Swim Sport Photography – Two lights setups

Photographing in water can be a bit expensive (in case you don;t know how to water proof you gear).

I saw some photographers using nylon bags to cover their flashes while they try to get some images done.

in case you want to use your flashes in the water, there are some DIY ways to do it , basically what I did is a dual layer water isolation:

How to protect you flash in the water:

(Thats how I do it, there are millions other ways – its your gear do what you want)

1. After setting the flashes, I covered them with a plastic sandwich bags. You can use more than one, they won’t eat much of you light power.
2. Putting them into a plastic canister – you can use Coca Cola bottles or any other type of transparent canisters.

I know this isn’t 100% water proof, but in most cases , unless your gear “drowns” in the pool, you’ll be safe.

How to take swimming action images:

I’ll cover here the basics of the bts in the video bellow and how I do it when I’m in a wet situation:

1. lighting – there are two flashes used here, as this movie was taken about 2 years ago with strobist gear, they used a two YN560II lights. The YN560II is the best flash per $$$ you can ever imagine. Both flashes were triggered by a YN602RF. As you may already know you can get the newer YN560III (reviewed here) and skip the RF602/3.
2. Lights are put in a canister and hold in some DIY connection to  a tripod and into the water!!! If you are shooting in a small pool like the one in the tut bellow, you don’t have to put the flashes in the water. I use the DIY flash Holder to attach the flashes to the tripod
3. Settings  – both flashes are at 1/8th full power, camera is about 1/125th sec, get the ISO as low as you can to avoid ambient light.

Here is a nice video I found on the how to

Do you think you can do it too, You are welcomed to share you best images here!