their parachute fail. Not often, but it does happen. No reason to think it couldn't happen with a camera

Scientists don't immediately believe anything - an experiment must be repeatable. So who wants to donate a Rebel or two, and buy me an airplane ticket?

ETERNAL wrote in post #9207426
I don't believe it. Even looking past the fact it works, has anyone here ever went sky diving?

You do not fall straight down on your decent. If you dropped a camera, or any object from over a half mile up, you would never ever find it. The search area for it would be MILES wide. And judging where you were when it fell off, after finishing your decent and you landing miles from the camera. Securing your gear, gathering your chute, finding a vehicle to hop in and then judging where you were in the air to find where it might have hit on the ground, just seems non believeable.

Then add in the picture looks to be taken on a table. Who really spends that time looking for a camera to take it somewhere and take a picture of it without knocking (accidentally or purposely) some of the loose strands of grass off of it?

3000 feet up is not so far up that the camera would have traveled that far. With 1/2 mile left to fall, you think that it's going to travel MILES in a horizontal direction? 1/2 mile up is seconds away from impact traveling at 60 to 100 miles an hour.

While it is improbably that a camera would survive the fall it is not impossible.

5Dmaniac wrote in post #9207845
No way this is true. 3000ft drop? I don't care how soft the landing site was, there is no way that Rebel would have survived. This has hoax written all over it.

Why do people think a rebel would be less likely to survive? Its going to hit the ground with a ton less momentum than a bigger camera. Its much more likely to survive than on of the bigger cameras.

I think it's a one in a million thing, but it could happen.

Terminal velocity is something like 125 or 135 mph. If there were foliage of trees that it fell through, that broke the fall and slowed it a little at a time, and the ground were soft... It could happen.

Heck, their have been people fall from that height or greater who somehow survived... most, but not all, were injured pretty badly. So, I wouldn't want to test it and wouldn't recommend anyone else do so.

Mythbusters could probably replicate it... But it might take a few hundred, thousand or a million attempts to make it happen again. They probably won't want to buy that many cameras in the name of "science"... even used.

And, yes, it would be hard but with some luck one might do so. In fact there was a recent news story about a guy dropping a small camera case with a diamond engagement ring in it out of a hot air balloon from about 500 or 700 feet up.... With Google maps and the help of friends he managed to find it after a couple days' search.

I would like to see more info as well. I certainly think it is possible hitting very soft marshy ground, which it looks like it did. Having said that, It seems like the plastic mount on that lens would have a least snapped from the force ....even if it the lens didnt absorb the impact. My buddy almost killed his D90 dropping in 3 feet and landing on the fiberglass floor of a boat. It took a couple of battery resets after getting error messages.

amfoto1 wrote in post #9209498
I think it's a one in a million thing, but it could happen.

Terminal velocity is something like 125 or 135 mph. If there were foliage of trees that it fell through, that broke the fall and slowed it a little at a time, and the ground were soft... It could happen.

Heck, their have been people fall from that height or greater who somehow survived... most, but not all, were injured pretty badly. So, I wouldn't want to test it and wouldn't recommend anyone else do so.

Mythbusters could probably replicate it... But it might take a few hundred, thousand or a million attempts to make it happen again. They probably won't want to buy that many cameras in the name of "science"... even used.

And, yes, it would be hard but with some luck one might do so. In fact there was a recent news story about a guy dropping a small camera case with a diamond engagement ring in it out of a hot air balloon from about 500 or 700 feet up.... With Google maps and the help of friends he managed to find it after a couple days' search.

Agreed, no matter what body could have fallen, it would have reached a steady speed, no acceleration at some point, and then 40-50' pine trees, etc could have easily slowed down the descent. There would be battle scars though if this went through foliage at 100+mph at a very minimum. I agree with the other poster that said it would have been extremely difficult to have located this camera though. That is probably the hardest part of the story for me. If it was in the wide open and you could see it land, then it should not have survived, if it went through a forested area and slowed down through foliage, then you would not have found it.

ETERNAL wrote in post #9207426
Even looking past the fact it works, has anyone here ever went sky diving?

Yep. A lot.

ETERNAL wrote in post #9207426
You do not fall straight down on your decent. If you dropped a camera, or any object from over a half mile up, you would never ever find it. The search area for it would be MILES wide. And judging where you were when it fell off, after finishing your decent and you landing miles from the camera. Securing your gear, gathering your chute, finding a vehicle to hop in and then judging where you were in the air to find where it might have hit on the ground, just seems non believeable.

From 3,000ft, you can absolutely find a dropped object (especially a camera helmet) as long as you can see where you're at when it's dropped and you're not over a dense forest or mountainous terrain. Most (but not all) skydives are done around relatively flat terrain with relatively open fields. I can assure you that the search area is not "miles" wide.

Over the course of 14 years of jumping, I've been at the drop zone when 3 people have lost their helmets. Every time the gear was recovered. In each case, the video camera and SLR were damaged to the point of no longer being operational. However, while highly unlikely, I could see a time and place when a SLR could survive the fall. Helmets don't fall as fast as you think, and the right type of tree limbs, combined with a soft ground, and a perfect angle of impact could possibly leave the camera intact. Again, it may be a one in a thousand shot, but it is possible.

In two of three cases I was exposed to, we were able to salvage the video. On one of them, we were able to make a frame grab when the helmet had just come off the camerman's head and was 10 feet away. The expression on his face was priceless...

Bryan

The helmet didn't fall with the camera in this case, and thus makes for a different situation, both from a visual perspective (smaller size factor) and from a damage perspective (less drag and thus closer to terminal velocity), wouldn't it?

TeamSpeed wrote in post #9209917
The helmet didn't fall with the camera in this case, and thus makes for a different situation, both from a visual perspective (smaller size factor) and from a damage perspective (less drag and thus closer to terminal velocity), wouldn't it?

The damage would be caused by the impact, not the freefall. Without knowing the characteristics of the ground and how quickly the camera decelerated upon impact, you can't really say it's impossible or possible.

Humans have survived freefalls of several miles (obviously terminal velocity was already reached well into those falls) because their fall was decelerated on impact by the ground material and impact force was well distributed.

charliec wrote in post #9209992
The damage would be caused by the impact, not the freefall. Without knowing the characteristics of the ground and how quickly the camera decelerated upon impact, you can't really say it's impossible or possible.

Humans have survived freefalls of several miles (obviously terminal velocity was already reached well into those falls) because their fall was decelerated on impact by the ground material and impact force was well distributed.

Oh..

runninmann wrote in post #9210277
Oh..

Hey I'm just stating the obvious because people are getting hung up on the wrong part of the story...the height, the speed, etc.

People on FM are funny, they think if you drop a brick and a penny from 3000 they'll land at the same time (while not talking about a vacuum)

ETERNAL wrote in post #9207426
I don't believe it. Even looking past the fact it works, has anyone here ever went sky diving?

You do not fall straight down on your decent. If you dropped a camera, or any object from over a half mile up, you would never ever find it. The search area for it would be MILES wide. And judging where you were when it fell off, after finishing your decent and you landing miles from the camera. Securing your gear, gathering your chute, finding a vehicle to hop in and then judging where you were in the air to find where it might have hit on the ground, just seems non believeable.

I asked this exact question in the thread on FM and this was the response FWIW:
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.

I would believe the body surviving more then the lens. The kit 18-155 lens is not very strong at all. The camera must have landed on its side without the lens hitting the ground at speed.