[Elfsea] OT - Photos of Carlsbad Caverns

[Richard Threlkeld]

Pyro and I just returned from a non-SCA vacation (gasp!) to Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. It was wonderful and I strongly recommend it. Even though you miss the massive bat exodus each night, this time of year is great. We only had a couple of hundred people in the caves all day versus 5-10,000 at peak days. We took all the tours we could (both self guided and ranger guided) over three very active days.



I heartily recommend the Lower Cavern tour which goes to the lowest level in hard hats with LED lights. There are no displays with optimal lighting in the Lower Cavern, just great caves. Sadly, I could not take my SLR camera since you have to squeeze a little and use both hands a bit. But Pyro took a compact camera (pictures not yet uploaded).



Another great guided tour was the Left Cavern which is primitive, but not difficult. The catch is you use a wood and glass lantern with a candle. This is similar to what the first explorers used.



For those who are in shape for it, there are two tours on weekends only that require you to climb ladders and ropes, chimney, crawl on your belly, and generally get pleasantly dirty. We were not there on a Saturday or Sunday so we missed them, but we will try next time we go.



I have uploaded the pictures we took (except Pyro's Lower Cavern ones) to the normal place (http://www.flickr.com/photos/rthrelkeld/sets/).



Like any new photographic venue, cave photography requires a lot of special skills and I only acquired a few of them in my time there. We did not bring a tripod and over half of my pictures the first day were useless despite careful hand-held shooting at high ISO with a vibration reduction lens. We bought an inexpensive tripod and it helped, but even pushing the button made some motion. I have a radio remote for the camera, but the battery was old and only lasted for 10-15 shots (but they were the best).



The on camera flash was too weak to do much unless I was very close to the subject. The big flash tended to wash out the shadows that made the subjects interesting and it washed out the color at times. Finally, Carlsbad Caverns is relatively unique due to its very large rooms. I was using an 18-200 f3.5-6.3 lens on a camera that used an APC sensor. This results in more or less the same image that an old 35MM film camera would get with a lens 1.5 times greater or 27-300 in my case. You cannot get the awesome magnitude of the rooms without a wider angle lens. When I go back I will try to have a 10MM lens (effective 15MM).



The result of all this is I took somewhere around 2000 pictures and 669 made it to Flickr. Some are pretty good. Some are merely adequate. But if you would like a small taste of what Carlsbad Caverns feels like, please take a look.



Caelin on Andrede

mka: Richard Threlkeld


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