Disneyland/So Cal

[jdboucher]

Anyone have any good ideas for taking some photos at disneyland?

Using a Nikon D60, and i do have a tripod.

[wulf]

How about taking lots of shots from a low position to give you a childs-eye perspective on the place?

Wulf

[inkista]

Originally Posted by jdboucher

Anyone have any good ideas for taking some photos at disneyland?

Yeah. Bring a point and shoot for the daytime and going on the rides, and keep the SLR and tripod in a locker until night. You won't need a telephoto zoom, unless you're into architectural details and hidden mickeys. A walkaround zoom will work just fine--the parks are built with a false perspective, just like movie sets. You may want a fast prime, like a 50/1.8, for inside the rides.

Unless you're like me (unable to go on the rides because of a medical condition). Then bring the whole bag, go for broke, and amuse yourself endlessly by shooting equirectangular panoramas.

[AlphaBjerke]

Do you have a tripod? Go there at night with it and get some really cool long exposures with all the lights and stuff. I didn't have a lot of time to try it, but you can experiment with a neat effect of putting the camera on slow sync flash which tends to combine motion with part of the scene frozen clearly. Vary the aperaure to see how much/little blur you want. For me I think f8 was the best. Good rides for this would be the teacups and the rocket ride at the entrance to tomorrowland. There must be others, but I didn't get a good chance to try. Look in my flikr photostream a few pages back and see what I am talking about.

[tmphillips]

I don't think taking pictures of Tinkerbell is a bad idea.. :-)



Being there at the right time to get a good spot for the parade can be difficult though.. My family had passes for a year and went a number of times and I only saw bits of the parade twice.. Really wanted to get another try at shooting the fairy :-)

PENTAX K100D
Software - GIMP 2.6.5
ExposureTime - 1/250 seconds
FNumber - 5.60
ExposureProgram - Aperture priority
ISOSpeedRatings - 800
DateTimeOriginal - 2008:08:24 18:52:44
FocalLength - 260 mm (this edit slightly cropped)
White Balance - Auto
FocalLengthIn35mmFilm - 390 mm

[B..]

One of the photo classes I took, the instructor had a photo of himself, mid-day, leaning against a post on Main Street in LA Disneyland ... seemingly alone!

He used an ultra-slow-shutter. And he described that loads of people walked past him leaning against his post, giving him the " *shrug* whateVVer???" reaction. And none of them showed up in his image. His shutter speed was 30 seconds. And it was mid-day, so he presumably had a dark filter over the lens. And, I'm guessing, he had carefully set the aperture to have himself in focus and the surroundings out-of-focus.

(And he had one of his kids on the sidewalk guarding his camera on the tripod from being jostled by the crowds during that long exposure.)

[AlphaBjerke]

Originally Posted by B..

One of the photo classes I took, the instructor had a photo of himself, mid-day, leaning against a post on Main Street in LA Disneyland ... seemingly alone!

I believe this is accomplished by using a very small aperture. I don't understand how it works, but it does. It is good if you want to take a picture of something like a building but there are people/cars in the shot that you don't want. He must have been good at standing perfectly still.

[inkista]

Yup he had to stand still, and no aperture alone will not do it; you have to use an ND filter as well. Here in Southern California the sunlight can be ferocious. To get anything approaching a 30-second exposure in the daytime, I have to use not only f/22 and iso 100, but also a 10-stop ND filter. But it do erase people a treat. About 40 or 50 people walked through this shot as I took it.


Canon XT. Contax Zeiss Distagon T* 28mm f/2.8 (AEJ)+ adapter ring. B+W #110 (10-stop ND filter). iso 100, f/22, 30s.
Taken around 5pm in April.

[tmphillips]

that is some cool beans! ;-)

[jdboucher]

Thanks for all the great ideas, I wish I could see some of the sample photos, but I am in Iraq right now and can not access them. I do plan on looking when I get home in the near future. Keep the ideas coming. I haven't been there in about 17 years, so the place will be new to me. Again, thank you.

The long, mid-day, exposure I will have to try.