Cameras are welcome on regular adventures, the small digital waterproof variety that you can "take anywhere" are best, although ordinary cameras can be taken if you are careful with them. Caves have plenty of rocks, grit, mud and water and in general are rather hard on cameras. Bring yours at your own risk. A few hints for keeping your camera alive are:
Keep it in it's case around your neck, inside your clothes when not in use.
Wipe your hands on a clean bit of clothing before you touch it.
Keep it firmly attached to you when climbing, traversing or abseiling.
Don't drop it.
Don't fall in the water!
Be warned, if you bring your camera you can use up heaps of time taking photo's, it's that sort of place!!
It's quite difficult to get the standard of cave shot you see in flyers and on postcards. Photo's taken with the on camera flash come out quite "flat" (no shadows), or pretty much black if you try for anything further away than 4 to 5 metres.
If you want to take a bit of time to get some better looking photo's of cave formations we know a few tricks with a flashgun and optical slave unit which we can bring along.
If you are really keen and want to get into some serious underground photography then we can run a photography trip. Don't expect to do too much else apart from taking photo's - it can be really time consuming! You need a camera with a full manual mode, a tripod mount and a time exposure setting. It really helps if you know how to use it in manual too! To get glowworm photo's the camera needs at least a 30 second exposure at ISO 1600 and f3.5. If you have an SLR bear in mind that changing lenses underground is something to be avoided - a 14 to 50mm zoom is good for most shots. We can supply some basic tripods, flashguns, optical slaves and a bit of advice! We also have plastic bags, cloth's for drying hands etc and a couple of padded, waterproof ammunition boxes for putting cameras and stuff in.
Oh and if you have non-photographers with you they need to be really patient, understanding and obedient...
Most of the photo's on this website have been taken our clients or by Paul with our Olympus 410e digital SLR.
