Evolution…

P7.2, 320 lumen…nuff said 🙂

For all the Fenix waving Lenser hat0rz out there every single underground shot on this blog is either partially or exclusively lit with a Lenser P7.

I’ve owned many, some are at the bottom of mines and mysterious shafts where they will lay for eternity (yes I feel super guilty about those decaying batteries), some have been lent to people and never returned, some were submerged for months, assumed MIA and then found (working) months later and the surviving ones ones are permanently attached to Cetacea Coil Landyards to prevent anymore waist deep *PLOP* “Oh Shit!!!” moments 🙂

(Need solution for tripod now as last *PLOP* “Shit!!!” moment involved a CSO and a pricey tripod….)

So Lenser released this updated version, this guy is 320 lumen instead of standard 200 lumen so should make some big improvements, he will be coming out on the next underground trip for some testing. 

Never buy one of anything ;-p

Bury Internalz

Carrying on with the Mil Derp Cold War vibe from earlier posts…..enjoy

Bulk Fuel Storage (WW2)
Transmitter Building
Briefing Room (Badly lightpainted…)
Flora & Fauna 🙂

Building 25 – Decontamination Area

More rush lightpainting (soz about passing headtorches…)

Better this time…(shot in total darkness)

Building 25 Hard Area

Parachute Store (Building 51)

 

Photographic Processing and Interpretation Facility (Building 69)

 

Nemesis & The Resurrection

If you follow this blog you might be aware of an incident that caused me an amount of problems, sadly the upshot of that day has since had even worse fallout and has been the reason for radio silence on this blog…

The place is really my nemesis, we’ve been going there for a long time and it doesn’t reveal its secrets easily, hard work and an often dangerous environment are required to get any payoff. We have found really neat stuff in far flung corners that makes all the slog worth the effort. In fact certain things, that have become obsessional, still elude me and it was just this said ‘thing’ that was on the menu when karma dealt me a sucker punch.

Its true my wad0rs split and I dropped a few quids worth of Lensers into the murky depths but the damage was far far worse as I was to find out. The Thrunite is now working, although it took several days for it to dry out, the ‘sinking tripod’ issues turned out to be the column clamp failing on my Velbon E-540 of which I am waiting to get a spares/repair price for.

The icing on the cake was when my 40D stopped working….yep…d-e-a-d. All of the buttons apart from the shutter had stopped working, the display had gone and the camera just sat there with the autofocus chattering away to itself trying to focus on an invisible/imaginary subject in the distance….FUBAR!!

It was left to dry for a week or so but still refused to play so it got shipped off to the camera doctors while I started searching for a new Canon body (just in case). Two weeks later and several hundred pounds worse off it got couriered back to me having been totally stripped, lovingly rebuilt (with several new parts) and calibrated to Canon factory standards, oh and they cleaned all the mine gunk off it for me too 🙂

The repair slip said my camera had suffered ‘contamination and corrosion’ LOLZ

So, I’m nearly back in the game…stand by for updates in the coming weeks 🙂

Dead Wad0rs

Apologies for the lack of updates, been a lot going on in the last month or so…

This pair of wad0rs didn’t last long, they’ve had a couple of leaks for a while now but I suffered a full ‘blow out’ 250ft from dry land in four feet of stinking, fetid, skanky water yesterday.

In epic Kit Fail stylee at the same moment my 40D started sinking on its tripod, I dropped a Lenser P7 and a P3 in the water (that should have been clipped to me on Paracord…) and flooded my Thrunite Catapult. Water then came over the top of my wad0rs just to add insult to injury. I could feel the Lensers around my feet and could have dived to retrieve them but with the 40D in the other hand it was an easy decision to make….walk away and go buy yet another Lenser Twin Pack…

Three lights down and soaked to the skin we continued the trip and was glad to get out of the wad0rs once away from the location. Suffice to say they went straight in the wheelie bin after I took these shitty cameraphone pix of the damage…..(cheap wad0rs suck by the way).

Their replacements were ordered last week so should be here soon….black Gimp Style rubber with an industrial boot this time 😉

Old Warden Tunnel

This was more of a camera/long exposure/torch experimentation than an explore but some of the pictures turned out half decent to I thought I would post up a quick report.

Old Warden Tunnel was built between 1853 and 1857 to connect Bedford to Hitchin, before joing the main line to London. It was closed in 1962 but not as a result of Dr. Richard Beeching’s ‘Beeching Bombshell’ report. The tunnel is straight and runs for 882 yards. The western end is half bricked up but with a large grille at the top to allow access for bats. I’m no bat expert but I have heard that a rare bat called the Barbastelle has been found in this tunnel from time to time. The eastern end has been partially backfilled and the trackbed at this end is flooded quite deeply. Internally there are some interesting Calcite formations on the walls and at the far end a small crystalline ‘Calcite Lake’ has formed.

Most pictures were taken at either 15s or 30s exposure and lit with either a Lenser P7 or a Petzl MYO XP 

Mines #31

Not disclosing actual mine names as I believe these are sensitive locations and need preserving, also there are clear and present dangers to the casual observer, not least is the air quality in some of these mines. Human’s start going very twitchy at oxygen levels of 17% and 15% can kill you. If you wander into a heading with oxygen levels of 13% or less it is quite feasible the effect would be so rapid that you wouldn’t be able to help yourself and then its lights out….permanently. If this happens it would be sad for your family and would totally fuck things up access wise for everybody else.

I’ve been caving since the early 1990’s so being underground is nothing new. Low oxygen levels can kill you if you are not prepared…be warned.

Health & Safety lesson over, the following pictures were me messing around with long exposures and trying to perfect the art of Light Painting. Some obvious issues were encountered and lessons learned, one of which is that Xenon/Halogen light is quite bad for light painting but LED light used carefully is good, the other is that my current camera, a Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ6 only has limited settings for long exposure, namely 15, 30 or 60 seconds. These pictures are either 15 or 30 seconds, ideally I would like the option of less than 15 seconds but ultimately that means buying a DSLR at some point.

Since this visit I have invested in another torch which should help with light painting, a LED Lenser P7 which has a one handed focusing mechanism so you can switch from spot to flood. Every underground location is different though and in many places the P7 would overcook the photos but in others it would work a treat.

All of these photo’s were lit with a combination of Petzl MYO XP (85 lumens) with diffuser, Underwater Kinetics Mini Q40 (50 lumens) and a Surefire Executive Defender (60 lumens)

Dead end in a heading, unusual in that the rails should have been removed when the mine closed!