Above: Shooting interviews with the designers of the Jonker Sailplanes' JS1 Revelation

I have the best job on earth. Seriously. I've only had my new (okay loan unit, not new; my new unit is still en route from the factory in Japan) Sony NEX-FS100 for two weeks when this job came up. Project brief: shoot the manufacturing process for a high performance glider aircraft and oh, be at the airfield Saturday morning really early because you're shooting some serious air-to-air footage as well. Bring a warm jersey...

Above: The flight crew was kind enough to rig up a makeshift safety rig for me...

The project is part of an ongoing series of videos for the NWU's Faculty of Engineering and this episode will focus on some of their commercially successful units. The shoot also gave me my first opportunity to really put the new camera through it's paces. Although the DSLR-style manual lens operation takes some getting used to the FS100 handled easier than I thought and I loved its low light capabilities when we shot the factory and manufacturing scenes - there's some seriously pretty machine shop footage waiting to be edited!

For the flight shoot I used four cameras: two GoPro HD Hero 2s mounted in the cockpit and on the wing of the glider, the Sony FS100 that would ride with me in the open door of the tow plane and my old Panasonic P2 camcorder. The P2 camera ended up shooting some takeoff and landing footage from the ground. For the flight I stripped the FS100 down to the bare lens with only a variable ND filter screwed on the front. No mics, matte box or anything else. And I'm glad I did because the wind did rip the hell out of me in the aircraft's open door. It was actually so strong that the zoom lens was extending by itself when I didn't hang onto it. Fortunately the footage still looks awesome.

Above: Setting up the GoPros. I love these versatile little cameras!

Above: Stills from the GoPro cams

Above: A still from the FS100 footage that I shot from the open aircraft door. There was a bit of a breeze blowing outside.