ExposurePlot results from my last WDW trip

[Groucho]

One topic that comes up fairly regularly is "what lens for Disney" or "what settings" or similar questions. I just ran ExposurePlot on my photos from my last trip. First thing I noticed, apparently the program maxes out at 4,000 images, so it processed almost but not quite all of my shots. But close enough.

The big question is, which lens got the most use... I brought four Pentax lenses (10-17mm fisheye, 31mm F1.8, 50mm F1.4, 50-135mm F2.8) and a Tamron 28-75mm F2.8 and a Lester A Dine 105mm F2.8 macro (identical to Kiron and Vivitar Series One - it's a brilliant lens).

31mm wins the focal length war! Most shots are wide - probably 70% or more are 50mm or less, and of course, a good number of fisheye shots. Hopefully next trip, the Tamron will be replaced with a 16-50mm F2.8 and I'll probably have that many more wide shots.

Actually, I can use Lightroom to find exact numbers for the lenses. It's a little clunky but works. In the Library view, go down to the Metadata and you can view photos taken with each lens. The downside is that it doesn't work with older lenses. Anyway, LR will give you the option to show all the photos taken with that lens. It'd be nice to have a little more flexibility - like all the shots from that lens in one folder, or that lens plus one camera, or some more functionality. (Maybe LR2 has this, I don't know as I haven't tried it.)

Pentax 10-17mm: 468 photos
Pentax 31mm F1.8: 857
Pentax 50mm F1.4: 488
Pentax 50-135mm F2.8: 1,428
Tamron 28-75mm F2.8: 354
Lester A Dine 105mm F2.8 macro: 399 (not at all the first couple days, then used it a lot more)

There's just a couple that weren't with those lenses, when I used the 18-55mm kit and 50-200mm lenses that usually go with the wife's K100D.

I actually didn't think that the 50-135mm was the most used. But it is a nice, flexible lens - I think the extra 50-69mm range that you use is very useful (by my math, over 225 shots were taken at 50mm with the lens), the weathersealing is great (it rained one day and I've had it out in a couple downpours locally since then), and it helps that any time I wanted more than 75mm, it was the only choice.

Here's the aperture numbers:

I've said it before, I'll say it again - Disney parks are dark and fast lenses help! In fact, add 'em together and fully 49% of the shots were taken at F2.8 or faster. Some of that is low for DoF, and the F1.4 and F1.8 speeds are usually on-ride photos.

ISO:

200 was used a lot since I left dynamic range enhancement on a lot, which raises the lowest ISO from 100 to 200. (It did help occasionally but overall, I think I'd leave it off most of the time next trip.) I've also turned off the mid-range ISO settings, it looks like ISO 4500 is not much different in terms of noise than 6400, so I'd rather have the extra half-stop of light with similar noise.

Just for completeness, here's the shutter speed data. Nothing too exciting here.

I hope this info is useful to someone. Obviously everyone's shooting styles vary, I'd be happy to see anyone else's information and thoughts on lens/aperture choices.

 

[Suburbanmom]

Very interesting statistics, Groucho. Thanks for taking the time to share them with us. I think it's particularly interesting that a prime lens was used the most. Cool...

 

[MarkBarbieri]

Are those stats for "all photos taken" or for "all keepers"?

 

[DueyDooDah]

...It'd be nice to have a little more flexibility - like all the shots from that lens in one folder, or that lens plus one camera, or some more functionality. (Maybe LR2 has this, I don't know as I haven't tried it.)
...

Off topic: You can do this in a round about way. Use the Find panel. Enable in the Text field, set the Text to IPTC and the Rule to Contains All. In the search box, type in, say, part of the Lens name such as EF-S18. As you type, LR will select all photos that match your criteria. Now scroll through the Folders panel. Any folder that contains a photo shot using the lens will be highlighted. All others will be greyed out. Now you can select any folder and it will show only the appropriate photos. Ctrl-click multiple folders to widen your selection. You can then save to a Collection, if you wish.

LR2 changes the layout and functionality of metadata searching. It is much more flexible, although it moves everything concerning searching and filtering to the top of the workspace (all keywording functions move to the right side of the screen, making it less confusing than in LR). It takes a bit of getting used to but it separates the functions to a more logical layout. It adds dropdown selection windows to refine searches from just about anything you can imagine. I find it to be a good change.

 

[boBQuincy]

Here's mine from our May 2008 WDW trip:

As you can see, I need a f/2.8 lens since I use my f/4 wide open a lot. The large number of images taken at the longest zoom are from AKL (baby zebra out side our room) and AK (tigers).
The 10-22 gets used a lot (these numbers are adjusted for the 1.6x crop factor, which is why they don;t go below 16 mm).

 

[Groucho]

Very interesting statistics, Groucho. Thanks for taking the time to share them with us. I think it's particularly interesting that a prime lens was used the most. Cool...

Well, the 50-135mm was actually used the most, but most photos were taken at the 31mm focal length with the prime. I do love my primes. And I think I mentioned before, the Tamron seems to be able to to keep up with the IQ of the camera's sensor. I actually wonder if the focusing is just slightly off with the lens - I will have to do a focus test. I don't think this is the case, and I'll be replacing the lens regardless (I want to be able to go wider), so I very well may never bother checking.

Are those stats for "all photos taken" or for "all keepers"?

That's for all photos (well, the first 4,000!) - I didn't have that many keepers. It might be interesting to also check the keepers, that would show what focal lengths actually producing the photos that I like the best.

Off topic: You can do this in a round about way.

Thanks for the info. I figured there had to be a better way. I hope LR2 makes the exif data more accessible; for example, it would be nice to be able to see more than just the ISO/aperture/shutter speed without having to leave the develop module.

Here's mine from our May 2008 WDW trip:

Wow, you really used the long reach a lot! Even with that being mostly at AK/AKL. (This would be interesting to compare these results with the same test done with the "keepers".)

Out of curiousity, is there any reason that you shot wide open so much but there's relatively few shots at ISO 1600? I usually prefer to bump the ISO (to a point, and 1600 is certainly fine on most DSLRs) than to shoot wide open, where most any lens will be not performing at its peak.

For reference for anyone comparing our ExposurePlot graphs, my shots are at actual focal length, not adjusted for crop factor, so they're skewed a little different.

 

[MarkBarbieri]

Here are my numbers from my last family trip. Mine are based on "keepers" only.

These are actual focal lengths rather than 35mm equivs. I was using a 1.3x crop factor camera. The spikes at 17, 24, 70, and 200 are because those are the extremes of my lenses (17-40, 24-70, and 70-200). Some of the 50s are because I also used a 50mm prime. The few above 200 were taken with a 1.4x teleconverter. Obviously, my sweet spot is between 40 and 70 (50 and 90mm for FF).

A 12% of my shots were taken at 200mm or above. Almost 30% were 100mm or above. Fewer than 5% were taken wider than 24mm.

You can quickly see that my 50mm was almost never used for wide aperture shots (or the shots weren't kept). A single shot wider than f/2.8 was kept. A quarter of my shots were at 2.8. Another 20% were wider than f/4. Only about 5% of my shots were at f/11 or higher.

My shutter speed plot isn't very interesting. The vast majority are between 1/60 and 1/800. The faster ones were probably just me being lazy about dropping my ISO and shooting with a wide aperture. It looks like I only had two shots longer than 1 second, but I was barely in the parks after dark on this trip.

My ISO chart shows an interesting spread. I'm almost equal in shots at 400, 800, and 1600. In fact, each of those exceeded shots taken at 100 and 200 combined. I'm happy with the noise levels at 400 on my camera and don't really hesitate to shoot there. Given all of the motion at WDW, I rarely bother to go lower. The 800 and 1600 shots are mostly shots of shows and other indoor situations. I have few dark ride shots because I've never been enamored with dark ride shots.

 

[boBQuincy]

Out of curiousity, is there any reason that you shot wide open so much but there's relatively few shots at ISO 1600? I usually prefer to bump the ISO (to a point, and 1600 is certainly fine on most DSLRs) than to shoot wide open, where most any lens will be not performing at its peak.

Laziness?
I was shooting mostly with two of Canon's L series lenses, a 24-105 and 70-200. Both of these are actually pretty good wide open and I am not happy with ISO 1600 on my 30D so I prefer to use the wider aperture if necessary.

A lot of the f/4 shots were from the balcony of our AKL room with the 70-200 wide open and at full zoom (and some with the 1.4x attached). It was a foggy morning, not much light. A lot of other shots were of Festival of the Lion King, wide open again. We both thought Disney turned the lights down compared to previous shows, can anyone else confirm this?

So, I need both f/2.8 lenses *and* a 40D so I can use ISO 1600 more! It's only money! And a lot of extra weight...

 

[MarkBarbieri]

Out of curiousity, is there any reason that you shot wide open so much but there's relatively few shots at ISO 1600? I usually prefer to bump the ISO (to a point, and 1600 is certainly fine on most DSLRs) than to shoot wide open, where most any lens will be not performing at its peak.

With the possible exceptions of the D3 and maybe the 1DM3 series, I haven't seen a camera that is "fine" on ISO 1600. Acceptable? Sure. It's still a big set down from ISO 800. Given the lenses Bob was using, I'd open wider before I'd boost the ISO that high - even on the 40D. If the lenses were of lower quality, it might be a tougher choice. With a faster lens, I might also worry about too shallow of a DOF.

 

[Groucho]

With the possible exceptions of the D3 and maybe the 1DM3 series, I haven't seen a camera that is "fine" on ISO 1600. Acceptable? Sure. It's still a big set down from ISO 800. Given the lenses Bob was using, I'd open wider before I'd boost the ISO that high - even on the 40D. If the lenses were of lower quality, it might be a tougher choice. With a faster lens, I might also worry about too shallow of a DOF.

Hmm. I pixelpeep more than I should and I'm more than happy with the ISO 1600 results from the K20D and the D300 is pretty much identical. On these, ISO 1600 is pretty close to ISO 800 on previous generation cameras, and certainly more than acceptable IMHO.

Here's an example shot, this is ISO 1600 with no exposure adjustment in post-processing. Default LR noise settings (0/25).

Here's a 100% crop. (Just a tiny bit of motion blur due to 1/45th second shutter.)

And I wasn't trying to imply anything about inferior lenses, but pretty much all lenses lose at least some quality when wide open. From what I've read, the 70-200 F4 is probably as close to being the exception as you'll find, and the 24-105 F4 seems to only show issues in the borders. These are probably helped since they're not really "fast" lenses - the comparable F2.8 lenses show more of a difference in resolution between wide open and stopped down one stop.

Anyway, I had asked because I didn't know what lenses Bob was using.

Bob, I can't answer your FotLK question but if you have similar shots from before and after, you could compare exposures. I only really look any photos of it on my last trip so I have nothing to compare it to. I do know (according to a Keys to the Kingdom tour guide, at least) that lights were temporarily brighter in PotC and HM around 2003 or so, and were later dimmed again - they were trying to see if it would be safer with the lights up, and eventually decided to dim the lights again apparently. A good decision as I can remember being able to look up in PotC and clearly see the black grid ceiling in the outdoor scenes, or the scrims in the HM graveyard scene...

 

[jann1033]

Laziness?
I was shooting mostly with two of Canon's L series lenses, a 24-105 and 70-200. Both of these are actually pretty good wide open and I am not happy with ISO 1600 on my 30D so I prefer to use the wider aperture if necessary.

A lot of the f/4 shots were from the balcony of our AKL room with the 70-200 wide open and at full zoom (and some with the 1.4x attached). It was a foggy morning, not much light. A lot of other shots were of Festival of the Lion King, wide open again. We both thought Disney turned the lights down compared to previous shows, can anyone else confirm this?

So, I need both f/2.8 lenses *and* a 40D so I can use ISO 1600 more! It's only money! And a lot of extra weight...

i'm in the same boat bob but mine is taking on lots of water and going down fast i use my 70-200 open lots as well, the photos are still pretty sharp. i love that thing and it's the one lens i'd never get rid of

 

[DueyDooDah]

It's unfortunate that the utility only processes .JPG files. I don't convert many of my photos - only the ones I intend to print or upload to friends/family. I normally process in LR and leave it at that. If I need a .JPG, it's a simple matter of exporting at that point.

 

[Groucho]

It's unfortunate that the utility only processes .JPG files. I don't convert many of my photos - only the ones I intend to print or upload to friends/family. I normally process in LR and leave it at that. If I need a .JPG, it's a simple matter of exporting at that point.

What I do is, after processing the "keepers", I just do a mass export of all photos using the original filename, from raw to jpg. This lets me more easily flip through all the photos quickly without LR.