I didn’t get any great pictures of Epcot’s giant golf ball. This is probably as close as I got. Everything else was a near-miss, at best.
Heck, this one ain’t the greatest, either, but I like the seed. But Epcot got cut off and that about destroys the whole thing for me. For all I remember, though, there might have been a tree in the way that prevented me from ever getting the whole of the golf ball, anyway. Oh, the pains of a tortured artist. . .
60mm, f/2.8, ISO 200, 1/2000s
Yes, I did shoot other stuff besides the Castle. but this might be one of my favorite shots of the whole trip. I promise — this’ll be the last.
It was dumb luck that I happened to walk by this shot. Handheld, no tripod. I took multiple exposures that I hope to blend into an HDR someday, but this will have to do for now.
28mm, f/5.0, ISO 200, 1/800s
Same set-up as yesterday’s picture, taken just a few minutes later. This time, instead of shooting for 1/80s, I went with 29 seconds.
There are imperfections in this picture that “serious” photographers would go crazy in Photoshop fixing. I did clone out one spot, but otherwise didn’t touch anything. If I missed something, that’s on me. I’m not faking the picture.
The reason the lighting doesn’t look like that much brighter is that I clamped down the aperture all the way to f/22 with an ISO of 200. Yesterday’s picture was at 2.8 with an ISO over 2000. I haven’t done the math in my head, but I imagine this pic is brighter, but not by that much.
17mm, f/22, ISO 200, 1/29s
Back to the DisneyWorld pictures. . .
This is a quick exposure. I did some ten second exposures after this. They’re not that much better, but maybe I’ll pop one up tomorrow to show the difference. The biggest difference is the lighting, and that was out of my control.
17mm, f/2.8, ISO 2500, 1/80s
300mm, f/6.3, ISO 640, 1/4000s
The 747 with Shuttle piggybacked on top of it could be seen on the horizon at about 10:35, pretty much right on time from where we were all standing. The plane’s headlights were turned on, and the bulky Shuttle on its back made it easy to pick out. It came up over some buildings just downriver, which makes sense; behind that is where the Statue of Liberty is. You can’t see the Statue from Weehawken, unless you’re in the middle of the river. And as tempting as it was to ride the ferry back and forth across the Hudson in the hopes of a one in a million shot, I wasn’t running that risk.
It was flying low and slow. It was a dream in motion. I was able to lock focus and take a few shots as it approached. I had time to look at my LCD display and read enough of the histogram to make a couple of minor adjustments.
300mm, f/6.3, ISO 640, 1/8000s
And here’s where things get harder:
* The closer it gets, the faster it gets. It’s some sort of optical illusion, I guess, like a Doppler Effect for the Eye. Your calm, cool snapping of pics gets frantic as the plane starts to fill the frame, as you start zooming back out, and as you realize you’re about to lose the shot.
* The plane was low, but think about the angles for a second. You can’t see the nose of the shuttle except for when the plane is further away from you. The closer it gets, the more of the underside of the 747 you see and the less of the Shuttle. Your best shots are as the plane is further away, which requires a bigger zoom than I had.
I was shooting primarily my 70-300mm lens on a Canon 50D, which means an effective focal length of 480mm. I’d have killed for a 600mm lens. I wouldn’t have had long to take those shots, but it would almost look like I was high in the air with the plane that way.
300mm, f/6.3, ISO 640, 1/8000s
I mounted my wide angle 17-35mm on my old Canon XTi, which I took out of retirement for this occasion. It didn’t produce anything all that usable here, but it was funny trying to remember all the settings and buttons to use after a year and a half with the 60D. I’m spoiled by the newer camera. It’s soooooo pretty.
(And if these rumors of a Canon entry-level full frame camera at Christmastime turn out to be true, I’ll be bending over backwards trying to find a way to afford it. But that’s another story for another time…)
300mm, f/6.3, ISO 640, 1/8000s
Pictures of the Shuttle with the city in the background were, indeed, impossible from where I stood. The plane shot directly over our heads on the New Jersey side of the Hudson. There were likely some good vantage points within a mile further inland that would have allowed for such a shot, but it wasn’t from where I was. It was fine, though. I was happy with what I had to work with.
So, yeah, here are the pictures. I think that about says it all for my little morning adventure.
300mm, f/6.4, ISO 640, 1/8000s
300mm, f/6.3, ISO 640, 1/4000s
17mm, f/10, ISO 200, 1/1600s
In a last minute decision, I drove down to Weehawken, NJ Friday morning to shoot the Space Shuttle flyover. Ultimately, the Shuttle Entertprise will end up at the Intrepid, which is right across the Hudson River from where I stood. In June, it’ll travel via barge to its new home. That might be a good photo opp, too. In face, it’ll be easier to shoot a slow moving boat with the city in the background, but who wants easy? I want birds in flight!
We knew two things going in: The flyover would be at 1500 feet, and that it would pass by twice: Once going up, and then once 15-20 minutes later coming back down. (Then it would take a spin around Northern New Jersey and once over Long Island before landing at JFK Airport.)
But just how high is 1500 feet? Just how far out over the river would the plane be? How fast would it speed by? How many shots could I squeeze off before it’s too late?
120mm, f/320, ISO 4.5, 1/8000s - Lots of helicopters flew over the city, which is undergoing a bunch of construction...
I didn’t know, and I spent most of my 45 minute drive there pondering those questions. Was there a chance to get the city in the background of a picture? I pretty much ruled that out once I got there; it’s just too close, and the plane would be flying too high overhead.
So I focused on getting a shot of the plane with the Shuttle on its back. It was a nice morning, weather-wise. A little windy, about 55 degrees. But there was a problem: The puffy white clouds left the sun playing peek-a-boo with anxious photographers. The variance in exposures based on the sun being out or not were great. I was guessing it was up to a full two stops, if not more. I took lots of test shots to try to guess the right setting, and then I made a compromise: I shot like it was an HDR shoot. I put the camera into Exposure Bracketing mode, with shots a full stop to either side of the setting I chose. I would take pics in bursts of three. I picked my exposure to be as far to the right on the histogram as I could get without blowing out the highlights on the One Stop Over shot, but it was still just a guess.
No, I didn’t have a tripod. I knew doing an actual HDR shot would be impossible with a moving target anyway. I just wanted to cover my bases. I brought my monopod with me, but that was back-up. Without knowing where the flyover would be, I didn’t want to lose shots because I couldn’t angle up high enough. Besides, it was bright enough that I could shoot at 1/4000th of a second. My 70-300mm lens has image stabilization. And I could lean on the railing, if I played my cards right. I wasn’t so worried about camera shake. I just played it cool and hoped for the best.
300mm, f/5.6, ISO 320, 1/4000s - Getting closer...
Just before the flyover, a gentlemen came and set up his tripod next to me. It was a tall, professional, and heavy Manfrotto set-up. He had the Gimble head with it, though, so he’d have no problem tracking the plane in flight. I have a simple (cheap) ballhead. I wasn’t going to get much use out of my tripod.
I got to the park about a half hour before the scheduled arrival time for the flyover. The park was busy, but not overly crowded. People perched on the rail away from the small trees that blocked the views of the city. Weehawken police had a couple of officers standing about, just to make sure the crowd didn’t get restless. It didn’t . And as a special bonus, they blocked traffic at the end of the flyover so all the cars could get out of the parking lot without sitting through a dozen lights. Thanks, WPD!
300mm, f/5.6, ISO 320, 1/4000s - Too fast a shutter speed leads to frozen motion of the NYPD helicopter rotor blades
Coming up next: Here comes the plane!
35mm, f/20, ISO 200, 41s - The first fireworks shot. I'm guessing I got lucky that the first light happened near the end of a looooong exposure.
People began lining up along the railing in front of me, but things were OK. An older couple came close, but the gentleman was nice enough to stand behind his wife and not next to her, so as not to block my lens. I thanked him, but told him it wasn’t likely necessary, as I was shooting up high enough into the sky that I’d be over his head. In retrospect, I wish I had begged him to stand next to his wife to block anyone else from getting in.
So the show started, and the problem is that, because a tripod is at an angle, it looks like it’s not pushed up against the fence. So one pushy Mom starts marching her kids right in front of it. So a lot of my pictures now have the top of a kid’s head in the bottom corner of it.
18mm, f/200, ISO 20, 1/28s -- That ghostly arc in the bottom left corner is the back of some kids' head of hair. I know I can Pixelmator it out, but it's still annoying...
I’m torn. This is Disney. It’s about the kids. We do everything for them there. I waited in the beating sun with no shade for an hour so my daughter could get a picture with a princess and talk to her for thirty seconds. And I know it would suck to keep your kid up way past his bedtime to see fireworks that were invisible to him because you thought showing up at the last moment would be a good idea, when all the good spots were gone an hour earlier. And, to his credit, the kid never actually touched my tripod, though he did come close. And his head is in a corner that’s dark enough that it would be easy to erase it from the pic by painting over it with black in Pixelmator.
But I can’t imagine being that pushy with my kid to stand her up where there’s no room for anyone else to go, potentially blocking someone else who was set up there first, and getting in their way.
Saw that a lot in front of Cinderella’s Castle for that “Dreams Come True” show, where people would just walk in front of a three year old girl, stand up right in front of her to watch the show, and not even think twice about it. People are their own centers of the universe, and they never acknowledge those around them, or even think of being considerate towards others. The Castle example is the worst: All they needed to do was sit down and it would be OK, but they’d stand there in a sea of seated people. They’re clueless and unaware of all around them.
18mm, f/200, ISO 200, 43s
It didn’t happen all the time. 99% of the people there were considerate and friendly and sharing. It’s all families trying to be good examples for their kids and all. But, man, that 1% is awful.
Oh, yeah, the fireworks! I was hit and miss. I stood there with my intervalometer in one hand and my iPhone stopwatch in the other, and tried to time things out for proper exposure. With the ND filter, a proper castle exposure was about 40 seconds. With the fireworks, things got nutty. The fireworks would often light up the castle, blowing out the highlights. Some fireworks were overblown on their own. Others were so small that they disappeared in the long haul.
17mm, f/18, ISO 200, 4s -- When the fireworks get this bright, you still get overexposure at even the quickest of shutter speed openings...
I kept playing with my settings, and even ripped the ND filter off near the end to try more shorter exposures of about 8 to 10 seconds. With a 10 or 12 minute firework show, you have to act fast, guess a lot, and hope for the best. I did what I could. Here you see the results.
23mm, f/20, ISO 200, 10s -- I think I had taken off the ND Filter by this point to experiment with quicker shutter speeds
Full story and more pictures to come, but here’s an exciting preview of the Space Shuttle Enterprise:
300mm, f/6.3, ISO 640, 1/4000s
The write-up should be a two day event.
35mm, f/18, ISO 200, 10s — In retrospect, that tree bothers me a lot more in closeups than it did on the back of the camera that night.
On the second attempt at fireworks, I got to the Magic Kingdom before the Main Street Electrical Parade started at 9:00. I had no interest in it, as I imagine a lot of people don’t. They just sit through it so they can have a good position for the fireworks later in the night. That parade is awful, mind-numbing, worse than Small World-level pap. It’s an impressive display of engineering, I suppose, but that endless loop of music is mind-shattering, and the overall effect is trippier than I care for. And what’s up with the Winnie the Pooh ride, speaking of that? Bad enough it’s in the dark, but then there’s this whole 60s-feeling neon colors under black light stuff that’s supposed to be scary – it’s WINNIE THE FRIGGIN’ POOH, people!
Sorry. Back to fireworks:
I knew I wasn’t going to make it on Main Street or at the Hub, so I went off to the side and set up on one of the bridges to TomorrowLand to the right of the Castle. It meant having to listen to the loudspeaker talking about the Monsters Inc. ride behind me all night, but it was worth it. The bridge was mostly empty when I got there. I took a spot off in a corner, away from the official photographers and the best spots where people stopped frequently to take their pictures in front of the castle. I’m nice like that. And it usually backfires on me.
This was no exception.
I set up my tripod against the railing and starting taking practice shots of the castle. An official photographer wound up setting up her tripod nearby, so I was able to ask her where the fireworks would show up in the sky. She helpfully pointed further right of the castle than I had guessed. So the castle would be off in the small corner, but thankfully I had a 17mm lens to catch it all with. I would manage OK.
70mm, f/22, ISO 200, 15s — When the castle is lit up in reddish/pinkish/purple, black and white is your only option
To Be Continued. . .
He loves each and every one of you, you know.
This was taken in the noon hour, which helps to explain the ridiculously fast shutter speed of 1/4000th of a second.
75mm, f/2.8, ISO 200, 1/4000s
