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 ‘housing’ Category
2011 Australian Age Champs – Underwater shots…
Thursday, May 5th, 20115D and Ikelite update
Thursday, January 20th, 2011New 5D arrived today. God bless insurance. I have tried the housing on dry land and all the TTL circuits seem to work ok.
Ikelite have sent me the new o-rings, but are still totally unapologetic about the housing flood. What a bunch of bastards.
I’ll start reintroducing the gear to the water slowly over the next few days/weeks and with any luck will be able to use this housing on a dive soon. I’ve added tampons (never though I’d say this) into the housing for added protection. They are only good for a small flow (snigger), but are better than nothing. Not too sure how I’m going to explain this to the missus if she finds them.
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
Annus horribilis – and its only just started….
Sunday, January 9th, 2011The year has not started so well. I lost 4 days work when a HDD failed (My own stupid fault there), and now my new Ikelite housing flooded killing my 5D (again, my stupidity there).
What has this taught me…..Slow down and do things properly. Having all files in only one location is poor practice, and getting on a dive boat with a briefly tested housing is crazy.
Lets get back to doing things properly and with any luck the year will get better.
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