Jenolan Caves - My kingdom for a tripod!

[losfp]

Well, our fascination with all things Blue Mountains continues - we went up to Jenolan Caves for a look around on Saturday. Didn't end up being a 6.5 hour accidental walk like a couple of weeks ago, but still had to tackle a good number of stairs.

Had a wonderful time in the two caves we toured (The Lucas Cave and the Temple of Baal), they are just so fascinating! Amazing too, that they are preserved as well as they are, considering how fragile most of the crystal structures etc are.

I noticed when I did searches on here for Jenolan Caves that sometime ago, a special tour was organised where members could bring tripods. A pox on all your houses!!!!! As brilliant as the caves were, it was incredibly hard to get good photos, as you weren't allowed to bring tripods, and you couldn't linger in one spot for long as you had to move with the large group (54 in the Lucas Cave group, incredibly the limit is 70!).

I thought it would be a great time to try out my brand spankin' new Tokina 12-24 (btw, thanks must go to Birdy and Poon for amazing service!).. The extra wideness of the 12mm end did help, but gee, when you're standing there in a cave, gawping at a massive cavern that's probably 25m tall... What the hell can you do? How can you possibly capture that on a mere flat image? I guess that's part of the reason we take up photography. There are so many amazing sights in the world, with the challenge of conveying the feeling of seeing them with your own eyes.....

I got only a few photos that I was reasonably happy with, some of which are posted below. The first two were ISO1600, 1/15-1/30 @ f/4, at 24mm. The last was taken with the flash.

I tried a few earlier on with the flash, but I found that the better pics were actually taken at high ISO with no flash. With the SB-800 on the camera, and with very little time to tweak settings, and set up multiple flash situations, I was getting very unimpressive, flat looking photos. More atmospheric with the handheld ISO1600 shots, though I did have problems with the dynamic range. The lights in the caves were blowing out my highlights before I was able to get any shadow details.

I'll have to go back and check out all the caves over a few trips of course, maybe I can learn a few tricks about low-light photography while I'm at it

[Bretski]

The janolin caves are awsome... I still have some shots I took on school excursions 25 years ago bofore all the wire fences were put up with my lil 110mm point and shoot and 1 time use flash... I should dig em out and scan some....

I must revist those caves some day

THanks for bringing back some fine memories

[losfp]

The janolin caves are awsome... I still have some shots I took on school excursions 25 years ago bofore all the wire fences were put up with my lil 110mm point and shoot and 1 time use flash... I should dig em out and scan some....

I must revist those caves some day

THanks for bringing back some fine memories

Yeah, we decided there and then that we wouldl love to go back and view ALL the caves! Before our trip, I was a bit sceptical, but came away loving it. They're just so.. untouched, or at least look and feel like that.

Looking forward to refining my low light techniques too!!!

I wonder if there's any chance dslrusers will repeat the special tours sans tripod policy... Do we still have a contact there?!

[stubbsy]

Des

Yes they're a trully amazing place. You've done well with these. Having had the good fortune to have been on the tripod equipped outing last year I had the bad fortune to only have a monopod at the time. My experience was that bumping the ISO up to 1000 made a difference without getting too much noise.

I wonder if there's any chance dslrusers will repeat the special tours sans tripod policy... Do we still have a contact there?

I'd say this is highly unlikely since Nigel who arranged it bas basically retired and his health wasn't too good last I heard PS Sans Tripod means WITHOUT tripod (in french it would be avec tripod if you mean WITH tripod)