May 19, 2010
New Entrance Tour, Mammoth Cave, Kentucky.
The gallery of images below are from the New Entrance Tour of Mammoth Cave National Park. I took this tour a short 45 minutes after finishing the Mammoth Cave Historic Tour (images and review here). I would highly recommend the back to back tours as there is a different feel within the two areas of the cave system. The Historic Tour was all about large caverns and walkways while the New Entrance Tour was about formations.
My external flash unit proved invaluable on the two tours I had of Mammoth Cave. The park service lighting is sufficient for the human eye within the cave but the camera alone will struggle. The flash unit allowed me to angle my flash and bounce it into the area of my intended image while avoiding bleached out images. However, as you will see I didn’t have much time to assure adequate lighting (as the tour keeps moving at a decent pace) and so I was left to estimate, shoot and move on resulting in unequal lighting in some images.
Having been through these Mammoth Cave Tours, Jewel Cave Tour and Wind Cave Tours I have a few recommendations for flash users. The most effective/efficient flash setup I found was to set my flash at a set output power (generally around 1/2 to 3/4 power) and shot with the camera in manual mode. This way the flash put off a consistent light amount and I could therefore adjust the aperture or shutter speed with some understanding of the result. With the set light amount I would dial my shutter speed up or down depending on distance to the subject. My experience is the ETTL (through the lens) metering is awful at trying to gauge the proper exposure in caves and the ‘auto’ flash power resulted in a gamut of blown out and under exposed pictures.
For those deciding between doing either the new entrance tour or the historic tour but not both, I personally would recommend the Historic Tour. Fat man’s misery is very impressive (even though I didn’t get many pictures due to the tight space) and the diversity of large caverns, tight spots and mining history made it the better tour in my opinion. However, my ultimate recommendation is if you have the time then to do both tours, worth the hiking and nominal expense.
Jess Cheney Photography 