De’ils Cauldron
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As little baby potter has not decided to come along yet, me and Ian took advantage of the nice weather and went on an adventure after dropping my dodgy electrics car off for its service (once we got it out of the very tight garage). We had no plans and just headed of towards the sun, assuming we could pick up something to eat on the way. Fools we were! we ended up in Comrie and hungry.
With Comrie being a little tourist place we thought it would have somewhere to eat even though it was in the middle of nowhere, we were wrong. Half the place had no electricity and was in candle light and the other half was shut! we were forced to return to nearby Crieff instead where we found some good food in a very odd cafe that was part charity shop and the staff consisted of one overly polite and proper gentleman who kept disappearing upstairs where I can only assume the kitchens were. Although it was a bit like a bad comedy sketch the food was really quite good, of course we were younger by the other clientele by about 30 years. But Crieff like Comrie is a bit of a coffin dodger town, we did however see more police presence there than I ever do in Perth, very strange.
Once fed we headed back to the very pretty but not exactly exciting Comrie. Although we know we have done lots of waterfalls recently we couldn’t resist heading up to the De’il cauldron (devils kettle) which is a very impressive waterfall which was made at the end of the ice age by water, ice and stone grinding out a large gorge in the rocks of glen Lednock.
Before we got up to the main cauldron we stopped by a few minor falls (the wee cauldron) and did our usual climbing onto large boulders and hanging off them to get some shots. I almost lost my wide lens when my bag opened and it rolled out and I was ready to follow it into the river if need be, but thankfully it stopped happily at Ian’s feet, PHEW! As usual I didn’t have my tripod so we shared Ian’s and I also balanced the camera carefully on rocks and used the remote shutter release to get the shot without knocking the camera and getting shake in the photo due to the low shutter speeds.
The water looked beautiful and full of spring colours like someone had come along and painted them on. Could almost see the brownie (of the elf kind and not the small child dressed in a brown uniform) playing in the colourful water and enticing tourists to delve into the cold, deep waters never to be seen again. After the tranquility of the wee falls we hiked up to the main cauldron, which though impressive wasn’t very photogenic from the view point. We considered other ways down but the only path into the deep chasm was a small rather muddy trail along the sharp sides of the cauldron.
We decided not to attempt this, well at least not today and to try when the summer is in full swing and the sides not so muddy. Would get great shots from the bottom if we got down in one piece, of course getting back up could be a bit of a challenge, but hey always like a good adventure.
Painted water for the brownie
We walked back down the main Lednock road which veers far and wide to wynd it’s way back to Comrie and the car. After such a long walk in the baking sun and carrying all our gear we decided that we deserved an ice cream and headed back to Crieff where I went to a local sweetie shop and got ice cream cones – mine was an Irn Bru one and must be the yummiest and strangest ice cream I have ever tasted!
The rocks in this stretch of river are fantastic for pictures.
I’ve been to the De’ils Cauldron before with my wife and very small daughter. Made the major mistake of taking the pram and although it was a three-wheeled off-road one, it struggled big time!
This time I was without any hinderence except for my gear – a massive difference!
The area itself is beautiful but the terrain gets very rocky for a short spell. Not suitable for wheelchairs or pushbuggies. The main cauldron itself is only accessable via a lot of steep steps but even then there is not much photographic opportunity unless you are an expert in rock traversing (which for reference, we aren’t!).
I had my polarising filter on again but I am discovering that the water trails are actually better without the polarised effect. Cutting out the reflections just removes the white trail details from the water. It can be a nice effect but there is a time and a place! Shutter speeds at iso100 were around the 3-5 second mark thanks to the trees blocking most of the light and the darkening properties of the filter. As usual in these situations I was shooting in aperture mode; the lens set to f22 to block out as much light as possible and ensure the longest shutter time in the cicumstances.
Raw seems to be the only way to shoot for me now. The quality difference is too great to ignore and I only seem to move back to jpeg if using higher ISO levels to save the struggle of fighting the amount of noise this develops. If anyone has any tips for noise control at high iso levels while using raw, i’d be glad to hear them!
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