My Trip to the World

[CapeCodTenor]

Afternoon, everyone!

Hope this finds everyone well. I've been back from Disney World for just over two weeks now, and I have to say that I had a blast. Won't get into all the details because this isn't the board for that, however, I will talk about my photographic adventure while down there. Don't worry, I won't go into extreme detail as I'm not much of a writer. Well, let's get into it, shall we?

1) I wound up not using aperture priority mode. I tried it and didn't like it. The times I used aperture priority the shutter speed wound up being too long, so I went back to full manual mode. And yes, I did play with the settings to get a high shutter speed (always concerned about camera shake), but this is something that I really should have played with before heading down to Disney World. Lesson learned. As for manual mode, I've gotten pretty good with my camera and know where all the buttons and dials are, so I can change things pretty quickly when needed, so shooting in manual mode didn't slow me down too much. I also have a few "go to" settings for certain scenes, so couple that with my quick knowledge of where everything is on the camera and I can get some quick photos. Now, I'm not going to sit here and say that I didn't have a few moments of fishing for the right settings to get the right shot, but those moments were few. Those moments where I had to fish for the right settings were scenes with high contrast. Scenes where I wanted to photograph what was in the shadows as well as what was in the bright light.

2) Did I use one of the partial modes? Yes I did. I think I've mentioned this in a previous post, but I shoot a lot of theatrical photography, from high school productions to local theater companies, I'm working on getting a professional ballet gig. Well, all this experience in theater photography helped when we went to see The Festival of the Lion King in Animal Kingdom. I was able to slip into theater mode and took, what I think, are some good photos of the show. Now, I will say that this was a bit difficult because how the theater was set up and the lighting, but I thought the pictures came out pretty good.

3) Shooting in manual mode didn't mean slowing the family down. I thought I was going to annoy the family by slowing them down for pictures, either of them or of things around me, but thankfully they get me and weren't annoyed.

4) Just how many pictures did I take? Well, not as many as I thought as I would. I had envisioned me taking 1000+ photos, it was my first time down in 22 years, after all, but I didn't. I wound up taking around 570 pictures, only 17 in the Magic Kingdom. I know, that's kind of paltry, but I was having so much fun being back in the park. I could have easily taken more photos, but I didn't want to live my vacation through my camera.

5) Photo examples: I'm still working on editing photos, but here are a few.

Magic Kingdom






Animal Kingdom

 

[MarkBarbieri]

The times I used aperture priority the shutter speed wound up being too long, so I went back to full manual mode.

I don't understand what you mean by this. Let's say your ISO is set to 400. You're in aperture priority mode. You set your aperture to f/8. The camera sets your shutter speed to 1/15s, which you feel is too low. You switch to manual mode. Now what happens? If you adjust your shutter speed by two stops to 1/60s but leave your aperture and ISO alone, your camera's meter will indicate that your picture will be underexposed by 2 stops. You can adjust your ISO or your aperture to compensate, but you already had those options in aperture priority mode. I don't understand how shooting in manual helps you here.

 

[CapeCodTenor]

I don't understand what you mean by this. Let's say your ISO is set to 400. You're in aperture priority mode. You set your aperture to f/8. The camera sets your shutter speed to 1/15s, which you feel is too low. You switch to manual mode. Now what happens? If you adjust your shutter speed by two stops to 1/60s but leave your aperture and ISO alone, your camera's meter will indicate that your picture will be underexposed by 2 stops. You can adjust your ISO or your aperture to compensate, but you already had those options in aperture priority mode. I don't understand how shooting in manual helps you here.

@MarkBarbieri thanks for your reply. I know I'm quite late in replying, so I do apologize. Basically I was being stupid and didn't think about altering my ISO to compensate. I forget things in my photography all the time and it's annoying. I'm going to have another chance at this come January when I head down for a solo trip.