The shot below is perhaps the classic Deer Cave shot. Mine is actually a seven-shot HDR – seven slides scanned and merged in photomatix Pro.
Since the seven shots were all hand held and the bracketing was manual, I think it turned out OK. A bit softer than I would like, but OK.
The green color is the result of reciprocity failure of the Fujichrome ISO 100 slide film I was using. Since the lens was manual focus I had the aperture wide open to gather as much light as possible but I got the focal distance wrong, since the foreground is quite sharp but the background is quite soft.
So how would I shoot this today? A tripod, for sure – I think they're allowed. And in addition to bracketing for HDR, I'd also try bracketing for focus to get sharpness through the depth of the photo as well as the extended dynamic range to balance out the luminance of the scene.
The mounds in the water are bat guano. And yes, I repeated my mistake from Clearwater Cave and sunk one of my boots into the gooey mess. On exiting Deer Cave I had to find a stream to wash the bat guano off my boot, sock and foot.
You can make out in this photo a curtain of water falling from the ceiling across the width of the passage. While you can't see the footpath, it runs around the left wall in this shot.
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