Friday 29/04/2022   Blue Waterholes Campground – Caves Creek – Nichols Gorge via Nichols Walk – Cooleman Cave – Long Plain Hut

                                    Kosciuszko National Park, NSW

                                    Ngarigo Country

Participants: Stephen Davies (Photos, Report)

This was a short solo walk back to Cooleman Cave with the sole objective of taking some better photographs than during yesterday’s visit. This time I was carrying a tripod, a white chopping board to act as a diffuser and a couple of small LED lights.

Download file: 20220429a.gpx                         Track Info

 

Unable to resist the lure of revisiting Cooleman Cave better equipped to take photos in the dark. Yesterday on our explorations of Cooleman and Murrays Caves we were hand-holding our cameras and headlamps for all of our photos. This necessitated relatively short exposure times, a wide aperture and a very high ISO (3200) setting. All this combining to result in unsharp (from motion blur), shallow depth of field (out of focus foregrounds and backgrounds) and harsh lighting from a point source headlamp.

This time with the camera placed on the tripod I could use much lower ISOs (less noise) and much longer shutter speeds to enable light painting of the cave walls. To diffuse the LED light I used a white cutting board (used for chopping food) and painted each scene throughout the long exposure. I did this several times for each scene, trying to modify the lighting of the scene each time. The results were better than I expected and vastly superior to the handheld versions.

On returning to Blue Waterholes Campground were had a visit from a very cooperative pair of female Scarlet Robins. They were generous with their time and seemed to know how to pose for the camera. They even allowed me time to switch to my 100-500mm zoom lens for the sitting.

On our way back we also drove in to check out Long Plain Hut and surrounds.

Photos

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