Can anyone give me some settings (ISO, aperture, shuttle speed) to have my camera at, so I'm ready in these situations.
Afternoon parade
Fireworks at night
Lit up park icon at night
MK during the Halloween party
Boo to You parade (would need a quick shutter speed)
inside rides
Wow! That's a lot to cover in one single post.
There aren't any firm, "magical" settings that are specific to different situations. I
could give you some settings for the afternoon parade, for example, but unfortunately these camera settings would change dramatically, depending on whether it's sunny, overcast, or cloudy.
The key to understanding what settings to use is to understand the 3 components of the
exposure triangle, which you've already mentioned: shutter speed, aperture, and ISO. If you adjust 1, you may have to change the others to compensate and to achieve the same exposure.
So when do you use what settings?
- shutter speed - probably the easiest to understand. You use faster shutter speeds to stop motion. You use slower shutter speeds in darker situations to get more light into the camera...at the risk of blurring from movement or camera shake.
- aperture - larger apertures (smaller f-numbers) let more light into your camera. So, in general, you'd use larger apertures (smaller f-numbers) in darker situations. Larger apertures also blur the background, so if you want to be creative with a blurry background, you can also use larger apertures.
Because large apertures let more light into the camera, you might be able to use faster shutter speeds to compensate. Sports photographers take advantage this all the time. You'd also do this if you're taking photos of "Lights, Motors, Action", for example.
Smaller apertures (large f-numbers), on the other hand, let less light into your camera. In general, you'd use smaller apertures (large f-numbers) in brighter situations. Smaller apertures also make distant things sharper, so if you're taking a posed photo in front of Cinderella's Castle during the day, you can use a small aperture.
Extremely small apertures (ex. f/16-f/22) run the risk of diffraction slightly blurring your photos. This is an intermediate photography topic that's covered here and here.
- ISO - this determines how sensitive the camera's sensor is to light. Lower ISOs make the sensor less sensitive to light. You'd use lower ISOs for bright sunny days. Lower ISOs also produce photos with less grain / noise.
Higher ISOs make the sensor more sensitive to light. You'd use higher ISOs in darker situations. The risk of using higher ISOs is the digital noise / grain that will appear in your photos. However, there are many excellent software programs that can help remove noise from your photos.
So these are the 3 settings you need to determine for each photographic situation. That's it.
These 3 settings determine how much light gets into your camera. If you adjust one setting, you'll probably need to adjust the other(s) to compensate.
In general, first determine which setting is the MOST IMPORTANT feature for the scene in front of you. Is your child running really fast? Or are you trying to take photos on the *very bumpy* Kilimanjaro Safaris ride? Then stopping motion is the TOP priority in these situations, so FIRST set your camera to a fast shutter speed. After that, adjust the aperture & ISO based on this shutter speed.
Or, are you on a dark ride? The MOST IMPORTANT feature in this case is a large aperture (small f-number), so that you can get more light into your camera. A very close second-most important feature would be a moderate or fast shutter speed, depending on how fast, bumpy, or dark the ride is or how much the animatronics characters move. After that, adjust the ISO based on these 2 settings (you'll probably go with a higher ISO).
So that's the thought process behind how to choose different camera settings. Sitting at my computer here, I can give you some "ballpark" settings to help out. But because I'm not right there at Disney World, I can't give you specific settings for your specific situation. You WILL need to adjust your camera settings to fine-tune them for the scene you see in front of you.
Afternoon parade
There's a whole thread here discussing parade photography (
link).
Probably the easiest thing to photograph because it occurs during the day. Today's cameras do a great job with daytime photography. You can pretty much set your camera on Auto (or any of the other semi-automatic modes) and do a decent job.
If you're looking for specific settings, try ISO 100-200 for bright sunny days. You can probably use an aperture of f/8-f/11 to get more of the parade in focus and since it's bright & sunny outside. Because the characters are moving and dancing, you'll want a somewhat fast shutter speed, perhaps 1/250 seconds or faster, depending on what aperture & ISO settings you have.
Fireworks at night
There's a whole thread here dedicated to fireworks photography (
link).
In general, you'll need a
tripod to keep everything stable because you're going to need sloooooow shutter speeds (like 1-6 seconds) to get the beautiful & crisp fireworks trails. There's NO way you can hand-hold a camera steadily with a shutter speed of 1-6 seconds. That's why you need a tripod.
What will also help is a remote shutter release, too. That way, you can fire off the camera without touching it (ie. without introducing small shakes or bumps while the camera is taking a long-exposure photo).
If you're using a tripod and long shutter speeds, the you might be able to get away with moderate apertures (f/5.6 - f/8) and lower ISOs (ISO 100-400).
If you're hand-holding your camera for fireworks, good luck. You'll need faster shutter speeds to prevent camera shake from your hands. If I'm lucky, I might be able to hold a camera still for 1/10 seconds. Because I'm using faster shutter speeds, I have to compensate by using larger aperture (smaller f-number) and higher ISOs (ISO 400-800) to let more light into the camera.
Lit up park icon at night
Here, you should probably change your camera's metering to either
spot metering or
center-weighted metering. That way, the camera will determine the proper exposure for the park icon, and won't be thrown off by all the darkness surrounding the icon. There's a thread on this, too (
link).
Do you have a
tripod? This is another time when using a tripod would give you nice, sharper, clearer photo of the park icon. With a tripod, you'd have the luxury of using a slower shutter speed to capture a lot of light in this low-light situation. Because you have a tripod and are using a slooooow shutter speed, you can also use a moderate aperture (f/8) for more depth of field and for your lens' "sweet spot" for maximum sharpness. You can also use a low ISO (100-200) for a nice, noise-less photo. So you'd probably end up doing slow shutter speeds like 1-6 seconds, depending on how bright the icon is lit.
If you don't have a tripod, then you'll have to hand-hold your camera, and probably do similar settings as the fireworks hand-hold settings above, except you can probably use a somewhat faster shutter speed.
MK during the Halloween party
(I'm getting tired, so someone else will have to answer this...maybe use an external flash set on TTL?)
Boo to You parade (would need a quick shutter speed)
You'll need a lens with a large aperture (small f-number) to get a lot of light into your camera during dark situations. I have a
50mm f/1.4 lens (about $400). Other folks here use a
30mm f/1.4 lens (about $400).
Because large apertures let more light into your camera (especially in darker situations), you're not limited to slow shutter speeds. You can actually use moderate shutter speeds for nighttime situations (perhaps 1/60 = 1/100 sec?). If the floats are well-lit, you can probably use faster shutter speeds, like 1/160 or faster. Use higher ISOs, like ISO 800-1600.
inside rides
Same thing here. Use lenses with larger apertures (smaller f-numbers). I'd probably use approximately similar settings as the nighttime parade. Adjust as necessary.
If you're really interested in understanding manual settings, I'd suggest picking up
Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson (
link to
Amazon). It goes through the "exposure triangle" and the thought-process behind when to use what settings. It's quite a good book, and it comes highly recommended on this message board.
Sorry for the super long post. Hope I didn't bore you. Hope that helps.
