Journey to the Center of the Earth (bandwidth warning)

[slejhamer]

Some pictures from our trip this weekend, down ... down ... down, into the nether realms ...

1. Stalactites and stalagmites:



2. The Hall of the Giants (hard to get the perspective, but I'd guess these are about 70 to 100 feet tall to the ceiling of the cave)



3. Hell freezes over:



4. "In a cavern, in a canyon ... "



5. Our quest is at an end - The Holy Ice Cream Cone:



All shot at ISO 400, f/8, shutter speeds ranging from 1/4s to 2s, and some multiple exposures. In photoshop I added a blurred hard light layer for contrast and diffusion.

[Petographer]

Wow! Those are incredible. I'd love to see those some day.

[EnglishBob]

Wonderful shots in very harsh conditions.

[Don Schaeffer]

Great shots. How were they illuminated? Was the cavern lit?

--Don

[Toad]

Fabulous work Mitch!!

[shuttertalk]

Wonderful, Mitch! I love the colours and detail fo the rock formations.

Did you have much problems with lighting? What did you use? Flashgun and tripod? Long exposures?

[Rufus]

Stunned silence ................................. :o

[guerito]

Wow... Uhm... Don't kno what to say either. Wow! These are amazing!

[Irma]

Your pictures are great, Mitch. I like very much the framing, it goes nicely with the subject!

[slejhamer]

Thanks all!

DON: Yes, the cavern is lit by what appear to be a scattering of tungsten floods. Unfortunately, the lights are not very well placed and created some high-contrast situations with hard-to-control bright spot. I was forced to do some multiple exposures (the ice cream cone, for example - one shot exposed for the cone, the other for the foreground rocks.)

ST: Yes, tripod and long exposures, though I think the very longest was only 8 seconds at ISO 400. I was the only geek with a tripod. Lots of folks with their P&S digicams shooting with flash - I would think that would ruin the images.

[Peted]

Fabulous caves and equally fabulous shots.

I do a fair bit of caving here in Australia as a caving leader, you know with overalls and helmets and headlights and do not have the luxury of well lit caves and am forced to use the flash as I have no other choice, big problem for me is focusing in the larger caverns in very dark conditions, how did you go with your focusing, I am guessing that manual focusing would be fine in these well lit caves??

[patch17]

wonderful photos!

there's so much beauty beneath our feet.

[slejhamer]

Peted Wrote:big problem for me is focusing in the larger caverns in very dark conditions, how did you go with your focusing, I am guessing that manual focusing would be fine in these well lit caves??

Yes focusing would be difficult in darker caves. The flip side of the problematic high-contrast light in these caves is that it was fairly easy to auto-focus. Also the f/2.8 18-50mm Sigma does a good job at auto-focus in poor light - impressive little lens.

Plus I was using fairly short focal lengths and was stopped down to f/8, so I had deep DOF which can hide focusing errors too.

Otherwise I would have probably needed manual focus.

[edit]
Just had a thought: you can bring some portable IR or RF slave flashes and place them strategically around the cave - that would probably help quite a bit, and you might be able to bounce them for softer light (less hot spots).

[Peted]

My V1 has an IR mode so next time I will have to give it a try. I am thinking that I will just have to drag some digger lights in with me next time and try some multi flash shots with the Ds set to "B".

Close up is not problem it's just the big and long stuff.

[jericho]

I love the colors and detail, especially given the lack of lighting! Great shots Mitch!!