It only seems like last year I blogged about this same event……hey, it was!!!
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Thanks to Duane for SportingImages for helping arrange the access. Thanks to Matt and Murray for the setup help.
Archive for the ‘geek’ Category
2011 Australian Age Champs – Underwater shots…
Thursday, May 5th, 2011JetBlack 24 – MarathonPhotos event…
Tuesday, February 8th, 2011For the 3rd year running I covered the JetBack24 endurance mountain bike event at Del Rio Resort Wisemans Ferry. The last 2 years its rained non-stop. This year it was 35, humid and mosquito infested. At least I could use my gear to its full potential without it getting wet.
The brief from James Rankin at Marathon Photos was to be creative. However, you need to get saleable shots. This means faces and race numbers. No point getting a super creative shot if no one can buy it. I tried to keep it simple this year, with just one off-camera flash and used the PocketWizard MiniTT1, the FlexTT5 and most of all the AC3 Zone Controller. What is all that? It mean full manual power control over a remote flash. If the light changes, you can change with it, while getting the consistency and reliability of manual flash power.
Camera Gear – 1DMK3, 28-300 – 135mm, OSI1000, f6.3 1/160
Flash – 580EX – Camera right behind a tree – Manual power – 1/64th
Camera Gear – 1DMK3, 28-300 – 50mm, OSI200, f4 1/200
Flash – 580EX – Camera right behind a tree – Manual power – 1/64th
Camera Gear – 1DMK3, 28-300 – 235mm, OSI1000, f5.6 1/160
Flash – 580EX – Camera left – Manual power – 1/64th +1/3
Camera Gear – 1DMK3, 15mm Fisheye, OSI1000, f10 1/40
Flash – 580EX – Camera left – Manual power – 1/64th +2/3
Twist the camera on a slow shutter for the effect.
Conclusion
* The 28-300 is a great versatile lens for mountain bike shooting. Its not too bad across the entire range and means I carry 2 lenses not 3 or 4.
* The PocketWizard Manual system works really well. eTTL fails in these events due to the changing light situations and vastly inconsistent results.
* Remote flash is the way to go. Get the flash close to the subject and it uses far less power. 600+ shots all day on one set of batteries, and 1/64 power.
New NVIDIA Quadro 5000 – No more renderring….
Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011Bit the bullet and bought the NVIDIA Quadro 5000 GPU video card today. Its a MONSTER of a card at twice the physical width of my last video card and 5 cm longer. Its super powerful and allows me to apply GPU effects to Premiere Pro without the need to render each clip again.
NVIDIA Quadro 5000
Testing the Ikelite 5D MKII Housing….
Tuesday, January 11th, 2011The last time I put a live camera in this housing, it flooded killing the 5D body. Thanks to the bright sparks at Ikelite, they neglected to install an O-Ring on the superwide port body leaving a gap for the ocean to fill. I’m stupid enough to have only tested the housing briefly by dunking it in the SPA for a few minutes. Not this time!!!!
“Camera Dummy” – 2 dive weights (6 lb) wrapped in newspaper. A suitable camera analogue and the newspaper will easily show signs of water
Dummy Camera
Test 1 – 30 minuted in SPA with pump running.
Today I installed the dummy camera in the housing and left it in the SPA (15C) for 30 minuted with the pump running. I was not gentle with the housing holding it by the dome port to see if it would come lose. No water at all in the housing. Not a drop. Who would have thought that a correctly assembled housing would work.
SPA test - Pump running
SPA test - Pump not running
after a good wash-off
Test 2 – Dummy Scuba
With any luck, I’ll be diving Wednesday night off the boat. I’ll take the housing along to see if I can get it to leak. Dummy camera installed.
Test 3 – SPA with live camera
Test 4 – Shore (sure) dive with live camera
Go-Live
2010 Aust Age Champs – Underwater Camera Setup
Tuesday, April 13th, 2010From the 5th to the 10th of April, I had the pleasure of working with Duane Hart from Sporting Images at the 2010 Australian Age Swimming Championships. The event brings some of Australia’s best 18 and under swimmers together to claim the national title.
In previous years, we had overhead remotes and remotes in the pool edge port holes, but this year for the first time, we used underwater remote cameras.
The cameras were Canon 1D MK3, MK4 and 5D MK2 (depending on the day and the set-up). The underwater housings are Aquatech and the lens ports used are for the 16-35 and the 15mm fish eye. To trigger the cameras we had one 100′ and 2×20′ Aquatech trigger cables. Duane operated the cameras from the pool deck, triggering the camera to capture the peak of the action.
To position the camera I used my recently acquired SCUBA skills to swim the cameras into place and to set them up. See the video below on how this was done.
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The final results are really great. After some initial teething problems we got the locations and setting perfect for the last 4 nights. Much thanks to Duane for letting me chase this image. There aren’t many companies that are as progressive and challenging as Sporting Images and I congratulate Duane for giving this a go. Cheers to Matt Roberts for his assistance and high contrast focus-specific board shorts. Cheers to Delly Carr for encouraging me to keep going when the first night was rubbish….and for giving me heaps along the way 
. Thanks to Dan and the team at the Sydney Olympic Aquatic centre for letting me in the pool, and finally thanks to John from Swimming Australia for giving the final ok.
Images can be seen at www.sportingimages.com.au