Hey! So Ill finally get to go back underground in a week!  

Anyway....Ive been playing with my new flashgun a LOT and its really handy to use in a lot of situations. However, I've noticed there is a harshness of shadows with it, something I didnt see with lightpainting (that used to be my only technique available so its what I always used). I heard/saw/something mention of mixing the flash with some additional foreground lighting softens the shadows and edges so you dont have the stark contrast in the images.

I have a few questions regarding this (and other ides are welcome!):
1) White balance...My new awesome duo (thx bif!) is neutral but the flashgun seems on the warm side. Will this cause a problem? I know mixing warm and cool has screwed up colour in photos before but I wonder if having one be neutral makes it less of an issue.

2) These kinda all go together...: What kind of settings do you use on your camera? How much light to you paint with? I assume it all goes in one exposure so you'd turn the flash gun lower and lightpaint on low too since its adding the light? Or do you take two photos one each and overlay in post processing? (I know this could be kinda a "depends on situation!" question, but some ideas would be helpful so I have an idea going in...none of the trips Ill be on will be small groups of friends, mostly larger grotto trips, so Im not going to have time to play too much with each shot.)

3) I think perhaps due to the harshenss, I also see more grain in my photos taken with the flashgun, whereas the lightpaining has smoother images. I dont always mind it, the grain look often makes it look like it was old time film photo so I tend to convert to black and white and use it artistically, but is there a way around this? (other than getting a larger sensor/better camera/investing in more and expensive lights? Right now just trying to work with what I have. I already shoot around 100iso to help, oh I am using a Lumix LX3 if that helps at all)

4) Would fitting a diffuser to the front of the flashgun (I have some old milk containers...) help with either issue or both?

Thanks! =)

70 views and no ideas? awwww.

Hi Amy,
   
I don't pretend know a great deal about cave photography in particular but if you're struggling with harsh shadows then adding some diffusion to your flash may well help. You could also try filling the shadows a little with another diffused flash (or several) aimed at the background and off to one side, slaved to the main unit. A quick search of Amazon shows plenty of choice, prices from around $10. Certainly cheaper than back in the day when I was a keen 35mm photographer!

Who took your avatar picture? Finest on UKcaving 

"Proper" bulb flashes are a lot less harsh, but are very difficult to trigger electronically, and are getting harder and harder to come by.
I havent been underground in over 10 years, but used to use a combination of carbide lighting and multiple flashes on a 40-ish second exposure.
This is a well photographed location, lit from the front wth carbide, and back-lit with electronic flashes.



Bit orange perhaps, but the effect I ws looking for.

(This was in the days of film - Kodachrome Gold ISO400)

What is a great photo to one person is an average photo to another. However most of us can agree on a boring photo. Personally, I like a few shadows in my pics, and struggle with it due to (I think) too high iso speed - interesting that Amy uses 100iso, whereas I use 400. Could explain my overexposure issues on a lot of my pictures, so a bit of experimentation needed.

Amy, if you can get them from a techie in the theatre or TV trade, try a bit of lighting gel taped over the flash to warm it up. Pale salmon pink works well, a strip covering about 1/2 the area of the flash is sufficient to take the "edge" off the harshness, or bounce the light off a rope bag for a bit of warm diffusion.

If I've got a new photo toy I want to take underground I'll go to a local easy cave, set up the gear and play with different setings / positions for a while.

simonsays said:

Who took your avatar picture? Finest on UKcaving 

Click to expand...

Aww thanks =) I did (well kinda, set up the shot and then switched places making friend hold camera and press the button and friend #2 fired the flash) I did a couple of my corset-in-a-cave photos...http://www.flickr.com/photos/sunguramy/sets/72157626956090710/with/6467943521/

Ooh i love that photo spikey! The orange works, definitely!

Thanks for the ideas

Burt, yeah I definitly like shadows but the flash seems to give too many and too "harsh" i find it distracting. I dont know what lighting gel is so I will look it up. Is that that celophane stuff the cover lights with for colours? I would totally go play in a local easy cave but uh...I am 8+ hours from the nearest cave so that doesnt work so well haha. I have played with things in the bathroom or closet but very small spaces and well..the bathroom mirror throws a loop into things.

I don't know enough about photography to really add anything worthwhile (particularly about colour and light-painting) but anyway;

I use flash for any photos I take - mostly just one gun but sometimes two. Camera settings depend on the situation - I recently changed camera and almost always use low ISO (100, occasionally 200 at most as it's not a top end model and anything more would possibly introduce grain, not tested this though) - which with flashes in not overly large passages produces acceptable photos.
I do have slaves to fire the flash but I have to force my camera, by a long winded method, into firing a single flash so more recently started using 1s exposure and manually firing one flashgun (which depending on situation, triggers another on a slave) - not ideal and sometimes need people to turn their light off to avoid trails - having said that I did take a picture of someone rigging a short while back and his light was left on, but obviously he was looking at the rigging so got no trail but it introduced just a touch of movement to his hands and rope etc which (in my opinion, perhaps not to everyones liking) added a bit of interest/sense of movement to the photo..

I'd agree with Burt on shadows, subtle ones can be good - I guess it depends what you're after in your photos. The position of the flash makes a difference, I took a few photos of a cracked mud floor a while back and on some the shadows were harsh, problem was getting the flash in the right spot which was tricky (or at least it was for me) due to the location of the floor etc.

Diffuser will soften the light of a flash or torch. Not something I've ever tried yet, though I do have a piece of milk carton ready cut to try out!

A really useful technique, when you can get away with it, is to use bounce flash.

In this, you don't directly illuminate the scene, but bounce the flash off the ceiling / wall / behind you to effectively produce a massive 'soft box' that then gently illuminates the scene.

The problem applying this when caving is that often you're right up against the limits of how much light you can get into a scene, and bounce flashing loses about 75% (2 f-stops) of the power, as well as increasing the flash-subject distance. Also the bounce target (i.e. cave wall / ceiling) is often rather off-white (i.e. muddy), so you'll get a colour cast into your image. But certainly for taking pictures close up of things (i.e. formations, people shots) it can be really nice.

Similar to Burt, I often also use the Daren Drum I carry my photo gear in as a bounce target, for near stuff. I give it an occasional scrub in the sink to avoid it becoming too brown with ingrained mud.

For Macro shots I've also used a full on plastic milk carton with a hole cut in it actually slid over the top of the flash gun. This gives a massive area for diffusion, the whole thing lights up like a big light bulb.