Live from Disneyland

[Groucho]

(edit: replaced original unprocessed photos with current, processed ones)

I'm here in Disneyland now... well, not actually IN the park, but nearly! We're staying at the Howard Johnson's that's across the street, it's very nice with some great views:

So far, we're just hung out here, gone swimming (another over-100' day), and wandered to Downtown Disney for dinner. I did set up the tripod and took a bunch of firework photos from our balcony:

Tomorrow morning, into the parks and we move to the Disneyland Hotel. More updates later!

 

[DVC Jen]

I am so excited for you. We are thinking about doing Disneyland next summer. We used to live just blocks from there and would take walks to the Disneyland hotel. Haven't been back since we moved here to Texas (DH has with business - but not the girls and I). I can't wait to see more photos!

Have a wonderful time.

Hey - if you think about it - get some shot of the Disneyland hotel. If we go we are thinking about using DVC points there - would love to see what it looks like now.

 

[0bli0]

very cool! i look forward to the next update.

i'm going to be bringing the whole clan (all 6 of us...aiyah) plus hopefully my sister and her kids in mid-november. it should be good for shooting as a family!

 

[LMarge]

Obli0, I've been looking at your siggy for a year or so now and it just now clicked what it says "upside down" - it's very cute - and my brain is running very slow these days!! (that 3rd child will get you every time!) It was truly a light bulb moment!! ROFL!!

 

[Groucho]

Hi folks, I'm on a quick afternoon break at our room in the DL Hotel now. We're heading back out as soon as I finishing copying my memory cards (taken about 250-300 pics so far, and tonight is Electrical Parade and the fireworks so I need as much room as possible!)... very hot today though maybe not QUITE as hot as yesterday.

Crowds have been very manageable. We got in via early entry and headed straight for the Nemo subs, which was about a 20-30 minute wait - by the time the park opened to the public, it was already two hours! But most other stuff was pretty much a walk-on or short wait. It should be even better the next couple days.

I got on-ride photos on PotC and HM using ISO 3200... we'll see how they look.

DL Hotel is very nice inside though a bit dull outside. I will definitely get some pics before leaving.

Gotta hit the parks again! May not get a chance to check in tonight (park open 'til 11pm which is 2am to our Eastern time zone minds) but tomorrow I'll probably be able to post a couple more photos.

 

[Groucho]

Afternoon break, both wife and son are asleep on the bed.

While they napped, I spent a couple minutes going through some of the photos... lots of tosses, a few keepers... part of the problem is dealing with a rather mediocre laptop screen, but what can you do.

Early entry yesterday really was pretty quiet... I don't think you usually see the castle area this empty!

Some on-ride photos of varying quality...

The Pirates one was ISO 3200, F1.4, and 1/25th of a second. I think that to get a decent result, you'd need at least one more stop (for a faster shutter) and a relatively low-noise ISO 3200 - something to think about for those who are hoping to get decent on-ride PotC photos without a flash! You better have a pretty amazing camera and pretty fast lens.

I've been trying to remember to use the fisheye lens, and have had some fun with it... here's a few. I'm not happy with the color of the Lightning McQueen shot, it was so bright out that in trying to reel in some of that, I lost a bunch of the color. Some more fiddling will probably take care of it... the unmodified photo has good color but lots of blown highlights in the background.

Got a bunch more "Remember... Dreams Come True" fireworks photos. Unfortunately, my memory card filled just before the finale. Oh well!

And, of course, saw this guy a few times...

Not much to report today. We got kind of a late start and headed to CA Adventure. Once the clan wakes up, we'll head for Disneyland for the remainder of the day, then maybe a little swimming.

 

[Gdad]

Very nice Groucho- especially the HM shot.

 

[AndrewWG]

I agree with the Gdad on the HM shot! VERY nice! I like the "hidden" Mickey in that shot too!

All the photos are great, as usual Groucho. Looks like you are having a great time!

Andy

 

[LMarge]

Very nice - LOVE the HM shot! Hope everyone is enjoying the trip and looking forward to seeing more great photos!

 

[Groucho]

Well, there would have been an update this morning but Disboards was down, so...

Thanks for the comments on the HM shot. That was kind of lucky, I got mostly tossers and one or two decents ones. That shot was ISO 3200, F1.8, and 1/30th of a second. Those are some tough conditions. But, ISO 3200 is certainly usable in extreme circumstances.

Well, we're all down in the parks now. We have one more night in DL Hotel (DVC Jen, I may not get much in the way of hotel photos, I'm sorry to say) and maybe a character breakfast in the morning, then back to the Burbank area for a couple days. I've determined that getting good photographs and having a fun Disney park trip when it's only two adults and one toddler can be a real challenge. But we all had a really good time, but not so many grown-up rides or chances to do interesting photos, unlike when there's another couple of adults with us, like on the first day here and our last two WDW trips.

On the other hand, I haven't gone through today's photos yet (about 370 of them!), but I think I actually got some pretty good PotC on-ride photos this time!

OK, here some pics I was going to post this morning...

I could go on and on about DL vs WDW's Magic Kingdom. Here's one that's a "tie" - the monorails. WDW's monorails feel smoother and are nicely air conditioned, and fit strollers better. The DL ones seem a little rougher, tighter inside, and strangest of all, they don't seem to have A/C - but they do have a more interesting ride through the park, unlike in WDW's where they don't even enter the park (except at Epcot). Back to the A/C - instead of it, the windows go down, unlike in WDW. Unfortunately, in the sweltering heat, it still made it pretty stuffy and unpleasant in there. The good part is that it's easier to get some photos without having to shoot through glass!

I practiced my panning...

...had more fisheye fun...

...revisited one of my favorite dark rides, no longer in Florida...

...and tried a little bit of night shooting w/o a tripod.

Yesterday afternoon, I really went braindead - I forgot my camera bag, but had my tripod and the fisheye and 28-75mm F2.8. That was fine - until I remembered that the quick-release plate for the tripod head was in the camera bag, I had just removed it before leaving! Argh!

Today, I decided to go different and intentionally left the bag behind. I brought along the fisheye, 28-75mm, and 50mm F1.4. I was able to cram two lenses into a single belt pouch, and used my new Tamron belt pouches to carry filters and batteries/memory cards, and jammed my remote shutter release in my pocket. It worked pretty well - I actually never used my 50-200mm even once since we got here. Maybe if I had a pretty nice telephoto prime or fast long zoom, I might have used it more, but by and large I didn't mind being limited to 75mm.

Oh, and did I mention that the new external DVD burner setup I'm trying to use has been a big failure? Weird errors and such. Fortunately, the free internet here at the DL Hotel is pretty darn fast, and I've just been using my web host's storage to backup all the RAWs.

More later...

 

[Groucho]

Here's a few from yesterday... first, an improved on-ride PotC photos. I have a few more, but white balance is really tricky in the bride auction area! I either get yellowed whites or I get pale pink reds. I need to play a little bit more, I guess. Anyway, I decided that the earlier shots were brighter than they needed to be (it's dark in there, so it's OK if the pics are dark), so I did -0.7 exposure compensation and set the ISO to 1600, that seemed to help.

...and here's a couple night photos with the tripod.

 

[0bli0]

Obli0, I've been looking at your siggy for a year or so now and it just now clicked what it says "upside down" - it's very cute - and my brain is running very slow these days!! (that 3rd child will get you every time!) It was truly a light bulb moment!! ROFL!!

- try 4 kids.... that's probably what lead me to dream up the sig in the first place...

 

[Gdad]

I completely agree with you on the WB in the POTC ride- completely threw me off using auto mode last time I was there. Even shooting raw and adjusting in PP they seemed all over the place.

 

[LMarge]

- try 4 kids.... that's probably what lead me to dream up the sig in the first place...

Thanks for understanding! My youngest starts preschool tomorrow - I'm not sure how I feel about that! A part of me wants to go dance in the streets with joy, while another part is really sad! I just hope he doesn't cry when we leave - that will kill me!! Anyway, I'm hoping for a happy send off, so I can happily head to Starbucks then home to play "alone" for a couple hours!!

By the way - your eldest son's eyes are amazing!!

Sorry Groucho - that was way off topic!!
Waiting for my next "vicarious" Disney experience!

 

[donaldduck1967]

Nics shots so far. But I do need to say that that is one ugly monorail.

 

[DVC Jen]

Wow it has been days since we got an update. Doesn't Groucho realize we are all sitting here waiting for his next installment? Where does he think he is? On vacation or something???

 

[senecabeach]

Wow it has been days since we got an update. Doesn't Groucho realize we are all sitting here waiting for his next installment? Where does he think he is? On vacation or something???

Me too...waiting patiently..

 

[Groucho]

I didn't get any comments on my last couple batches of photos (except for the one earlier today, and this is the first time I've been on since then) so I figured that no one was interested. Glad to hear there's still a few readers. I was really proud of the couple fisheye night shots I posted... (though the first might need a touch of rotation to straighten it.) I took a bunch of exposures of each so will probably HDR those.

I'm back safe and sound now to gray, rainy upstate NY - quite a change from southern CA where we saw just a couple very light clouds on one day! Since I've been losing my eternal battle with hard drive storage lately, I'm probably going to wait until the 500g drive I ordered Saturday arrives to start processing the photos in earnest.

The monorail is, in case it's not clear from those shots, painted to match the Nemo subs. I'm not sure, but I think that a couple of the monorails were painted that way, while another was still in the usual paint scheme.

My friend and I were able to go to the Universal Studios backlot on Friday, which was kind of interesting. We wandered around the soundstage buildings (but not actually in) and drove much of the route of the backlot tour, stopping and wandering a couple of the backlot shooting areas. (Yes, the bricks and stuff really are plastic, and a pretty flimsy-feeling plastic!) We stopped by the War of the World plane crash set but didn't wander it as the gap between tour busses was fairly short and we didn't want to disturb it for anyone on the tour. We also had to avoid a couple areas as they were actively filming Desperate Housewives and Ghost Whisperer. We then went in the park - and man, what a change from Disneyland! Exactly two rides (Mummy and Jurassic Park; Back to the Future is closed), a couple 3D movies, a couple walk-through attractions, a live show, and a backlot tour. Plus four big escalators to get from the stuff on top to the stuff down below. The stuff they did have was usually pretty good, but the park really suffers from a lack of both stuff to do and overall theming. A Flintstones food stand across from a Marvel comics store, both a couple shops down from Cinnabon? There's just no cohesiveness at all. Because we were backstage, cameras were not allowed, so I didn't have one when we were in the park, either, but I really don't think I missed much. If you're coming to Hollywood, don't feel bad if you skip Universal Studios.

Back to Disneyland, here's another couple shots that I processed on-trip but haven't posted yet... both fisheye shots, did I mention that I love that lens?

Big Thunder Mt Railroad, I forgot I was in a slow shutter priority but the motion blur kind of works for the shot, I think. Too much dynamic range, though.

From a shop in CA Adventure.

 

[Suburbanmom]

Thanks so much for the photos. I love the BTMR one. I'll be at Disneyland for the first time ever on Saturday. I hope I have a few good ones to share too. Thanks again!

 

[senecabeach]

Groucho...

Welcome Home !!

Thanks for all the time you took from your vacation to update us daily with "Great" pics !!
Yea...love those fisheye pics too !!

Looking forward to see more pics..