May 2011 – sYnc

Mines #39

This blog has gone a bit off-topic recently with a distinct lack of Cold War items, this hasn’t gone unnoticed but I’m having such a blast with the underground lark I’m afraid I’m still showing the love for the underground 🙂

I wish I could show the whole set of these shots as they would truly blow your mind but sadly it would also compromise things so for the top drawer stuff just use your imagination…

Water is a big deal here and boats make sense for much of it, there’s also plenty of Death From Above action going on to keep you on your toes.

Plant Room

Do Not Panic

Stops

Props

Wetlands

Death From Above

This is where it started to get a little damp, when I say damp this next shot was taken in thigh deep water and waders weren’t on the kit list for today.

Wet Legs

The intention was to hit this back wall which will happen next time in the boat. Today’s attempt saw me up to my waist in freezing water for this next shot before I realised I had nearly killed my phone & wallet and if I fell over there was ££££ of camera gear going to die too…..check the ceiling height compared to previous shots, It’s all roughly the same in here.

3 Feet High and Rising = Wet Nuts

Stay tuned to this channel for more water filled antics…

New Legs

For the last year and a bit I’ve used a Velbon Luxi M tripod, mainly because it is VERY compact (34cm closed) and quite light (1.2kg) but recently its been pissing me off a lot due to one of its ‘features’. Velbon call it ‘the unique and patented Velbon “Twist Lock” leg system – a simple quick twist and pull allows you to extend each leg, with another twist to lock the leg’ .

This might well be fine in ‘nice’ conditions but on many recent underground trips one leg has refused to twist and lock back when collapsing the tripod and was doing so with more and more regularity. To be fair to Velbon I am sure they didn’t design these legs to be used in glutinous mud, submerged in water and smashed on rocks so its probably my own fault for picking the wrong tripod for underground use…As much as I love these legs for their size the Twist Lock issue was starting to get to me badly so I got me some new legs in the shape of Velbon E-540. The 540 is still very compact as tripods go (40.7cm closed) and even with the PHD-41Q head is still under 18″ collapsed so can easily be hidden out of sight in a smallish rucksack for those trips when you don’t want to look like an explorer…
They are VERY solid and robust, although much bulkier than the LUXI M’s so more like a conventional (read big and heavy) tripod. Weight is still only 1.25kg (headless) which is impressive and down to all the fancy composite junk these are made from :-)They have yet to be used in waist deep water but soon will be…

Mines #38

Royal Weddings don’t really do it for me so being as far away as possible from a TV on Friday was probably a good thing. The solution was five hours underground and getting to the farthest accessible point in an abandoned mine, what we didn’t expect was to be tripping over artifacts from the 1930’s…

Usual rules apply…No names, no locations, just pictures…

Junction to knowhere