Travelog: The Tantanoola Caves

Hello everyone and welcome back to Tiro Finale! First of all, apologies for the infrequent updates here on Tiro Finale. Moving towards the end of the year, our writing staff has been rather thin in view of the holiday seasons. Nevertheless, I am here to hold the fort with our regular publications. On one of my recent days off, I decided to take a quick drive out of town to pay a visit to the Tantanoola Caves Conservation Park.

Just like my recent foray into cave photography, I figured this local cave would be another fantastic opportunity to gain even more experience on the subject matter. Unlike the Engelbrecht Cave, visitors are allowed to spend as long as they like in these caves. A tour is provided as part of the entry fees but, the content and length of the tour is entirely dependent upon the group.

With photography in mind, this is an absolutely golden opportunity to spend as much time as I liked taking photos. Throughout my hour or so in the relatively small cave, I took approximately 70 photos. Here are the collection of my ten favorite shots from that day.

One major benefit of photography in the Tantanoola Caves is how well lit the entire cavern is. This makes taking picture handheld a very viable option even if that means having to bump the ISO a little higher. Taking photos with a tripod is allowed in these caves but, users are reminded to be mindful of other visitors. On the day I was there, it was only me and another small group which would have been a perfect opportunity to utilize a tripod. Alas, I had not brought one with me. Next time, I will keep that in mind and bring my travel tripod with me wherever I go on future cave trips!

Having the entire cave to myself meant that I could take my sweet time taking photos and tweaking the settings to my liking. In order to preserve as much detail as possible, I settled on an ISO setting of 2,000 - 2,500, kept the aperture as wide as possible and shot no faster than 1/20 of a second.

While the photos did become gradually better (to my eyes, at least), the noise still a little too much for me. Not to mention, the sharp contrast between the highlights of the artifical illumination and dark crevice shadows made it tough on dynamic range. It is not so apparent now anymore as I was able to even out the dynamic range in post.

In fact, I liked the results of the photos even more that came out of my iPhone SE when compared to the raw shots I had taken from my Olympus OM-D EM5 Mark II. While my Olympus did manage to even that out in post and have better results overall, it did not discount that so much additional work had to be done just to make it look better. This goes to show just how far computational photography has come!

One cool feature I did utilize in order to equal out the dynamic range of the cave was the HDR mode on the EM-5. This would have worked even better with a tripod. In order to make up for it, I ended using what few flat platforms to act as a natural tripod.

Because of the relatively constant temperature throughout the year, the caves are a perfect place to visit regardless of the season. Even on a hot summer's day, I was kept cool and comfortable within the caves. Talk about an ideal location for a photo shoot.

The caves open to visitors are just one of the few caves in the conservation park. I am told by the guide that there are several other cave systems throughout the park with one even used for cave diving.

Aside from the caves, the conservation park also has a pleasant yet short nature trail for all its visitors to embark upon. While there are paved tracks, the path can be pretty steep and uneven. As such, a decent pair of shoes are recommended at the very least.

The walk around the nature path will also give you a great view of the surrounding pine tree plantations. I was very lucky to have such good weather on the day I went out.

I stumble upon these rose looking plants but, did not know what they are called. It looks like a succulent plant.

With plenty of experience accrued from this cave, I had a lot of learning points that I would love to implement in my next series of cave visits. I am certainly looking forward to utilizing a tripod in my next cave trip.

With that, we come to the end of this little travel log. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to leave them in the comments section below. If you would love to see more of this type of content, please let me know as well. Until the next time, thank you so much for reading and have yourself a wonderful day ahead!