In September after working 6 days a week getting half a bizzilion school diary's made I am planning on spending a chunk of cash on upgrading my photography kit to something decent. I'm currently using a Bridge camera with a flash and LED photo lights which work fairly well.



My upgrade is going to go along the line of

Canon 1100D or 600D
Yongnuo RF-602 transmitter and receivers with 2 flashes and maybe tempted with a blind bat from biff
A new tripod that wont wobble under the weight of an SLR
Some kind of transport device slightly uprated from my current wrap it in a towel and stick it in a darren drum set-up

I have no idea about which flashes are good ones, the one I have now has an annoying rectangular beam! how well do these RF slaves work?

Are the cameras good choices? or should I be looking at Nikons etc...

I will be sticking with the stock lens to start with but what type should I be keeping an eye out for?

Any advice/experience with this kind of stuff would be most appreciated

The reply could be lengthy and there are much better cave photographers than me on here  :bow: but I would look at mirrorless cameras and the benefits of size and weight they offer. I am a Wedding & Portrait photographer and am considering selling my pro Nikon kit and going mirrorless next year.

RF-602's are great, very reliable, well built and cheap.

Flashwise Yongnuo also make great flashes, cheap, fairly reliable etc. Try the YN-460.  I'd be reluctant to bring pricy flashes underground as they're the most likely part of your kit to be dropped or get wet.

Put them all into a Peli Case. Either a 1200 or a 1300. The 1200 is smaller and therefore much more manoeuvrable. Thing is, larger cameras mightn't fit into it so you might have to get a 1300.

If you're just going to use flashes then I wouldn't be too worried about using a tripod. The flashes sync in about 1/200 of a second so there's no motion blur. I only use a tripod on rare occasions where I need a long exposure, like around entrances.

Cheers guys, Had a quick look at mirrorless and there way over my budget!

Do you know if these will fire from the RF triggers? http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/FLASHGUN-JOB-LOT-4-X-FLASHGUNS-ALL-WORKING-FOR-FILM-CAMERAS-/350847584557?pt=UK_CamerasPhoto_CameraAccessories_CameraFlashUnits_JN&hash=item51b025492d

Older film flashes tend to have a range of voltages running across the points. If they're too high they can fry the circuitry of more modern digital stuff. Camera's have been destroyed in the past. You can:

A. Find out the acceptable voltage levels for whatever you're planning on using with then, and then look up the voltages of the flashes you intend to buy - often you can find tables on the web.

B. Find out the acceptable voltage levels for whatever you're planning on using with then buy the flashes and test them with a digital multimeter. If it's too much then just don't use them.

C. Get a Firefly 2 to use with them. The Firefly 2 was designed for use with film flashes. Not sure about the Firefly 3. Inquire with the manufacturer. Fireflies are expensive and a bit faffy anyhow.

D. Fire the flashes manually. Bit of a pain but you can do this without a tripod if you're just firing a single flash - set the shutter speed to a second or so, turn off all other lights, get someone to fire the flash on command. More than one flash and you'll need a tripod.

F. Don't buy the flashes and use the money to buy ice-cream.

Anyone tried light triggered flashguns with digital?, used to be fine for film as long as the trigger (master flash) was electronic, IIRC, bulbs did not "peak" enough to trigger them.

Antwan said:

Cheers guys, Had a quick look at mirrorless and there way over my budget!

Do you know if these will fire from the RF triggers? http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/FLASHGUN-JOB-LOT-4-X-FLASHGUNS-ALL-WORKING-FOR-FILM-CAMERAS-/350847584557?pt=UK_CamerasPhoto_CameraAccessories_CameraFlashUnits_JN&hash=item51b025492d

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Just a couple of suggestions - hope this helps:

The Nikon 1 v1 is cheaper on Amazon than the Canon DSLRs in which you're interested. It's built for action photography (up 60fps!!!) but is a fiddle to use in manual exposure mode and so isn't well suited to cave photography. A Meike underwater housing is available for the v1 for about ?70. The design of the housing isn't great but will be easier to use than the home-made housing that you're proposing. RF remote controls are available for the V1 for next to nowt but their only functionality is to trigger the shutter.

Take a look at the Samsung NX100. This has a 14mp half-frame sensor, is great in low light and can be found very cheaply at e.g. Argos Outlet. The Samsung is the same size as a Nikon FM so plenty to get hold of and is fairly easy to use in manual mode. Unfortunately no housings have been made for this camera and only wired remotes are available as far as I know.

Electronic flash - horrible - don't use it. Try MagicShine cree LEDs - the cheapest lumin/? lights that I know of. If you must use flash, the cheap RF triggers that Jessops used to sell work a treat with Metz guns. No doubt alternatives are still available.

Thanks, Who would have thought the business of flash guns was so complicated!  c

Went for option A. then Option F. 

At least I have a month untill I can afford anything, so plenty of time to figure out what I want to get.
Looking at the price of the canon speedlight flashes I'm half tempted to buy half a dozen blind bats from Biff!

Graham, I'm definitely getting a DSLR, if only to have one! there are a few things outdoors I fancy having a go at with the bulb mode.

You're making a good choice but be very wary of the wet stuff if it goes caving - DSLRs are very susceptible to damp. Good luck.

judging from your picture at the top of this thred I'd say you are pretty good already - will upgrading your kit make that much difference?
but of course if you want an excuse for new toys then go ahead!

there are some of the yn flashes that are compatible with the 602 controller.
less kit so more reliable / less to drop.
The weather proof SLR's look worth their cost (have a look at pentax)

I use a Lumix LX3
And a $10 flash gun I picked up at the local used camera store. Manualy fire it so I just went with the one that throws the farthest! (120-ft)

Other than that, helmet lightpaint. (I have a Omni v1 for my Duo, and my 2nd light is a knockoff Ultrafire that's a nice 600 lumen flood)

Other than that, for *specific* things, I have a sodacan sized light that throws a  nice beam of 3000lumens to paint large domes and huge pits (uh, TAG-huge....so like... GG or Titan size). But that is rare for me to bother carrying.

www.sunguramy.com to see some my shots

Overall my kit cost <$200 and weighs about 2 pounds (3 if dragging in that sodacan light).

My theory is - ya don't need expensive kit. Just light and understanding. More difficult sometimes and I still run into times I can't get what I want. But it makes me grow as a photog and become more creative so to me it's worth it.

To each their' own though, I won't dare knock someone else's method. We all do what works for us.

Antwan said:

Looking at the price of the canon speedlight flashes I'm half tempted to buy half a dozen blind bats from Biff!

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I got a rude nora with the same colour temperature leds as the blind bats, and a blind bat, this is plenty for ost things.
you will need a good tripod and a camera that is capable of long exposures, ie has a bulb setting I use a canon 40D about ?200 for the body secondhand

bograt said:

Anyone tried light triggered flashguns with digital?, used to be fine for film as long as the trigger (master flash) was electronic, IIRC, bulbs did not "peak" enough to trigger them.

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I have tested out my current 'Film Flash' which has an optical slave option and it did trigger from a digital camera flash

The problem with digital and slave flashes is normally that certain digital cameras in certain modes use a number of pre-flashes to obtain exposure information before the main flash fires, synchronised with the shutter.

If the slave is triggered by the pre-flashes then although the slave will have fired, it won't be synchronised with the opening of the shutter and will have no effect on the photo, even though you saw it fire.

On my Nikon SLR I can use the menu to set the built in flash (which I use as the trigger) to either operate in TTL mode (which will involve pre-flashes) or manual mode in which case it will only fire once. In the latter case it will trigger a suitably sensitive slave unit fine. I don't know about specific cameras.

don't know if they still are but preflashes are to reduce red eye andcan normally be turned off. fire fly flash triggers do a version that can learn preflashes and therefore fire at the correct time

Preflashes aren't necessarily anything to do with red-eye reduction (though they can be used for that). They are used in TTL flash metering (i.e. the calculation of the correct flash output). In traditional film photography this was done by having a sensor close to the film that detected light reflecting off the film during the exposure and cut off the flash when it deemed the exposure to be correct. This doesn't work with digital photography because the sensor isn't reflective enough. Manufacturers then developed a technique using a number of preflashes fired at low output levels before the shutter was opened to detect the correct flash output.

This is important for slave flashes because some cameras let you turn it off (i.e. put the flash in manual output mode - no need for preflashes because there is no flash metering) and some (typically cheaper compacts) don't.

You're absolutely right that the Firefly 3 has a mode that can learn the preflash routine of a given camera so that it only acts on the main flash. The Firefly 2 doesn't have this feature. A lot of older external flash units had built in slave units. If you can't put the built in flash in manual mode then the built in slave is unlikely to work correctly. In that situation the Firefly 3 is a good solution to the problem.

If the pre flashes are at a lower level, will they be strong enough to trigger a built in slave? IIRC the ones I had were'nt all that sensitive, as I said earlier a bulb would not trigger them.

As you note, it depends on the sensitivity of the slave. One of the firefly's main selling points is that it is particularly sensitive and is reliable over long distances and round corners.

TTL flash metering is unlikely to work correctly in a cave environment as camera/flash systems are optimised for the domestic setting; you'll probably need to set exposure manually to get best results. This also means that there's no need to buy expensive flashguns as cheap manually operated guns are more effective. Manual mode is very easy to use with modern cameras as you can instantly check for correct exposure.

You'll probably get better results in many situations by using LED floodlighting as electronic flash 'freezes' water in a very unpleasant way. It's also much easier to compose a shot and get the right bits in focus when using floodlighting. 7dayshop and MagicShine sell powerful and relatively cheap LEDs. Cheap tripods such as Gorillapod are excellent if you put the camera on self timer or use a remote shutter release so that the camera/tripod are settled when the shutter opens. Shoot in RAW mode and correct temperature, D lighting etc. at home.