DON'T Read This TRIP REPORT If You're a Princess Hater!

[DISNEYaddict4evr]

YEAH! update.... What great shots, you were spot on with the dress, the match almost perfectly. You truly are a seamstress wizard

 

[mom2rtk]

What a great meet. So glad they let you wait.

I know what you mean about the camera bag. Mine cut in my shoulders the whole trip. It has a padded area, but it is not of soft material. I need it to be draped in velvet or silk so it's comfy!

I was really unimpressed with the exposure of a couple of the raw easter shots. I need to play around a little more I guess. But they were unexposed by me and then when I brought them up they had so much noise.
I swear I am going backwards instead of forwards with my shots. I need to get out and practice. I would love to take another class too, but I don't see any reasonable ones offered in my area like there used to be.

Keep at it Jen. If the editing program you have is what you intend to use for a while, maybe you want to consider some sort of book to help?

I installed Lightroom 3 for the first time last July. I'm by no means an expert. Not even close. But even so, I've come a LONG way from when I first started. And keep posting your questions in the photography forum. I bet many of them can help........ far more than I can!

Great pics, and I love her Belle dress! Gorgeous, as usual!

Thank you! I think the red Belle dress is going into storage to keep for Katie's daughter to wear one day!

Great update!!! I love her Belle dress!!! And as always the shots are great!

Thanks a bunch! I really loved watching her wear the gown that night. It added a lot to our MVMCP experience!

We're still working on our trip for this year, and now we're thinking it might be December again. But...... I keep thinking.......... I already DID the red Belle dress......... What would I do THIS time?????? So far.......... nothing. I'm in need of inspiration. I really want to do Halloween, but the timing for December is just looking better.

 

[mom2rtk]

12/16/10: Continued


OK, so is it just me, or does it seem like this day has gone on FOREVER???? That's probably because it DID!

Our next stop was to see Mickey and Minnie. We did the Christmas party twice in 08, but STILL never managed to see Mickey. We found Minnie that year, but had to bail on the Mickey line to catch the fireworks. I told Katie she could change out of the Belle gown before we left the County Bounty, but she wanted to leave it on. And yes, that made me happy.

I watched the Disboards closely as the first MVMCP was held in November. I wanted pictures. I wanted to see what finery Mickey & Minnie would be sporting. Then the day finally came. I was really glad they put Mickey & Minnie together, but their finery? Eh........ not so great. Regardless, we still wanted the photo. First...... a quick stop for a return engagement with the hopscotch game:

The up side of putting them together inside is that they could use their normal means of making that line move a little faster. The line wasn’t nearly as long as I thought it would be, especially since I had heard the party was sold out. It only took around 15-20 minutes. I always said I’d wait twice as long to see them together, but it didn’t take that at all.

On the way out, we did take a few minutes to say good-bye to Toontown! I knew this would be it.

Next, Katie asked to try the Barnstormer again. It seemed like a LIFETIME ago that she rode it for her first time...... hard to believe it was just that morning! No one was in line so they let us stay on for a couple trips around. It was an awesome send-off for Toontown!

Up until then, we would have never known the party was a sell-out. Remember, we started the night in Toontown, and hadn't left the area yet. But we were about to find out that sell-out story was no rumor!

Anyone tired of fireworks photos yet???????

 

[tsme]

The costumes you make are gorgeous. Where do you find the patterns or do you make your own patterns?

 

[mom2rtk]

12/16/10 Continued:

MVMCP honestly isn't what it used to be. It seems they cut more out every year, and don't feel the need to replace it. I really wish they would add back in a couple things..... maybe the Cinderella Carriage photo op. That would make me a happy camper. But of course, I haven't gotten my email from Disney yet asking for my input!

There was really only one more thing I wanted to do before seeing the parade and fireworks again. I had made a Jasmine gown for Katie and wanted photos during the party. We had been to a bunch of parties before, but never had gotten the chance to meet Aladdin as Prince Ali. Just one thing.. How hard could that be??????

As we left Toontown and headed for Main Street, the crowds practically overwhelmed us! The first parade had started, and there was NO WAY we were getting across there. Since the parade comes from Frontierland, we decided to head around back behind the castle and through Liberty Square instead. Of course, when we got back over there, the parade was just ending. We were trapped in a mass of humanity I wouldn' t wish on my worst enemy! (OK, so maybe I would........ but you get my point.......)

We had no choice but to just wait until the people cleared out a bit. Time was becoming an issue because I wanted another shot at photographing the fireworks...... and it seemed like every person in Frontierland was headed for Main Street.

We scurried on back to Adventureland. Jasmine and Ali weren't out, but we asked where they would be and got in line. Just a couple minutes later they appeared!

As soon as we were done, we swallowed hard and headed into the belly of the beast........ Main Street on a sold out MVMCP night!

 

[mom2rtk]

The costumes you make are gorgeous. Where do you find the patterns or do you make your own patterns?

Thank you and.......

Most of my costumes start with a pattern. Most from the SAME pattern. But I liberally adapt from there.

 

[tsme]

That's awesome. I'm pretty limited with my sewing abilities, mostly just sundresses for my DD. I just realized while reading that we were also at disney the week of Dec. 12 & we froze! Especially for MVMCP, could not warm up. It didn't warm up until the Friday. But we still had a magical time.

 

[mom2rtk]

That's awesome. I'm pretty limited with my sewing abilities, mostly just sundresses for my DD. I just realized while reading that we were also at disney the week of Dec. 12 & we froze! Especially for MVMCP, could not warm up. It didn't warm up until the Friday. But we still had a magical time.

So which night did you go to the party?

And yes, wasn't that ONE day of nice weather heavenly? We were in Epcot that day. And it's coming up next.......... after the fireworks and parade.

 

[Caretames1]

Katie looked as she was having the best time! I really enjoyed these pictures, as it made me feel as if I was there! While Kadence & I love the Belle dress, we both said the Jasmine is our pick for tonight!
She told me she wants the "Whole Costume"! I just told her when I win the lotto honey

Can't wait for more Fireworks pics. Those are my favorite

 

[mom2rtk]

Katie looked as she was having the best time! I really enjoyed these pictures, as it made me feel as if I was there! While Kadence & I love the Belle dress, we both said the Jasmine is our pick for tonight!
She told me she wants the "Whole Costume"! I just told her when I win the lotto honey

Can't wait for more Fireworks pics. Those are my favorite

Thanks Carey! She did have a lot of fun. It almost felt like we had Toontown to ourselves. It was so strange to then find SO many people on Main Street, even though I sort of knew that would be the case.

Tell Kadence I'm glad she liked Jasmine! That was one of those things I had wanted to do for a long time. Sort of had a bee in my bonnet about it......I had seen animated pictures of Jasmine in her purple gown, and wanted to give it a go.

When I asked Katie recently what she might want if we go back....... she said Jasmine. That surprised me. She said she wanted a "blinged-up" Jasmine. But I sort of feel like I've given Jasmine my best shot..... twice. I also did a blinged-up turquoise one in 09:

So I think I've sort of done the Jasmine thing, and I told her that. Her response? She wants Jasmine's cloak she was wearing that night! I just laughed and told her I wouldn't even know where to START on that!

 

[WDWAtLast]

Love the pictures with Belle and the Beast! And how cool that you got to see "Prince Ali". Seeing your party pictures make me more excited for our October trip. One day we will make the Christmas party, but not for a while!!

 

[jenseib]

Ikm first off, what lens did you use on the close up of Katie on barnstomer. I like how sharp it is.
And I LOVE that Jasmine gown. One of the Dream shows had Jasmine in a dress. I thought of you when I saw it...not know you had already made one. I can't remember if it is purple of blue, but I think it was purple. I'll have to go through my zillion pictures to find it. I had never seen a Jasmine dress before that.

 

[jenseib]

I found it...it was blue. I really liked it though.

 

[basketkat]

Yikes those crowds sound so overwhelming!!! I'm glad you had such a great time in Toontown though!!!!

 

[kwitcherkicken99]

My goodness Beast is HUGE! We didn't get the chance to meet him in person on our last trip - we had to get to our ADR at Le Cellier and we didn't make it back to EP before we left.

There's always next time!

BTW, I'm being smart about my response today... copied it into Word so I can work on it in bits and pieces if I have to stop for some reason.

 

[mom2rtk]

Love the pictures with Belle and the Beast! And how cool that you got to see "Prince Ali". Seeing your party pictures make me more excited for our October trip. One day we will make the Christmas party, but not for a while!!

Before this trip we had been to the Halloween party twice and the Christmas party twice and the Pirate & Princess Party 3 times. Prince Ali is usually part of the lineup at all of those, but we had never made it back to find him. And of course, he and Jasmine are usually trading off with the Genie and Abu, and you know how I LOVE rotating characters..........

We really were so lucky to find them coming out in a moment with no line in place. We were done in about 5 minutes........ and on our way out to Main Street.

I keep wanting to do October. I even booked some ADR's last week. But the more I think about it, the more I think it's going to have to be December again. MNSSHP is awesome! And I have to admit, I'm a little gun-shy about the December weather.........

Ikm first off, what lens did you use on the close up of Katie on barnstomer. I like how sharp it is.
And I LOVE that Jasmine gown. One of the Dream shows had Jasmine in a dress. I thought of you when I saw it...not know you had already made one. I can't remember if it is purple of blue, but I think it was purple. I'll have to go through my zillion pictures to find it. I had never seen a Jasmine dress before that.

I found it...it was blue. I really liked it though.

Jen that was taken with my go-to, absolute most favorite lens. It has a reputation for being very sharp and it has not disappointed me at all. It's the Canon 17-55 f/2.8.

Thanks for the comment on Jasmine! And thanks for posting the photo of Jasmine from your trip. That's a gorgeous costume, and I have never seen it before. And you did a great job on that shot. And it's VERY sharp! I hope to see a lot more pics from the shows on the ship. I love seeing different versions of the costumes!

Yikes those crowds sound so overwhelming!!! I'm glad you had such a great time in Toontown though!!!!

Thanks! I sort of knew what to expect with the crowds since I had been at a sold-out party in 08. But honestly, I do think this was over-sold. And what an amazing dichotomy to go from a near-deserted Toontown, and straight into the massive crowds!

My goodness Beast is HUGE! We didn't get the chance to meet him in person on our last trip - we had to get to our ADR at Le Cellier and we didn't make it back to EP before we left.

There's always next time!

BTW, I'm being smart about my response today... copied it into Word so I can work on it in bits and pieces if I have to stop for some reason.

LOL! He's HUGE! And I love it! We saw him again in Epcot on the next day. It's funny because everyone was in line and Belle came out, but no one would go see her. Every last one of us was waiting until the Beast came out! We have met him before, so we knew he was big, but having him indoors made him seem even BIGGER!

I'm sorry you missed him. Do put him on the list for your next trip. But see him at MVMCP if you go, because he's in his formal attire. He's in "Beast Casual" in Epcot! You'll see pics in our Epcot day.

 

[jenseib]

I took that one with my telephoto lens. I think that lens is my best lens and I wish I could take all pictures with it.

I did take a ton of show pictures and I thought of you a lot with all the costumes.

 

[mom2rtk]

I took that one with my telephoto lens. I think that lens is my best lens and I wish I could take all pictures with it.

I did take a ton of show pictures and I thought of you a lot with all the costumes.

So which telephoto do you have? It did great! I'm having some issues with my Sigma 50-150 telephoto and am thinking of sending it in for calibration. The problem of course is that I have to send the camera body in with it, so they can it can be calibrated to the body, so I keep putting it off. Now I think I've waited too long to have it fixed before Robbie graduates in May. So I need another plan. Or I need to be sure and not use it wide open. That's where I notice my problem on that one.

Can't WAIT to see the rest of your show pictures!

 

[kwitcherkicken99]

I'm going to break this up because it got... well... really long, sorry.

My original words are in red, your responses in green to keep with the Christmas theme of your trippie - that way you don’t have to go back and try to figure out what we were talking about!

Lowest = smaller number. If you can get away with 400, do so. 800 really is where you'll start to see your images "break" or pixelate.

I've been going with a higher ISO in an attempt to get more background light into the photos. I seem to think that at the lower ISO's, the subject is well lit, but the background seemed darker. Is that not the case? Or is it perhaps that I just needed to adjust my shutter speed or aperture to allow for that ambient light instead of the ISO????????

The higher ISOs won’t have a major affect on your background. Light “falls off” or is absorbed by surrounding elements very quickly.

In low light situations, the camera is exposed for the light on the subject. Anything other than the star of the photo won’t catch as much light, it “falls off”. Therefore, by increasing you ISO, you are solely affecting the amount of light on your subject. The background will get bumped up a bit, but not enough to get it to where you want to be. Decreasing the shutter speed will allow the remaining ambient light to illuminate your backdrop.

Changing your aperture will ONLY affect the amount of light on your subject as well as the distance between you and said subject. Your shutter speed will ONLY affect the background. Personally, I wouldn’t go below 1/30 unless you have a tripod set up. You could affect your background by having too much camera shake.

I don't think I would. I would be more afraid of the subject getting blurry using the rear curtain sync. I'd rather go normal with a slightly long shutter speed and let the background go out a bit **but you have to find the balance between just enough and too much... you can easily put too much "motion" in the image if your background blurs out too much.

Hmmmm......... I'll try that approach next and see how it goes. What is the longest shutter speed you would use in this situation?

For indoors, I typically have my shutter speed at about 1/60. I bump it down to 1/30 if it’s REALLY dark. I consume mass quantities of caffeine, so I can get a little shaky at times, so much below 1/30 and it affects my images.

I used my little pull down diffuser that's already on my flash. It's not much but it helps even out my fore- and background.

What sort of a pull down diffuser do you have? Was it something you added? Or was it like the one you linked earlier for Jen?

My flash has a little diffuser that sits inside the flash head. I can pull it out and it rests on the front of the flash.

[That is the flash I have.]

I also have a modified bounce card contraption that I made (similar to the link I showed Jen) so I could use flash at a basketball game and still be within the rules of using flash and not affecting the contest. I put it on the flash to force the light against the wall behind me. The light bounces off the wall and then onto the players. IHSAA rules forbid the use of direct flash in athletic competitions.

At 1900PF, I'd probably try to bounce off the ceiling unless it cut my exposure WAY down. Then I'd either use a bounce card or some kind of a diffuser.

I think the hardest part about all of this is that we go to Disney once a year, if we're lucky, and don't get to practice in similar surroundings in between. Yet they are photos I don't want to take a chance on not getting right.

You want to know what I do? I preset my camera once I can start to see the characters.

For example, the character trails at Camp Minnie-Mickey: Once we start to get close, say 5-6 families back, I’ll adjust my camera to where I think it needs to be. When we get about 2-3 families back, I’ll fire off some test shots of those people to check my lighting. (I delete them right away, of course… I don’t need to keep pictures of strangers.) When we are the next family, I’ll fire another test shot to make any last minute adjustments because we are relatively close to where I would be taking our family photos (remember DISTANCE IS A FACTOR IN YOUR EXPOSURE!) By the time it is our turn, my camera is already set and we can enjoy our interaction with whomever we are seeing.

I used the same tactic last month at a local Children’s Museum. They offered a special meet and greet with Spiderman, and they told us that we were allowed 1 photo. No autographs, no chatting. Walk up, smile, snap, move on. The lighting situation was a nightmare because we were indoors, but had directional sunlight in some places and regular museum lights in others and then massive indoor shade from part of the building (and this was all in the area that Spiderman was going to stand…). We were in the middle of the pack, but directly in front of the winding M&G queue.

I used that time to get my camera set up for our interaction. I think I have my museum photos with me at school today… If I do, I’ll show you some. Anyway, I did one last test on the family ahead of us (it was my friend and her kids, they were my guinea pigs). I made a quick adjustment and then got the shot of DS4 because DD2 was star struck and wouldn’t go up to him. She did the same thing with Eeyore and Cinderella. :

 

[kwitcherkicken99]

I'll have to think on these a bit. Any particular situation(s) you are seeking?

… I'm assuming I'd be using flash in all situations. But how would you approach your settings and your use of flash?

Yes. As much as I fought using a flash (especially outdoor – I always thought it looked silly…), I use it more often than not to make sure I get the best possible lighting on my subject’s face.

Here is where I share a story that E ribbed me about for a bit… When we were at Chef Mickey’s for dinner, she ribbed me for taking pictures of the kids eating. They weren’t the best poses and I was photographing them stuffing their faces. I told her that I was setting up my light for when the characters got there (and I was). I was able to find a happy medium between exposing for DS’s face while allowing enough background light to carry over to the darkening windows behind us. (We sat in the outer room, just behind the dessert bar). I probably fired off 6-8 shots before I was 100% happy.

… the steps you'd take at CRT, either sitting out in the middle with a high, oddly shaped ceiling, or maybe over to the side with lower ceilings, but dark wood all around. Don't recall the color of the ceilings.

I believe the ceilings are a cream-ish color, but I can’t remember exactly! However, I’m guessing about an ISO of ~ 800, maybe around F/4-5.6. Use the TTL on your flash – you have that right? I’m working from a very tired brain today… Use 800 if you have to, but I would fire off a couple of test shots (right after you get seated) at 400 to see if you can pull it off.

I would use a diffuser over the front of the flash for either seat. In the middle, you will have to use a lower shutter speed ~ 1/45 to get your background where you like it. On the outer seats, especially if you are near a window, the shutter speed would be ~ 1/60, if you are close to windows. The ceiling in there is just too high and dark to bounce.

If you felt daring and were sitting close to a window, you could use it as your backdrop. You wouldn’t have to finagle the shutter speed very much because you’d have the bright window behind you. You might even have to speed it up a bit!

Then how about how you would handle the Mickey meet & greet indoors?

At the EP M&G at Innoventions, they really set up a lot of the light for you. They have a ton of light dumped onto the backgrounds so you should be able to get away with a shutter speed around 1/60 with an ISO of 400 at about F/5.6-8.

Now, I’ve not seen the inside of the rooms at the new Town Square Hall… I’m assuming it is darker and may not have as much light for the backdrops (similar set up at the Judge’s Tent – they didn’t have much light on the backdrop there either). In that case, a shutter speed of about 1/45-1/60 would be appropriate. You may have to open up the aperture a bit too, maybe shoot at 800 with F/5.6 at 1/45?

Then how about meeting a character under a shady tree?

Ah… going back to Camp Minnie-Mickey, similar set up because they have the little tent thingies to stand under! Anytime you are under an overhang or tree or tent, watch your white balance as well. Things lean to the blue side in the shade (even with flash)

I’d keep the ISO ~ 400 (boy I wish your camera did 1/3 stops… otherwise I’d say 320). You won’t have to fight your light here as much so you will be able to keep the shutter speed around 1/60-1/125. If the area is heavily shaded, stay around 1/60 at ~ F5.6-8.

Did I say thank you??????

You are more than welcome. I want people to get the best images they can and I’m more than willing to help those that don’t have a holier-than-thou attitude about photography.