Skydive video Interlaken: photos, video and the handcam

There is a moment that repeats itself on every skydiving airfield in the world, and Reichenbach is no exception. Someone lands, unclips, walks back across the grass grinning, and then asks the question they should have asked an hour earlier: so where is my video? The answer is that filming is arranged and paid for at the airfield, and if nobody asked for it before the aircraft climbed, there is nothing to hand over. It is not a trick and it is not hidden — it is simply not part of what you bought online, and the booking page never claimed otherwise. It only feels like a surprise because most people never read the inclusions line by line.

So read it here instead. The inclusions on $526 are four items, and they are worth knowing by heart: the skydive itself, the safety briefing, the skydiving equipment, and the tandem master. That is a complete jump. Harness, altimeter, the parachute system, the briefing that tells you how to arch and how to lift your legs for landing, and the qualified person who is attached to you from the door to the ground. One instructor per customer, which is how tandem skydiving works and why the day is structured around pairs rather than groups.

What is not in that list is a camera. No stills, no video file, no edit. The media is a separate product sold at the airfield, and the reason it works that way is the way the filming is done: your instructor wears a handcam on the wrist, and switching it on is a decision made before you walk to the aircraft, once you have said yes and settled it on the spot.

We are deliberately not printing a price for the media package anywhere on this site. The GetYourGuide listing does not publish one, and a number invented for a guide page would be worse than no number at all — you would budget around it, and then the figure at the desk would be different. What we can tell you is the shape of the decision: it is made at Reichenbach, it is charged on site, and it is quoted to you before you buy. Ask at check-in, hear the figure, and choose with the real number in front of you rather than one you read on the internet.

The practical takeaway is small and it costs nothing: decide on the ground. People who plan for the media in advance come away with the footage and a story. People who have not thought about it at all get asked at a moment when they are already thinking about the aircraft, say no by reflex, and then spend the bus ride back wishing they had said yes. Forty-five seconds is a long time to remember and a short time to live through, and the handcam is the only thing that brings any of it back in a form you can show someone.

A handcam is exactly what it sounds like: a small camera strapped to the instructor’s wrist or the back of the hand, aimed along the arm. On a tandem jump that geometry does something no other mount can. The instructor is behind you and attached to you, so an arm extended forward puts the lens about where a friend holding out a phone would be — which means the frame is your face, with the Swiss Alps filling everything behind it. That is the shot people actually want. Helmet cameras look at the horizon; the handcam looks at you.

In the aircraft. The climb is the part nobody expects to enjoy on film and everybody watches twice. The camera is running while the aircraft spirals up to 4,000 metres, so you get the window, the valley shrinking, the mountains coming level with the fuselage, and the faces of everyone else on board. Instructors tend to use this stretch to talk to the camera and to you, which is why the footage has a conversation in it rather than just noise.

The door. This is the single second that justifies the whole package. The door opens, the sound changes completely, and the handcam is pointed straight at your face as you rock back with your instructor and go. No angle you can arrange yourself captures that, and no memory reproduces it accurately — ask anyone who has jumped what the exit felt like and watch them fail to describe it.

Forty-five seconds of freefall. The listing is specific: a 45-second freefall from 4,000 metres, with the ground coming up at 200 km/h (120 mph). On camera this is the loudest, fastest and least controllable part of the film. Your cheeks move. Your hair does whatever it wants. The Alps rotate behind your head as the instructor steers the fall. Most people find they are grinning in every single frame and had no idea at the time.

The canopy ride. Then the parachute opens and the film changes character entirely: 5 to 7 minutes of quiet, according to the listing, drifting down towards the landing area at Reichenbach with the Bernese Oberland spread out underneath. This is where the scenery footage comes from, and where you get the calm, coherent version of your own face — the one you can actually hear talking. Instructors often turn the canopy here so the camera picks up the peaks on one side and the valley on the other.

The landing. Legs up, a slide onto the grass, and the walk back with the harness still half-on. The last twenty seconds of a handcam file are usually the most-watched part after the exit, because it is the only footage of what you look like immediately after doing something you had been thinking about for months.

Two practical notes about the handcam, both worth knowing before you book. First, it is a single camera on a single arm: there is no separate camera flyer filming you from the outside, so the whole film is shot from your instructor’s point of view. Second, stills and video usually come off the same footage, so a “photo package” on a handcam jump generally means frames pulled from the film rather than a separate stills session. Ask at the airfield which formats you are being offered and how the files are delivered before you pay — the answer is the operator’s to give, and it is given on the spot.

If this is your first jump: take the handcam. The first one is the one you will talk about, and it is the one you remember least accurately, because the exit removes your ability to take notes. 586 people have rated $526 and it holds 4.9 — a lot of those reviews are people describing the footage, not just the fall. Say yes at check-in in Reichenbach, hear the price there, and have a card ready.

If you want the face shot specifically: the handcam is the only mount that gives it. Your instructor’s arm is the camera position, so the frame is you with the Alps behind you, from the door onwards. There is no outside camera flyer on this jump, so if you skip the handcam there is no footage of you at all — only what the people on the ground can see, which at 4,000 metres is nothing.

If you are flying as well as jumping: check each listing separately. The media arrangement is set by each operator, and only one listing on this site names a camera in its inclusions: $272, whose inclusions read “tandem gear and camera”. Everywhere else, including $222 with its 2,580 reviews and $209 over the Lauterbrunnen cliffs, treat photos and video as a separate question to ask your pilot on the day.

If you are bringing your own camera: ask first, and expect the answer to be about mounts. Anything in your hands is something you are not using to hold your harness, and anything strapped on is equipment the instructor is responsible for. The person to ask is your tandem master at the briefing, and the answer you get at the airfield is the one that counts.

If you are travelling with someone who is not jumping: plan their transport first. The bus from Interlaken carries jumpers only. Companions get themselves to Reichenbach, and once they are there they are the second camera — the landing area is where the canopy comes in, and that is the shot the handcam cannot take.