Lighting & Filming In A Cave

A

audionandfilm

New member
I was not sure where to post this. I might have to post this in more than one place on the forum to get information for the project. So, I am doing a project involving caves. I am not going to bring expensive lighting gear. It will get destroyed easily. I am thinking about getting powerful flashlights / battery powered stuff. I can afford to lose those but not $1000's in lighting gear. Maybe some combination of flash lights, hand held floodlights, or whatever available that is affordable to lose. I am looking for gear I can pack into bag or at least carry hand.

Will Gels work on a flash light or battery powered light?

I am going to be doing things like crawling in passages, crawling through deep mud, walking through streams, jumping off cliffs on rope, and climbing. Running a generators and cables is out of the question. Caves have 100% humidity. The temperature of the ones I will be in are around 50 degrees. They can be loaded with mud and very fine dirt that gets into everything.


I am leaning towards using DSLR because they are small and easy to carry around. I am open to other suggestions to cover the camera.

Any suggestions on DSLR cameras or cameras that can be lighted with flashlights?

For sound, I am trying to keep it simple and light. It will be a shot gun and a H4N probably. It is a lot easier to carry that than a audio bag with a mixer, wireless, and recorder. In addition, all that stuff would get destroyed in cave a easily.

I am thinking small pelican cases and waterproof bags to put gear in like you use to for kayaking when traveling between places in a cave.

***** Anyone shot with battery powered flashlights, lanterns, or related type lights or have suggestions? If so, what did you use or can suggest? ****

Any other suggestions on gear & filming in a cave in general would be appreciated.
 
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Something you want to consider is that flashlights will look like flashlights. Not only in the quality but the pattern. Most flashlights have a hot spot and often a pattern from the bulb and reflector. This may be a desirable look for you. Rather than nice soft light from video lights you would get a stylized look. This comes down to your own taste and goal for the production.
 
For what it's worth, I shot a film in a cave. It was shot on 16mm 500T Fuji Film with an Arri 416. We had a generator and lots of lights. We also had a sound guy and a boom operator with a Sound Devices 702T and 302 with a Sennheiser 416 on the boom. Nothing got destroyed, despite the 100% humidity. We used a hair dryer to defog the lenses, but everything worked. The lights were hot enough to evaporate any moisture that got on them.
 
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