CAVES LIGHTING

Hi all! Any advice on how to light big caves? 

Continuos lights or Strobes?

Thanks

E

Great question, and the short answer is that both work, but tend to produce different effects...

I would say that this is not a beginner question -- inside a cave, the lights you bring with you and how you place them is what often makes the photo. It's much more about composition and lighting than it is about anything technical.

Both video lights and strobes can work, but you want to be able to keep them off-camera set up around the cave for most creative flexibility. From that perspective, video lights have an advantage in that you can preview the way the illumination will look before you take the picture. Strobes require more experience, in my opinion.

Also, because there's no ambient light, the fact that continuous lights are weaker than strobes is less limiting than it would be outside of a cave. You can control your overall exposure and modern cameras are plenty sensitive enough. 

Don't try to illuminate the entire cave with one or two lights mounted on the camera. You'll have much more creative control and achieve better results with multiple weaker lights staged at various positions around the cave. Lights can (and sometimes must) be used to separate subjects from the background, for instance by backlighting them or creating a pool of light behind them. 

And remember negative space -- sometimes, it's the part of the image that aren't lit that create all the depth and interest.

Some inspiration: https://sjalicebennett.com/cenote-nariz

While I've never done cave lighting, I have seen a number of examples.   Setting up the lighting reminds me of putting up Christmas lights - it takes very little light to fill in a space itself, a bit more to light something else close to fill in that space.  In the dark, a little goes a long way.  

I might add that the Christmas displays I'm thinking off were quite extensive, lighting up house, yard, side yard, trees, ground and rooftop.  (There was a contest.  Winners tended to have more than 10,000 lights).

Actually, it would be interesting to me to see how a string of lights would work underwater in a cave...