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If anyone wants an on the spot weather report tomorrow morning... feel free to call me on O4II I96 946... I'll be leaving in a couple of hours and will probably be up early in the morning...

I think I'm right with my eyes tomorrow

OK - we're off - see you all on Sunday

Just worked out how long it will take to get from Newcastle to Blackheath (about 3:45 hrs). I'll have to leave at about 9:30

(and a 4:45 hrs drive home after the caves)

Nigel (hope you're reading this) - We need to take our lunch with us for Sunday. Does that mean we need to take it into the caves with us, or do we come out for lunch & can get it from our cars (or the office)?

I'm packed & ready

Hi Stubbsy,

We will have to eat lunch outside, possibly by the Blue Lake.

Recommend you leave it in the office, much easier to access.

Regards
Nige

Hi guys,

If there is anyone left to read this, it looks more and more like I will not be coming into the caves with you. Quite frankly just not well enough to even climb 10 or 20 steps.

But will definitely meet you Sunday morning and at least I can say g'day in person.

On top of this, the wife is feeling as crook as Rookwood and I think I need to be home with her and we can both suffer together.

Don't worry though, you will be in excellent hands with Ted and Russell, two top guys.

Regards
Nige

nigels wrote:Hi guys,

If there is anyone left to read this, it looks more and more like I will not be coming into the caves with you. Quite frankly just not well enough to even climb 10 or 20 steps.

But will definitely meet you Sunday morning and at least I can say g'day in person.

On top of this, the wife is feeling as crook as Rookwood and I think I need to be home with her and we can both suffer together.

Don't worry though, you will be in excellent hands with Ted and Russell, two top guys.

Regards
Nige

Sorry to hear that Nigel given all the time and effort you've put in, but the health of both your wife & yourself must come first. At least we'll be able to thank you in person.

Birddog,

So, what do you say? Are you coming to Blackheath? At Northrn Beaches we even got a little bit of sun

Hlop wrote:Birddog,

So, what do you say? Are you coming to Blackheath? At Northrn Beaches we even got a little bit of sun

I'm at Glenbrook now! hehehehe!

Gee birddog

I'm just leaving Newcastle

Still in Bondi, will be leaving in about 90 minutes, picking up Lindy in Castlecrag on the way ...

Birddog, is the family coming with you down to Avalon tomorrow morning?

Say Hi to your family for me.

Hi guys, I have written private use letters for the following. If I have missed anybody please reply to this forum as I will be checking it every so often

Nige



Gary Stark
Leigh Stark
Peter Stubbs
Matt Kaarma
John Peake
Leon C Williams
Stephen Kilburn
Scott Collis
Eric Follan
Andrew Follan
Mikhail Khlopovskikh
Geoff Yates
Belinda Tricker
Craig Baker
Diana Baker
Chris Russell
Geoff Leff
Adam

Whew, what a day....

Just needed to say a quik thanks again to everyone involved in the day, especially Nigel and the Cave guides, they were VERY good guides letting us wonder the caves at our lesiure.

I am still going through all my shots but one thing is for certain the caves are a tough subject to shoot (well for me anyway).

Looking forward to seeing everyone's images as the post them.

W00DY PS: So when is the next Big Day Out

W00DY wrote:I am still going through all my shots but one thing is for certain the caves are a tough subject to shoot (well for me anyway).

Looking forward to seeing everyone's images as the post them.

W00DY

Woody,
What do you mean? I presume you have lot of keepers
Now you can tell everyone what the internal lighting are? great colour if you can capture them? What lens do you think suitable for the caves shoot? your thoughts please!

I thought I would just quickly post this one of some D70 Users doing what they do best....

Not a great photo but it shows what the caves were like for our members.

Yes, I've been there twice and I knew the conditions in 7 or 8 caves in the area, lucky this is the private not the public tour, if public tour you hardly take many good shots.

Birddog114 wrote:
Woody,
What do you mean? I presume you have lot of keepers
Now you can tell everyone what the internal lighting are? great colour if you can capture them? What lens do you think suitable for the caves shoot? your thoughts please!

I'm not sure I am the best person for this but I will give it a go...

I have SOME keepers, probably not as many as I would have liked.

The main difficulty I found was not blowing the highlights (which I did a lot ). I found it difficult to capture a large part of the caves without blowing the lighter sections. Most of my keepers are smaller parts of the cave where I have pinpointed a particular part of the cave.

I am looking forward to seeing some of the other guys images when they used the SB-800. I didn't take mine as I wanted to concentrate on the "natural" fell of the caves, but then I did find myself using the onboard flash a few times.

As for lens I was only using the kit lens (my 24 - 120 VR is in getting fixed) which I think handled the caves very well. A few times I found myself wanting a little extra reach (IE: My 120) but very few times did I want a wider angle (this is probably due to the fact I have not really used a wider angle than the kit lens so might not know what I am missing out on).

Anywhere those are my thoughts and I am sure other users will have a completely different take on the requirements. One thing is for sure though if you do go to the caves make sure you visit the River Cave, that was the highlight for me

Cheers,

W00DY

Birddog114 wrote:Yes, I've been there twice and I knew the conditions in 7 or 8 caves in the area, lucky this is the private not the public tour, if public tour you hardly take many good shots.

We say one public tour going through which had about 40 people in it

Can you imagine trying to take a photo with 40 flashes going off and bodies everywhere

I was in the River Caves

Cool start,

I was awaiting pictures from the Jenolan Caves.
Nice shot.
What do you need to do to get shots without people in them ?
Woody, what were the exposure settings ?

Regards
Christian

christiand wrote:Cool start,
What do you need to do to get shots without people in them ?
Christian

CD,
Tell people back-off
or stay back when the tour leave and remember where the light switches are

christiand wrote:Cool start,

I was awaiting pictures from the Jenolan Caves.
Nice shot.
What do you need to do to get shots without people in them ?
Woody, what were the exposure settings ?

Regards
Christian

The exposure settings for this shot were:

24mm
1.30sec @ F/3.8
ISO 200
Metering - Center Weighted

I didn't spend any time setting this one up I just wanted to get a shot of the members.

Thanks Woody,

how did you arrive at that exposure setting ?
You mentioned earlier that some of the lights caused blown highlights
in the images.
Did you manually meter or did you do EV adjustment ?

By the way I've changed my avatar today.
It is no longer the tulip but "pirates enterin Sydney Harbour ..."

Regards
Christian

CD,
Canberra members will object our avatar should have one with Canbera landmark! hehehe.

Well,
An amazing day at the caves - was great to see everyone and meet some new people. Still got to have a look at the images I took today but Craig (JordanP) is reviewing his images in camera as I type here. A huge thank you to Nigel for his generosity on organising this wonderful event. If it were to ever happen again I would strongly recommend it. Might I also ad how great I thought the kids were that came along, Leek's little one Shinod (? spelling) and baby MHD Isabelle. Will hopefully post some images in the next few days.

Geoff.

Where’s the pic woody - all I am getting is the dreaded red x

Woody - can see pic now and it is better than anything I got - well done. I will also voice what Geoff has said and thanks to Nigel for arranging this meet. PS: wait for my pic of the 2 ladies (they know who they are sleeping on a bench )

Birddog,

its Canberran pirates entering Sydney Harbour ! ...
(harr, harr ...)

Cheers
CD

CD,
Do you know that the HMAS Manoora is on standby and our Killakoala on her deck and ready to fire

Too late Birddog,

we arrived last weekend

The damage is done ...

The first 2 shots are inside the caves and where shot with Glen’s 50mm f/1.4 which he kindly loaned me.

The third shot is of Diane and Bel absolutely exhausted after the first trip. Shot with the Sigma 12-24mm.

The fourth shot of Bel was a set-up (with apologies for the placement of the empty beer bottle) shot with the 105mm macro Sigma

Well I've just got home to Newcastle. Too tired to even download an image, but I have to say a HUGE thank you to Nigel for organising such a brilliant day. We passed a public tour with maybe 50 people in it all going flash flash flash. We had the luxury of two excellent guides in Russell & Ted(?) and were in groups of 10.

The more intrepid (or was that stupid) of us did 3 caves and all those steps, but hopefully we have some keepers amongst us.

I'm almost tempted to have tomorrow off work to see what I have, bt we can't be sick on Mondays

Just in case anyone missed it... I posted my cave images here...

Saw them John. They look damn good. I have a feeling mine won't be near as good. Like Woody has mentioned elsewhere I was getting a lot of blown highlights, kept fiddling with my EV and ISO and just about everything else I could twiddle.

Also managed to lose my newly purchased eye cup in the very last cave.

Should have done what birddog told to me and superglued it in place!

Time for bed

stubbsy wrote:Also managed to lose my newly purchased eye cup in the very last cave.

If it makes you feel better, I lost mine during the course of the weekend as well... I think I'll manage without an eye-cup from now on... I obviously didn't notice the difference...

I'm so glad I'm not the only one that's lost something yesterday.. Oh well.. Birddog.. do you have any lens caps that fit the 18-70 kit lens?

I was too tired to go through my shots in depth last night, and I probably won't get much of a chance for the first 3 days of this week, but from what I did see.. I think they turned out pretty cool. My biggest problem is white balance, but I did them in raw so that's easily fixed. I especially like the river shots.

Anyway, Nigel, if you read this.. THANK YOU very much and please pass on my thanks to both Ted, and Russell.. They were absolutely great.

Geoff

Nigel,

Thanks a lot for the wonderful day! Our guides were great, caves are amazing!

Birddog114 wrote:Now you can tell everyone what the internal lighting are? great colour if you can capture them? What lens do you think suitable for the caves shoot? your thoughts please!

Many interesting forms and colors if you can capture them

I used 50mm 1.8 and Sigma 12-24. I'd say 50mm was bit long for caves. With film it would be perfect but with digital is a bit inconeniet in many places.

leek wrote:

stubbsy wrote:Also managed to lose my newly purchased eye cup in the very last cave.

If it makes you feel better, I lost mine during the course of the weekend as well... I think I'll manage without an eye-cup from now on... I obviously didn't notice the difference...

I told all of you:
Put some nails polish or super glue around the rim of the eyecup and stick it on, you never loose it again. By using a toothpick and dip it pointer to the liquid then spread on the rim, not too much! and you're done!

Birddog114 wrote:

leek wrote:

stubbsy wrote:Also managed to lose my newly purchased eye cup in the very last cave.

If it makes you feel better, I lost mine during the course of the weekend as well... I think I'll manage without an eye-cup from now on... I obviously didn't notice the difference...

I told all of you:
Put some nails polish or super glue around the rim of the eyecup and stick it on, you never loose it again. By using a toothpick and dip it pointer to the liquid then spread on the rim, not too much! and you're done!

Just make sure you don't put your eye onto the eye cap straight after you have applied the super glue

Birddog114 wrote:Put some nails polish or super glue around the rim of the eyecup and stick it on, you never loose it again. By using a toothpick and dip it pointer to the liquid then spread on the rim, not too much! and you're done!

Same applies to prevent loosing of the lens cup

Monday afternoon, still nackered after caves trip.

NIGEL, RUSSEL & TED thanks again you all did a great job, much appreciated. The caves are not the easiest place to photograph and your patience was a great help, we wern't rushed at any time not even when I took the wrong turn and the lights went out.

Blown hi-lites seem to be the order of the day, I got a few shots I think are ok and will post some soon.

Had a great day, thanks again to everyone.

Rick. PS I don't know how but I finished up with copies of the agreement we all signed that should have gone to Stubsie, John Peak, Stephen Kilburn and Geoff Leff. If you contact me with details I will forward them on to you and if anyone has my copy let me know?

EDITED Oooops. Not meant for here.