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 ‘swimming’ Category
2011 Australian Age Champs – Underwater shots…
Thursday, May 5th, 2011Testing 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
Underwater Housing remote trigger and Data Transfer…
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010This 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.
Swimming Remotes with Duane at SportingImages…
Monday, April 20th, 2009I had a great week last week with Duane, Lucas and Matt from Sporting Images.Duane has a great attitude towards trying remotes and he let me give some shots a go.
The first shot we tried was from the under-pool port holes. I’d never been down under the Sydney Olympic Aquatic Center, so this was a great thrill.
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This shot was not without it’s problems. My camera (1DMK2N) worked ok, but had to shoot at a challenging ISO3200. Duane’s amazing 5DMK2 was shooting at ISO6400 and the shots were amazingly clear, however, I couldn’t stop that set-up from falling asleep after a few minutes. My remote cables are home made and I hadn’t tried them on a 5D MK2, so they were likely the problem.
The second shot was a high shot of the starting blocks. It was a 1DMK2N at ISO3200 in TV Mode at 1/400th Second. The shot is part of an image montage product that Sporting Imagessell. This shot worked well……when I had it focussed correctly (I’ll get to that issue in a later post).
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Images are from the 2009 Australian Age Championships. Images for sale through Sporting Images.