Hooray for Tripods!

[choirchic]

My husband is a budding amateur photographer and he played around with a lot of night photography this trip.

Here are a some of my favorite shots...My husband told me that he likes constructive criticism, so feel free to comment!

If you liked these, feel free to check out all of our pics. You'll be able to tell my pics from my husbands...his are the better ones!

Here is a link to our Flickr Set:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tbblake/sets/72157622427229932/

 

[VVFF]

Honestly, I have no criticism! Fantastic pictures!

 

[My2Girls66]

Nice job!!

 

[choirchic]

Honestly, I have no criticism! Fantastic pictures!

Nice job!!

Thanks! We had a lot of fun this past trip and took advantage of Extra Magic Hours as much as we could!

 

[Evad]

They all look fantastic!! Great job and thanks for sharing.

 

[nancycg56]

Fabulous pictures!!!!

 

[WDWFigment]

They all look pretty good, but since he was looking for constructive criticism: it's better to slightly underexpose a night shot or expose for the most dominant highlight because it's easier to increase the exposure and fill to the rest of the shot, but you can never recover a totally blown highlight. Sometimes blown highlights are unavoidable, but with the Fountain of Nations, Golden Carousel, and Haunted Mansion shots, shorter shutter speeds or smaller apertures would've helped with it.

All in all, very nice shots.

 

[choirchic]

They all look pretty good, but since he was looking for constructive criticism: it's better to slightly underexpose a night shot or expose for the most dominant highlight because it's easier to increase the exposure and fill to the rest of the shot, but you can never recover a totally blown highlight. Sometimes blown highlights are unavoidable, but with the Fountain of Nations, Golden Carousel, and Haunted Mansion shots, shorter shutter speeds or smaller apertures would've helped with it.

All in all, very nice shots.

Thanks very much! I know this is the type of comments he was hoping to get so I will definitely pass it on!

 

[wmah]

This make me want to try more night shots.

I like the food shots, not because they make me hungry, but because I started doing this myself to show others how expensive a little plate of food can be at some places. Other times to show how good something actually looked for the price. Too bad I can't give them a taste of how good it was, I guess they'll have to go there themselves to find out.

 

[VVFF]

They all look pretty good, but since he was looking for constructive criticism: it's better to slightly underexpose a night shot or expose for the most dominant highlight because it's easier to increase the exposure and fill to the rest of the shot, but you can never recover a totally blown highlight. Sometimes blown highlights are unavoidable, but with the Fountain of Nations, Golden Carousel, and Haunted Mansion shots, shorter shutter speeds or smaller apertures would've helped with it.

All in all, very nice shots.

If they were shooting JPG I would agree. However, if their shooting raw I have to disagree to some extent. If he were to underexpose and have to increase exposure for any of these night shots, noise in the shadow areas(which are quite large) would become painfully obvious. With a RAW file, some highlights are recoverable and can be pulled back into detail if he very slightly overexposed. Obviously its a fine line here but increasing exposure on a night shot is something that has to be done in fine increments to avoid noise.

 

[WDWFigment]

If they were shooting JPG I would agree. However, if their shooting raw I have to disagree to some extent. If he were to underexpose and have to increase exposure for any of these night shots, noise in the shadow areas(which are quite large) would become painfully obvious. With a RAW file, some highlights are recoverable and can be pulled back into detail if he very slightly overexposed. Obviously its a fine line here but increasing exposure on a night shot is something that has to be done in fine increments to avoid noise.

I don't see how this advice in any way contradicts what I said: I recommended underexposing slightly. If you slightly underexpose, you shouldn't have issues with noise when increasing the exposure (at least I usually don't). I said you couldn't recover a 'totally blown highlight'. Unless I'm using the wrong photo editing software, you can't. You are right that there are fine lines when doing this, but that is why I chose my words carefully.

 

[VVFF]

I don't see how this advice in any way contradicts what I said: I recommended underexposing slightly. If you slightly underexpose, you shouldn't have issues with noise when increasing the exposure (at least I usually don't). I said you couldn't recover a 'totally blown highlight'. Unless I'm using the wrong photo editing software, you can't. You are right that there are fine lines when doing this, but that is why I chose my words carefully.

I apologize for misreading your post. Hopefully my misread just gives the OP even more information that may be valuable.

 

[boBQuincy]

It looks like you had fun with the tripod and came back with a lot of really good photos as as result!

Night photography usually involves a decision as to what we want to expose for, the range is often so great that we can't get it all (except for HDR). I agree with VVFF and WDWFigment about using RAW to get all the range we can, using our lowest ISO also usually gives the most range the camera can offer.

After that we either accept blown highlights or noisy shadows, or as the host of Haunted Mansion says, "there's always MY way..." which is bracketing. Even if we don't use the three (or more) exposures for HDR we can still layer pieces of them to get the best exposures for different areas of the photo.

I just spent about an hour playing with various exposures of Fountain of Nations and Spaceship Earth and this is what I came back with, but I am getting ahead of myself, these are for the Monday trip report...

 

[WDWFigment]

It looks like you had fun with the tripod and came back with a lot of really good photos as as result!

Night photography usually involves a decision as to what we want to expose for, the range is often so great that we can't get it all (except for HDR). I agree with VVFF and WDWFigment about using RAW to get all the range we can, using our lowest ISO also usually gives the most range the camera can offer.

After that we either accept blown highlights or noisy shadows, or as the host of Haunted Mansion says, "there's always MY way..." which is bracketing. Even if we don't use the three (or more) exposures for HDR we can still layer pieces of them to get the best exposures for different areas of the photo.

I just spent about an hour playing with various exposures of Fountain of Nations and Spaceship Earth and this is what I came back with, but I am getting ahead of myself, these are for the Monday trip report...

Definitely the best option of the bunch.

Nice shots, by the way, Bob. Maybe you should include a Spoiler Alert for followers of your TR!

 

[Groucho]

This one in particular is kind of interesting; I can't remember seeing a long-exposure shot of Tinkerbell flying over the castle before.

You can also post larger versions - lots of people most their pics at 800x600 or 1024x768 in order to show them off better.

I'm a little surprised by the HM lights - I don't remember there being colored lights in the front (would that be considered an atrium?)... I've taken long shots there at night before and gotten consist straight white lighting there.

Bob: nice fountain shot in front of SE! IMHO I think the white balance is a little warm for my tastes, but I suspect we that we may just have different tastes as most of your night shots seem to be a bit on the warm side...?

 

[choirchic]

This one in particular is kind of interesting; I can't remember seeing a long-exposure shot of Tinkerbell flying over the castle before.

You can also post larger versions - lots of people most their pics at 800x600 or 1024x768 in order to show them off better.

I'm a little surprised by the HM lights - I don't remember there being colored lights in the front (would that be considered an atrium?)... I've taken long shots there at night before and gotten consist straight white lighting there.

We got lucky with the Tinkerbell shot as he was just trying long exposure for the fireworks...I really like that one though. As for the Haunted Mansion...that's the way it's lit up on the nights of the Halloween Party. We knew it was something special, so we made sure we definitely caught it.

Thanks again to everyone for the posts...my husband is enjoying reading them!

 

[annnewjerz]

This one in particular is kind of interesting; I can't remember seeing a long-exposure shot of Tinkerbell flying over the castle before.

I'm a little surprised by the HM lights - I don't remember there being colored lights in the front (would that be considered an atrium?)... I've taken long shots there at night before and gotten consist straight white lighting there.

I could have sworn I saw Jeff do a long-ish exposure of Tinkerbell, but I could be wrong. I know I saw someone do it and thought how different it was from the usual castle pics. ETA: Here's Jeff's.

The lights in front of HM I believe are on during MNSSHP. That being said, I've never been during MNSSHP before---so I am basing this solely on photos I have seen from the party.

 

[boBQuincy]

Bob: nice fountain shot in front of SE! IMHO I think the white balance is a little warm for my tastes, but I suspect we that we may just have different tastes as most of your night shots seem to be a bit on the warm side...?

Thanks! The white balance may be a combination of my monitor calibration (about 6 months overdue), personal taste, and that my eyes each see WB differently. That makes it difficult to get consistent WB but it also makes it easy, just close one eye and it may be just right!

 

[choirchic]

(DH here on the wife's account, so pardon me if my posts aren't "disboard-worthy" .

Thanks for the feedback, I understand and really appreciate it all. A few notes so you know what I'm thinking, but plan to alter that thinking at least somewhat now.

As for the range of exposure, I shot in jpg and raw, planning to only use the raw if something was too blown out in a shot somewhere. I was trying to get a good mid of fun and pictures while on vacation, so the raw was really a failsafe to pull back over or underexposed parts of the shots, not necessarily to get a broad range of exposure.

However, having read what you guys wrote, I think at least for the night shots, I wish I could go back to those raws and use them to pull out a little more dark or light. Unfortunately I just deleted the raws last night so I'll stick with what I have for now. Having been my first "big" attempt at night shots, I still like what I came back with, but know more for next time.

For the white balance, same stuff, it was because I worked on it while in jpg. Since I'm just starting out with this stuff, my photo editing software is photoshop elements, so doing any major batch conversion from raw, and color correcting isn't as quick as it could be in other software, and plus part of that whole fun/photography mix, I think I was just looking for "good" for now, not "great".

Maybe I'll just have to organize a trip to the parks without the DW next time so I could focus more on the shots . Thanks guys!

 

[choirchic]

You can also post larger versions - lots of people most their pics at 800x600 or 1024x768 in order to show them off better.

If you want to see, all of the originals are posted on my husband's Flickr site. Here is the link again:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tbblake/sets/72157622427229932/