How to shoot competitive swimming uw

Wolfgang Rattay's underwater setup for swimming events makes for a nice read:

http://blogs.reuters.com/photo/2008/03/26/...-he-shoot-that/

Landscape-oriented camera results in portrait shot. Neat trick .

Looks like he just dropped a WFT-E1 in a Subal/Sealux/? SB-800 strobe housing and ran sync-cord between the two, with the housing modified to connect to the USB port. Sounds familiar .

The Reuters press pass doesn't hurt either...

Yeah, but how did he get the cable from the transmitter housing to the surface? There's only one bulkhead on the housing. I wonder if he ported a second bulkhead.

It looks like he's using UK - Germany gear.

It's a great idea.

Cheers

James

Transmitter is wireless - no cable to surface required. One would only need a total of two bulkheads for the setup since no strobes are being used.

Matt: the transmitter is in that flash housing on the bottom of the pool. Don't think it can wirelessly transmit from there but I could be wrong...

James

Yep, that's the purpose of the transmitter. Canon lists a (rather generous) 150m/492ft range for the transmitter with antenna attached. Even if it drops to 10% of its working range underwater, that's still 50ft transmission radius.

It'd be different if he just decided to run a long USB cable (or switch it to CAT-5 with one of the repeaters) for the same result, but an extra cable.