Underwater Cave Photography is hard! (3rd Trip)
After strobe nightmares this trip is all about ambient light in the cavern zone. The idea being to take some of the pics i took earlier with a lower iso and longer shutter speed by using a tripod.
First things first I had to some how get the camera housing without a tripod mount onto the tripod. After some deliberation I decided epoxy would do the trip. If it doesnt work I will get one of the local metalworkers to tap out a thread in the aluminum tray. So here's some pics of how it looked.
After peeling off some of the excess epoxy, I wasn't convinced that it works properly on the aluminum of the camera tray. It peeled away with no resistance. I didn't want to overstress it. So decide to field test carefully!
I rigged a 3 pound lead weight to a boltsnap and did a quick pool test. All was well. the lead weight is a bit dangly an forces me to extend the tripod legs, but it seems better than weighting the tripod directly.
So next day the real thing. I get up at the crack of dawn and head out to Taj Majal again.
I jump in and clip off the camera and the lead weight. I carry the tripod in hand and can really feel the drag from both camera and tripod. My camera is clipped of on my left D-Ring. Normally i would just keep it in hand and rarely clip it, but with my hands fiull with the tripod this is not an option. I experiment a bit clipping on the right side, but now Im worried about the dome port banging against my cave light battery cannister. The lead weight feels a bit like a deco bottle and is quickly forgotton. I need to find a better way of carrying the tripod. I think with all the snag hazzards on it i might need to put in a bag and clip it off like a stage. that's what this all about though, getting a working system up running in the cavern before I even think about taking all this into the cave zone.
I arrive where I want to be and the light sucks! Where are streaming beams. Did i screw up the time? In fact I did. The effect I wanted and can be seen in earlier photos can be seen around 10am in July in Cenote Taj Mahal. Towards the end of the dive a few beams wandered in but as I'm diving before work I can't hang around to wait for the full show.
I decide to try some light painting. I set up the tripod on a big bolder, balance it out and attach the lead weight. Finally the Camera is attached and i make the focus using the exposure lock button (switching focus lock with exposure lock is discussed in the previous post) I set ISO400, 30" shutter and f22. I bracket the exposure one stop either side and press the shutter on a timer. As i wait I paint parts of the cave with my cave light. Hoping to bring a few of the darker areas into the picture. The result is below :
So how did the tripod mount work out? Badly! It broke after the photo above. For a quite exorbitant 100 pesos I now have a nice 1/4-20 hole tapped into the tray. 1/4-20 is pretty much the standard thread size for tripods and is definitely the size of my Canon EOS350D. Larger exist but generally on Medium Format cameras and older weirder ones.