Lessons From Caves

I love caverns, and if there’s one within 70 miles of where we’re vacationing, we’ll find our way to it before we leave. Most of the caverns we’ve visited as a family have a similar story as to their formation, but with human habitation, each has its own unique history. Due to the capriciousness of Mother Nature, each cave will have features to call its own. While taking “decent” photos in caverns is fairly easy using a flash, taking really great photos in a cave is devilishly trickly. I’ll show you what I mean.

The image above is from a family vacation in 2008. This was my first digital camera, the one that got me hooked on photography. It was a Fujifilm FinePix A303; it still works and I still use it for nostalgic reasons. Not bad for its time, it did have a few program settings, but at the time I shot exclusively on Auto. RAW was not an option on this camera. The flash fired automatically because, well, we were in a cave. Digital cameras were early in this phase, especially on a consumer level. This image’s resolution is 960 x 1280, which really doesn’t look too bad here. The resolution is 72 ppi, or pixels per inch. I took this image at Ruby Falls in Chattanooga, TN, and we haven’t ever managed to get back there. Two cameras later, I’d like to make a return visit.

You see the vertical line in this image? I cannot account for it. It happens in some photos but not others, and it appears most often in low-light situations. This was Tuckaleechee caverns in Townsend, Tennessee. Additionally, with a better camera, a Canon Powershot, I tried to shoot this without a flash. I used a really high ISO, 1600, so that I wouldn’t have to slow the shutter down. That worked, I didn’t have any camera shake, but there’s lots of “noise”, little tiny grains of lighter pixels in the darker areas of the image. I could probably take care of the noise but I’d still have that line down the center, and if I feel like putting the time in, I could probably take care of that too. I anticipate an arduous task in that.

This was April of 2022, and it was taken with my current camera, a Canon EOS Rebel T5, using the original lens that came with the camera, 18-55 mm, f/0. I suppressed the flash so that it wouldn’t fire at all, I set the ISO to 400, the lens aperture at 4.3, and a shutter speed of 1/8 second. For reference, on a bright, sunny day shooting pictures of cars at a car show, the shutter speed was 1/1000 second. Even at 1/8 second, if I had moved at all, you’d have know it in the image. This image is nice and sharp. I leaned against the handrail, got the focus, inhaled, checked my focus, exhaled, pulled my elbows into my sides for support, inhaled again, and pressed the button. The result is that I got every detail of the rock, and you can see the depth of the formation. Look again at the first picture and notice how flat it looks, compared with the contours of this one. I was determined to only use the flash if it was absolutely necessary. There were a couple of places where I did need the flash to capture something that was otherwise not showing up, and I will freely admit that most of the shots I took in the cave were crap, because there wasn’t much to help me steady the camera and I wasn’t about to try to climb in and out of a cave with a tripod, not to mention how inconvenient that would have been for the other visitors. The shot below is another one that turned out surprisingly well.

The camera settings were nearly identical to the previous shot. If I had moved even enough to draw breath, this shot would have been worthless. In fact, the two preceding it were. Fortunately I was able to be the last person in the group, so it really didn’t matter if I took a couple of extra seconds to try again. There were some shots I just had to abandon, though, because the group was moving on.

Here are the things to remember about taking photos in caves if you really don’t want to use flash:

• It will be tempting to turn up the ISO, but remember the second picture; use as low a setting as you can get away with.
• A tripod is nice if you can get away with it, or even a monopod. If not, steady the camera on or against something. Pull your elbows in to your sides to help steady the camera.
• Longer shutter speeds will help produce the images you want, but you risk breathing and moving the camera. The secret to some of the shots that turned out well was recognizing that I could underexpose with a shorter shutter speed and expose just a touch more in Lightroom or Photoshop. The ones that turned out spectacularly well except for a bit of underexposure were worth that little bump, but actually, most didn’t need it. It is an option to keep in mind, though. If it gives you the chance to catch a shot that you just can’t get without moving, fix it in post. It’s okay, even Ansel Adams touched up his photos to tell the story he wanted to tell.