Will remote strobes work underwater?

Am looking at photographing swimming and want to put a remote strobe

underwater. Canon gear & the remote triggering from a 550EX on

camera and the same strobe under the surface of the water in the

pool. Am looking to clean up the water & swimmers with bright light

working off the water.

 

Waterproofing with multiple ziplocks taped to the poolside. The real

question is whether the Canon strobes will pick up the remote signal

underwater?

I wouldn't imagine ziplocks to be the best sealing method but it may work. I think triggering could be the problem, given the flash will be submerged. test it out in your bath tub. I'd probaly look at some type of cabled arrangment but you never know.

 

How about using some form of hot light like a car headlights on 12 volt DC for safety and try some of the different bulbs around like the blue ones that the boy racers seem to love now? Cover everything in sealant and just run two wires from a battery, try some spot lights which would be pretty cheap compared to your cannon flash should things start to leak. You could even put a bank of them on the bottom facing up which could make for a pretty cool effect, and they would be out of the way.

 

Make them adjustable with a variable resister?

 

Just some ideas.

 

If you get it to work post some pic's of the set up I'd love to see it.

 

Good luck

 

Regards

 

Mark

The canon flashes uses IR to comunicate so they must be in a line of sight for them to work, if you could get to trigger the flash by radio it will work.

I don't know about the IR trigger working through the barrier of water, though my guess is

it wouldn't.

 

Another route is to buy/rent an underwater strobe and use this slave trigger made by <a

href="http://www.ikelite.com/web_pages/dsensors.html" >Ikelite</a> . It works

optically by sensing the flash from your main strobe; the sensitivity is variable, although

you might still have issues with the main flash being above water. I've used it in purely u/

w settings and it works flawlessly, mirroring the TTL exposure of the main flash unit.

 

Your baggie solution sounds scary to me, but it's your nickel! Best of luck...