Archive for the ‘Pocket Wizard’ Category

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2010 Aust Age Champs – Underwater Camera Setup

Tuesday, April 13th, 2010

From 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 setup). 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 teathing 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 boardshorts. Cheers to Delly Carr for encouraging me to keep going when the first night was rubbish….and for giving me heaps along the way :D . 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

Posted in Pocket Wizard, Sport, Tech, aquatech, camera, gear, geek, housing, remote, swimming, technology, underwater | No Comments »

Underwater Housing remote trigger and Data Transfer…

Wednesday, March 24th, 2010

This is something I’ve been working on for a few months now, and it’s finally working. My aim was to have a camera underwater and to be able to trigger it with the PocketWizards and to be able to retrieve the data instantaneously.

SETUP :
Aquatech DV4-III, FishEye port
Canon 1D MK3 and Fish Eye
Some homemade cables
Pocketwizard
Laptop

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The data transfer is by far the hardest part of this build. The transfer rates are not too fast with L-JPG taking 8 seconds each and RAW files taking 15 seconds each, but if you are just shooting bursts (Start and finishes) then this is fine.

The first real test will be the National Age Group Swimming with Sporting Images in a few weeks. I have to get the approval of the pool manager and then hope the coaches don’t get too upset by it and we’re a go’er.

Fingers Crossed.

Posted in Pocket Wizard, Sport, Tech, camera, gear, geek, remote, swimming, technology | No Comments »

WFT-E2 Long Range Tests….

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009

I’ve had some time to myself with the recent birth of Ryan, so to pass the time I’ve been playing with some ideas that have been bouncing in my head. This one is to test the usable range of the WFT-E2 unit I have for the MK3. I wantes to see if it could be used for live transmission of a remote camera at the other end of a cricket field. According to the SCG web site, the goal-line to goal-line distance is 151 meters. I’ll need to comefortably stretch this distance to make this work reliably.

For my test I had the MK3 with 24-70 lens attached, set in FTP mode with auto send. This means that when ever I take a photo, it would autimatically be sent to the FTP server. I had my laptop in the car running Cerberus FTP server, and connected to a netgear wireless router running off a 12V battery. To extend the range of the router, I have an 8db Omni antenna stuck on the roof on my car. To measure the distance, I have a measuring wheel and the GPS attached to the camera to Geotag every photo (link to KMZ below).

Starting at the car, I took a photo every 10 meters and made sure it sent ok. All was well, untill 80 meters, where the first transfer failed. I manually sent the image again and it steamed through at 36Mbps. At 100 meters everything worked a charm also. I tested every 10M until 160 meters, then went to the end of the field for shits and giggles.

At the end of my test field I got to 203 meters and all was working ok.

Results : Generally everything worked ok in the test and I am happy with the range. I was testing on RAW files that were 13.6Meg, so at times when the transfer speed got to 1Mbps it was very slow. In theory this will work ok. The SCG is a very RF noist environment so it may struggle.

I have ordered a 14dB Directional antenna which should fix the reception up a bit. The WFT is the weakest link with it’s transmitter not being amazingle strong.

The only remaining problem, is that images that do not send, are not automatically retransmitted. I will need further tests to see if this is a real limitation. All images are stored on the cards so there is always later…..

Test info in the attached Google Earth KMZ file (1 Meg)…..HERE

Posted in Cricket, Pocket Wizard, Sport, Tech, remote, technology, wireless | No Comments »

2009 ITU Triathlon World Champs…

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

From the 9th to the 13th of September I had the pleaseure of working with Duane Hart and the rest of the SportingImages team at the ITU Triathlon World Champs on the Gold Coast. It was a hot couple of days for a Sydney sider like me, but great fun.

My job was to run the remotes at the finish line. I had my main camera (1D MK3/70-200) which triggered 2 remote cameras. The idea is to have 3 of the same shot from different angles.

Everything ran pretty well. There were some hitches with camera location, batteries etc, but generally I was really happy with how it all worked.

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I’m going up to Noosa this weekend to do much the same thing, but this time I have arranged mains power for the cameras. this time there’s not worry about batteries.

Posted in Multisport, Pocket Wizard, Sport, Triathlon, Video, remote | No Comments »

UCI World MTB Championships….

Friday, September 18th, 2009

I spent the first weekend of September at Mount Stromlo, Canberra, covering the UCI World Mountain Bike Championships. I drove down with Murray on the Thursday afternoon to get the Accreditations, then we shot Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
Last year at the World Cup we are both sick with various ailments, but this time we were good to go. Some great results. As usual, I overcomplicated things, while Murray kept it simple and clean.

I used flash for most of the weekend using the PocketWizard ETTL flash system. My aim was to shoot backlit and to fill the subjects with flash. It worked ok, but even using 2 x 580EX flashes I lacked some punch against the sun. I was pushing it a little however, trying to shoot 1/1600th in high speed sync at f5.6. Generally I just pumped the flashes to full power and went from there.

Here’s the video of the weekend….it’s a bit big, so please be patient while it loads….

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I did try something interesting and that was to use a fish eye with the flash on the hot-shoe (at full power), but the flash head was zoomed to 50mm. This gave a tight center of light in the frame and as long as I kept the rider in that spot as they flew past, It looked great. With the fisheye you can use f5 and due to the lenses great hyperfocalqualities, everything was sharp.

Click HEREto see our results.

Posted in Flash, Mountain Bike, Pocket Wizard, Sport, Video, remote | No Comments »

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