JustJill Loc: Iowa

I hope to go hiking in a cave in the near future. What is the best way to take pictures in a cave and the best settings to use.

larryepage Loc: North Texas area

Cave photography is difficult because of the combination of distance, darkness, and scale. This is the best place I have seen for examples and for training materials:

http://www.pjcaver.com/shotindark.htm

Select on "On Three" for a look at his training materials.

Wallen Loc: Middle Earth

Had experienced it during my younger days. I got really awful photos.
Fast forward to today and in retrospect, a good flash (several off camera if possible) and not having anything in the foreground to flash the light back is imperative.

hpucker99 Loc: Anchorage, Alaska

If you have a cave in mind, find out ahead of time if you can do flash photography and use a tripod. A tripod or monopole will allow longer exposures if flash is not permitted. Also try to find out what lighting is present in the cave.

roxiemarty Loc: Florida

Forget flash..........I have many years of trial and much error. Depending on the caves you are going into.............if tripod is allowed, use it! I suggest an attached shutter release, take a small flashlight for fine focusing and light painting if you want to try that. Know ahead of time your cameras settings..........bulb is good. Manual focusing is good, so your autofocus isn't just zooming in and out trying to find focus in almost no light. There are examples of my Carlsbad Caverns photos on my topics page. If I can answer any more questions, don't hesitate to ask. I'm sure someone here has more experience. Settings are on my topics page with the Carlsbad photos.

JustJill Loc: Iowa

Thank you for the link. His photos are beautiful!

JustJill Loc: Iowa

I appreciate the tips. With all the tips from hoggers, hopefully my pictures will not be really awful.

JustJill Loc: Iowa

Thank you! I appreciate the tips, especially the manual focus and why to use it. You take beautiful photos. I might have some more questions after reading more information. Thanks again!

JustJill Loc: Iowa

Thank you! I appreciate you took the time to explain some things!

manofhg Loc: Knoxville, TN

I recently did some cave photography for the first time. I've caved a lot through the years, but this was the first time doing photography and the first time in a cave in several years. How you photograph depends on the cave you will be in. I was in a wild, non-public cave and consequently cannot publish pictures since the cave is being surveyed, is on private property, and they are trying to keep the casual visitor out. Unfortunately, most who go in caves who aren't experienced also don't know cave etiquette or how to protect a cave. They get graffiti, trash, and endanger the wildlife in the caves, bats among others.

Whatever the cave you are going in, you will need a tripod. If you are going in a commercial cave, you should talk with them first to find out what is allowable, if there is lighting or not, etc. Since I was in a wild cave, I took 3 strobes with wireless triggers. I wasn't sure whether the triggers would work if the flashes weren't in line of sight and were obscured by a rock. As it turned out, they worked fine.

One of the tricky parts will be getting the focus correct. Either you will need an f/stop that will accommodate the range that you want in focus or carefully focus on what the subject you want in focus. I say careful be cause the light needed to focus is sometimes more than the average flashlight. I had a caving light which was quite bright and I would shine it on the point I wanted to focus on and then allow the auto focus (spot focus mode) to do the rest. I still missed it on some shots, but got some I was happy with. If the only lights you are using are strobes, the shutter speed doesn't have to last but as long as the flashes. If you are relying on the lighting of a commercialized cave, you will have to work with exposure lengths to get what you want. I also found that just to shoot the cave itself without a subject made it difficult to tell the size of the cave. After shooting for a while, I started setting a delay on the camera such that I could get in the pictures. This helped a lot for the general composition for the scale anyway.

I shot for about 5 hours by myself until I got injured, but that is another story altogether.

Blaster34 Loc: Florida Treasure Coast

Take a flashlight, I had a Park Ranger shine his flashlight on a bat on the cave ceiling and it came out pretty nice...a tripod, monopod if allowed is a must or use benches or railings can be used to set your camera, with a remote shutter release. Good Luck.

Wallen Loc: Middle Earth

Your doing good preparation so most probably will get very nice photos.

What I got then was a point & shoot film camera and it gave no justice to the cave experience. The cave we went into has shiny walls and If anything was close to the flash, it bounces light and is over exposed while obscuring everything else in the dark. On the great halls, the same built in flash is too weak to light up the place properly. As I've said, really bad images.

How I wish I could visit it again with my now better tools and more experience.
Then maybe I could set up which areas I wanted lit and play with the shadows. But I doubt I could return there. Maybe some other cave.

Looking forward to see you photos. Enjoy the adventure and Good luck!

.

(Even the photos taken in the daylight was not that great /circa 1989)

jsfphotos Loc: New York, NY

I carried my camera (Nikon 7200) and a few different zoom lenses into Lauray Caverns a few years ago and got some wonderful shots, but found the most challenging aspect of the shoot was the fact that everything underground was mostly very damp/wet or dripping. Also, the most dramatic rock formations feature were artificially lit by spotlights, giving extremely high contrast situations. I suppose a polarizing filter would have helped but I didn't have one with me. I had to do a lot of post-processing to get some good shots out of hundreds taken. I have found the same challenge with shooting giant Redwoods. It's generally pretty dark under the canopy but very often everything is glistening with droplets of water. Figuring out how to deal with the underground conditions was more critical than deciding what lens to use.

Would love to hear how others have mastered these conditions.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I asked the same question a few years ago.

http://www.ephotozine.com/article/a-shot-in-the-dark---guide-to-cave-photography-4680
http://www.goodearthgraphics.com/showcave/photo.html
http://digital-photography-school.com/14-tips-for-cave-photography
http://www.weatherfriend.com/travel/txcave/cave_photography.htm
http://museumca.org/caves/onli_photo.html
http://www.shutterbug.com/content/cave-photography-color-gear-and-light-painting-underground-style

JBRIII

The wild cave tours I've been on would require a waterproof (really mud proof) camera, small in size. You could or never would be able/allowed to take along lighting, tripods, etc., unless you were with Nat. Geographic or such. You be lucky if anything less rugged than a sealed action camera would survive the trip.

Many years ago my wife and I got really good results in Mammoth using high Iso film in a low Iso setting in the camera or something like that, using just lanterns. A good low light camera like the Canon R should do fine, based on my efforts at shooting the Aurora in Norway (used lens that came with it).