HowToFixComputers.com

Neil Patterson · Guest

Hello,
A few weeks ago I posted my intention to visit Luray Caverns, VA, and
asked for some photography advice. With your advice I visited the
facility, took some photographs, and posted a few to
http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/~neil/Luray/Caverns.html

The place is awesome. The initial view, the parking lot, overwhelmed me
as did the long line up to buy tickets and another to wait for a tour.
Each tour group has approximately 50 people and I believe there were at
least three groups concurrently touring. I made it a habit to hang back
in the group, as did a few others, to take some people-less images.

The tripod stayed in the car. Elbows on the chest, try not to breathe; as
you can see in the photos that was not successful. The suggestion of
bracing elbows on the hand rails is a good one as there are many. I have
never used a monopod, have seen them, and believe this would have been a
practical control method that is accomodated by the tour operation. No
limits on photograohy other than 'keep the tour moving'. There were many
flash photographers, video cams and cell phone photographers.

The Eastern states all experienced record low temperatures that week.
With the camera acclimated to the cold and the caverns being warm and
very humid my first problem was a foggy lens. While the situation
improved I was constantly wiping the lens before shooting.

I set the camera to Aperture Priority Mode, F2.7 (lowest value), ISO 200,
flash off. I turned on Auomatic Exposure Bracketing and gathered three
images per shoot. I used JD Smith's tutorial to blend the three images
into one and you can see the results in the web page. The utility's
default values are used and images had to be aligned as I did move the
camera through the bracketing process.

Enjoy. Oh, can you see Gollum, Bilbo Baggins or the lost ring? The first
two phot sets include a cave lake.
..../neil patterson