Photo Sharing: Ultra Wide Angle

Marlton Mom is back from the World but she is VERY BUSY with Christmas stuff. This is killing me because I want to work on my pictures and I have no time to do that or write a photography trip report. Ack!

But there is one picture/story that just couldn't wait.... you see that Tom Bricker fella MADE me spend $600 + bucks on a Tokina 11-16 super duper wide angle lens. How did he do that you ask?? Well just look at some of the pix he has taken with it! Twisted my arm I tell ya! :rolleyes1

So any way, I realized that it was W I D E angle that I craved for my photography, sort of the missing link if you will, in my repertoire. It seems like initially we want Photography to take us deeper into a subject and then we get to the point where we realize that the bigger picture is, well, the BIGGER picture. At least that's what happened with me any way.

So this Tom Bricker fella goes and takes that Spectro Magic picture.... you know, the one where he is up on the train platform at the entrance to the Magic Kingdom and he sets the exposure to long and captures the streaks of color. I REALLY LOVE that picture!

It got me to thinking..... how could I accomplish capturing color like that..... but in a different way.

You know how before you go to the world you have all these ideas about what you're going to see/do/find/photograph ?? Well I had em! OF course I'm smart enough to realize that the best made plans go to pieces in the heat of the battle and it's the unforeseen that gets you in the butt or provides that magical moment that was totally unexpected.

The picture below is perhaps one of them.

I had thought about that Spectro Magic picture where Tom is still and the 'World' is moving and I immediately thought, "what would a picture look like if the photographer was moving and the 'World' was still..... like in Tomorrowland.... like on the Tomorrowland Transportation Authority ride!"

THAT was it!

I couldn't wait to get to TomorrowLand! I was sure that all those Night shots I wanted to get were there! (they weren't, they were elsewhere but more on that in the trip report!) As luck would have it I only had 1 night to shoot in the Magic Kingdom. One of my Top 5 things to see on this trip was SpectroMagic, which was right before Wishes fireworks spectacular........

Uh oh! The parks were CROWDED! I got to the center hub before 5:45 and it was packed with people already! I decided to go with plan B and set up in front of the Crystal Palace against the railing, where all the strollers were parked, to get a PEOPLE FREE spot for Wishes. I had to choose between Wishes and Spectro, and Spectro lost out yet again! Oh well......... Next trip!

So Wishes it was and I fired away! I got some good ones, which will be posted later, after the holiday madness and Mom duties diminish. A cup of tea and a couple of hours (at Least!) on photoshop are in my future.

After Wishes I was exhausted! I crawled over to Adventureland and got myself a Dole whip and conked out for a good half an hour. Then I started to work my way over to Tomorrowland. It was then, at some point that I realized that my freshly charged battery was almost DEAD!!!! Wishes had done me in! I had thought about getting a second battery but at $50 plus bucks a pop I just couldn't afford it and I was vigilant about charging my battery every night.

I knew I had only a few exposures left before my time was up. I high tailed it over to The TTA and asked if I could set up the camera on a tripod and just keep riding. The cast members smiled knowingly and said Yes!

I set up in the car and I realized that I would have to go around a few times to figure out the good spots to try making exposures. I didn't have enough knowledge of the ride to know where these spots may be. I just started to take pictures as I went along, not really knowing what I was getting, but knowing that the end was near.

As it turned out the battery died, dead as a door nail, before I got all the way around once. I maybe got less that 12 exposures of God knows what because I couldn't even see that on my dead D60.

I sighed and went around again, packing up my equipment, and coming to terms with the fact that you can't have everything and sometimes WDW is about making choices and the knowledge that it will be there for another day. I was explaining this to my husband and I related that our son will never be 11 again so we have to go more often than my husband would like but if I don't get to complete my "Picture Plan" well, I'll try it again next time. Some things about Disney will still be there and other things, like the age of my son are gone forever so that is the more important thing.

I was dog tired, :crazy2: getting up Early and staying out Late so I trudged off for the hotel and the battery charger, a lot earlier than I had expected that night. :sad2:

When I got home I downloaded my pics to the computer and lo and behold Tomorrowland had given me a gift!



I cleaned it up a bit in Photoshop but it was mostly for contrast issues. That blue color is for real and it shows up just as prominently in the original. It's one of my favorite pix from the trip! I love the way the color shows the motion and it gives you a sense of direction and speed.

Now I'm one that believes that if anything has been done, it's been done before. It's not important if you are the first to do something or even the best to do something. The most important thing is to have a creative vision, and even if that vision has a framework provided by others, if you are flexing and stretching your creative muscles, then you have achieved your goal.

I'd like to thank Tom for inspiring me. Simply by flexing and stretching and reaching I have achieved my goal, unexpectedly, with a mostly dead battery! GO FIGURE!!!

Smoochies,
Marlton Mom
 
For anyone interested in seeing the picture since Marlton Mom's didn't work---here is the link to her picture on the People Mover.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/45933094@N08/4210049602/

And for the OP---on Flickr, go to "All Sizes" and then scroll below the picture and copy the link that's in the "2. Grab the photo's URL" box. Paste it into your post on the DIS between
and you'll be good to go (or should be).
 
Thanks for the assist Ann! It took me 15 million tries but i finally got it. That picture posting dance is Evil I tell ya!!!!

~ Joanie
 
Marlton Mom is back from the World but she is VERY BUSY with Christmas stuff. This is killing me because I want to work on my pictures and I have no time to do that or write a photography trip report. Ack!

But there is one picture/story that just couldn't wait.... you see that Tom Bricker fella MADE me spend $600 + bucks on a Tokina 11-16 super duper wide angle lens. How did he do that you ask?? Well just look at some of the pix he has taken with it! Twisted my arm I tell ya! :rolleyes1

So any way, I realized that it was W I D E angle that I craved for my photography, sort of the missing link if you will, in my repertoire. It seems like initially we want Photography to take us deeper into a subject and then we get to the point where we realize that the bigger picture is, well, the BIGGER picture. At least that's what happened with me any way.

So this Tom Bricker fella goes and takes that Spectro Magic picture.... you know, the one where he is up on the train platform at the entrance to the Magic Kingdom and he sets the exposure to long and captures the streaks of color. I REALLY LOVE that picture!

It got me to thinking..... how could I accomplish capturing color like that..... but in a different way.

You know how before you go to the world you have all these ideas about what you're going to see/do/find/photograph ?? Well I had em! OF course I'm smart enough to realize that the best made plans go to pieces in the heat of the battle and it's the unforeseen that gets you in the butt or provides that magical moment that was totally unexpected.

The picture below is perhaps one of them.

I had thought about that Spectro Magic picture where Tom is still and the 'World' is moving and I immediately thought, "what would a picture look like if the photographer was moving and the 'World' was still..... like in Tomorrowland.... like on the Tomorrowland Transportation Authority ride!"

THAT was it!

I couldn't wait to get to TomorrowLand! I was sure that all those Night shots I wanted to get were there! (they weren't, they were elsewhere but more on that in the trip report!) As luck would have it I only had 1 night to shoot in the Magic Kingdom. One of my Top 5 things to see on this trip was SpectroMagic, which was right before Wishes fireworks spectacular........

Uh oh! The parks were CROWDED! I got to the center hub before 5:45 and it was packed with people already! I decided to go with plan B and set up in front of the Crystal Palace against the railing, where all the strollers were parked, to get a PEOPLE FREE spot for Wishes. I had to choose between Wishes and Spectro, and Spectro lost out yet again! Oh well......... Next trip!

So Wishes it was and I fired away! I got some good ones, which will be posted later, after the holiday madness and Mom duties diminish. A cup of tea and a couple of hours (at Least!) on photoshop are in my future.

After Wishes I was exhausted! I crawled over to Adventureland and got myself a Dole whip and conked out for a good half an hour. Then I started to work my way over to Tomorrowland. It was then, at some point that I realized that my freshly charged battery was almost DEAD!!!! Wishes had done me in! I had thought about getting a second battery but at $50 plus bucks a pop I just couldn't afford it and I was vigilant about charging my battery every night.

I knew I had only a few exposures left before my time was up. I high tailed it over to The TTA and asked if I could set up the camera on a tripod and just keep riding. The cast members smiled knowingly and said Yes!

I set up in the car and I realized that I would have to go around a few times to figure out the good spots to try making exposures. I didn't have enough knowledge of the ride to know where these spots may be. I just started to take pictures as I went along, not really knowing what I was getting, but knowing that the end was near.

As it turned out the battery died, dead as a door nail, before I got all the way around once. I maybe got less that 12 exposures of God knows what because I couldn't even see that on my dead D60.

I sighed and went around again, packing up my equipment, and coming to terms with the fact that you can't have everything and sometimes WDW is about making choices and the knowledge that it will be there for another day. I was explaining this to my husband and I related that our son will never be 11 again so we have to go more often than my husband would like but if I don't get to complete my "Picture Plan" well, I'll try it again next time. Some things about Disney will still be there and other things, like the age of my son are gone forever so that is the more important thing.

I was dog tired, :crazy2: getting up Early and staying out Late so I trudged off for the hotel and the battery charger, a lot earlier than I had expected that night. :sad2:

When I got home I downloaded my pics to the computer and lo and behold Tomorrowland had given me a gift!



I cleaned it up a bit in Photoshop but it was mostly for contrast issues. That blue color is for real and it shows up just as prominently in the original. It's one of my favorite pix from the trip! I love the way the color shows the motion and it gives you a sense of direction and speed.

Now I'm one that believes that if anything has been done, it's been done before. It's not important if you are the first to do something or even the best to do something. The most important thing is to have a creative vision, and even if that vision has a framework provided by others, if you are flexing and stretching your creative muscles, then you have achieved your goal.

I'd like to thank Tom for inspiring me. Simply by flexing and stretching and reaching I have achieved my goal, unexpectedly, with a mostly dead battery! GO FIGURE!!!

Smoochies,
Marlton Mom

Well, thanks for the kind words (or the blame, depending on whether you're lamenting losing that $600! ;) ). The lens really is fun, isn't it? I love that TTA shot of yours. I took a similar shot last December on TTA, but I much prefer yours. Great work.

I really should get around to posting the rest of those Spectro long exposure shots. I have some with the spinning floats that (in my opinion) look sort of cool.

One thing - you say you're using a D60; I thought it didn't autofocus on the D40/60. It's normally very easy to manually focus a UWA so this is no big deal, but at night when you're going for tight distorted shots (a favorite of mine), it can be a little tricky.
 


Tom Wrote: "One thing - you say you're using a D60; I thought it didn't autofocus on the D40/60. It's normally very easy to manually focus a UWA so this is no big deal, but at night when you're going for tight distorted shots (a favorite of mine), it can be a little tricky."

It was a BEAR to focus in the dark manually, especially with 46 year old, glasses and Bifocal wearing eyes!!! The rangefinder didn't work as accurately as I had hoped either during the night shoots but then the same can be said of any focusing system in low light. I did really rely on that range finder though....

The D60 won't auto-focus with this Tokina but I knew that ahead of time and I am thinking of the day when I will upgrade the camera body but keep this lens.

Just think.... I am only just starting out with this baby. When I get my balance (so to speak) with it and get more comfortable it should be even more fun!

I like to think of this lens like a spoon, you know how when you look into the curved side and you tilt the spoon up and down you can get differing degrees of distortion.

I was trying to be mindful of that as I composed my shots so I could minimize that effect where I felt it would serve the shot.... but it was HARD!!!

This can be used for some great effects or it can really "mess up" your shot. I also realize that with any lens you have to be mindful of "tilt" but this 11-16 really forces you to choose, or rather, be mindful of this factor in your compositions.

I tried to practice outside at night before we left but it was so cold I just couldn't stay out there.

Overall I'm happy with what I accomplished photographically on this trip. With the competition of having an 11 year old son to put first and having only 5 days in record heat and humidity I really drove myself to do as much as I was able.

The remarkable thing to me was that I have a sense of patience with this new lens. For me its a keeper and my skills with it will grow with more experience. I used it as much as I could but there were some times, like taking pictures of the fireworks, where it would just be too "fast" and I couldn't compensate the exposures low enough to preserve the colors in the fireworks/ Castle combination.

By the way, I think the camera Gods really have a sense of humor when they tempt us to take pictures at night of that beautiful castle (BRIGHT!) with those wispy color fireworks (DIM!) Just when you think you have it right, along comes a barrage of the Bright White fireworks and you blow out the whole shot! :scared1:

So there ya go.... I guess I'll have to keep going back until I get it "right"!
:rotfl:

Marlton Mom
 


Here is the other TTA shot I got with an almost dead camera. This one reminds me of Tomorrowland existing in a fish tank and the people riding on the TTA are exploring the mysteries within.

I tried to "help" this in photoshop but any kind of change took away from the pix so here it is "nekked" for all to enjoy. I love the way the colors changed from one location to another when compared to my previous TTA "Blue" shot.

It's always surprising to see what the camera "sees" and how that totally differs from your perceptions at the time.

~ Marlton Mom... Who needs a... um "beverage" after trying to post this latest image... But I do think I've got .... ~ it ~ now!



 
I like the 2nd one even more than the first! Just got my Tokina 11-16 last week and am so looking forward to putting it through its paces, once all this holiday business is over and I've got some time to shoot again!
 
Great shot!! This is the type of shot that, for me, illustrates the benefit of an UWA lens at Disney. Other types of lenses never seem to properly convey the size and scope of Disney World.

Thank you very much. To bad they don't have a f/1.4 UWA for POTC and HM.
 
Wow...realized I hadn't updated any UWA shots lately! Didn't take too many at Disney this last trip, as we were concentrating more on the Pixelmania meets and discussions, but I did use it a ton on my last cruise in November. So I thought I'd share a few more from the Tamron 10-24mm:

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Justin- those cruise shots are just great. :thumbsup2
 

Great cruise shots... I wish I had an UWA when I had done my cruises back in the day. Hopefully I'll get on another one.


This particular shot looks a lot like Virgin Gorda. There was (probably still is) a small resturaunt/gift shop at the top of the hill that leads down to the The Baths. But then again a lot of the Caribbean Islands have areas similar to this.

Thanks for sharing.
 

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