Swimming in UV/IR

[StephanN]

During the last years I've been taking photos at a swim meeting in the nearby town of Wels, due to the fact that I've got friends amongst the organizers, and they were always happy to get photos of the runs. Here's the link to this year's meeting, although no photos have been uploaded yet:  https://www.wtv-schwimmen.at/swimcity-wels-meeting/.

 

Anyway, this year I did have some time for experiments, as one of the organizers was more than eager to take his brand-new mirrorless out for a spin, and decided to bring gear to take "special" photos. This special gear consisted of the usual EOS 6Ds (one UV, one 700nm), and the appropriate lenses. Action-shots are fairly easy to obtain in IR, because I've had autofocus adjusted for 700nm, even though the low fps gave fewer shots as opposed to VIS. In UV, however, I've not even tried to get action-shots, as my cam doesn't have autofocus-capabilities. That's in fact the one thing that gets me considering a mirrorless converted camera, but even then I'm not sure if AF would be fast enough. Perhaps I'll try to get some shots next year, for example for the starting dive I could prefocus and just hope for the best.

 

So, the first batch are some of those action shots, all four disciplines, starting off with, well, a starting dive:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next, a couple of comparison shots of the pool, with and without swimmers:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Using a slightly lower shutter speed, it's always fun to take photos of the backstroke-start. I would have loved to show some UV-shots like the first three IR-shots, but ran into a snag. In UV and with this longer exposure, from my point of view all the swimmers look naked. It's not that bad in the shots from the side bcause of the angle and the shorter time, but shooting in the direction of the lanes, it was quite different. Of course, it was just an illusion, because skin and bathing suit are almost of the same colour in UV, and with the smearing out it all looked the same.  The two swimmers in the fourth shot are not bald, it just lookes that way 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Doug A]

Spectacular sports images. Never seen swimming coverage like this. They look other worldly. Well done.

Thanks for sharing,

Doug A

[colinbm]

These have turned out so well, they are precious.

[Nate]

Great shots of the swim meet. 

[VideoJohn]

Very cool stuff.

[StephanN]

On 6/4/2023 at 1:48 AM, Doug A said:

Spectacular sports images. Never seen swimming coverage like this. They look other worldly. Well done.

Thanks for sharing,

Doug A

 

On 6/4/2023 at 5:52 AM, colinbm said:

These have turned out so well, they are precious.

 

On 6/5/2023 at 3:32 AM, Nate said:

Great shots of the swim meet. 

 

On 6/7/2023 at 4:25 AM, VideoJohn said:

Very cool stuff.

 

 

Thanks guys. Just for completeness sake, this are the VIS-photos I took: https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipO5Z_IPhaqfgdhSiN8L-JOaHad-4kHJ9CPYtnGl12qZhUuzijPyIsJbtgYzIkIBvA?key=V3Q4aWpPM0NsendQSy1Ca3o3dFRxVFJ2bWEzUGVB , don't know how long they will be online. Nothing special, I vastly prefer the IR/UV-shots.