On my way back from Star Wars, Electrical Parade, and Nightastic

[Groucho]

ARGHHHHHHHHHHH excuse me for a moment while I break the laptop in half. I accidentally hit the back button, then hit forward again and didn't realize that my login had timed out, and lost about 15 minutes of entering a message. grumblegrumblegrumble

Anyway. I suppose that fits the rest of today. We had to get on the Magical Express bus at 8:15am for an 11:25 flight... which has now been delayed by an hour and twenty minutes... and the rain is coming down sideways outside so who knows if there'll be more delays. Oh, and my web host, which started having serious issues before we left, still doesn't have my web site functional. Not happy!

Anyway... the good news is that the rest of the trip was quite good. SWW was great. Hyperspace Hoopla was hilarious but the crowd control was not great. It was great to see MSEP on Main Street again. The Nightastic fireworks were great, and I even got to see them from Splash Mountain last night. The kids were mostly good (Jack suffered from the usual Disney deafness and Leila did a good amount of crying on the flight down and is preparing herself for screaming her head off on the flight home)... weather was pretty good but hot... and photos? How does over 1,600 sound... on first day! The rest of the days were way less, but I think I kept up the Groucho tradition of photos that may not be the best but are certainly ones that you haven't seen before!

Looks like our flight has finally arrived so it's time to get ready to board... more later!

 

[annnewjerz]

Have a safe trip home! I'll be anxiously awaiting a post with pictures from the trip---sounds like you guys had a great time.

 

[Groucho]

Thanks Ann! Yep, I'm definitely glad that we went. Even though this was one of our more expensive trips... we went a little nuts on souvenirs, much more so than usual. I did pick up a lightsaber and kept it on my belt whenever we were at Hollywood Studios!

Back home now... about 95 minutes late. Oh well, at least we made it... and I was even able to keep Leila fairly calm! Only 2-3 minutes of hysterical crying.

Now, to start copying the, oh, 50+ gigs of pics and video to my main PC, and start tagging... and processing... or maybe just relaxing on the couch, going to bed early, then starting the real work tomorrow.

 

[RBennett]

Congrats and welcome home!! WOW!!! 50+GIG??!!!! I don't want to know how much storage you have at home!! Can't wait to see 'em!

 

[Daisy14'sDH]

Awesomw! I cant wait to view your always impressive photos!

 

[Groucho]

Congrats and welcome home!! WOW!!! 50+GIG??!!!! I don't want to know how much storage you have at home!! Can't wait to see 'em!

Well, some of that is videos... and the K-7 takes fairly large (and quite nice!) videos. (And storage? Well, I did recently add a new drive to my main PC - I had to in order to get back to scanning photos as those take up insane amounts of space - like ~130 megs per picture!) The current setup is 160gb + 640gb + 750gb + 2tb. I've got most of the raws backed up on Mozy... once it finishes these new pics, that'll put me at over 600 gb backed up with them! I'm getting my money's worth in terms of my "unlimited" storage with them.

The total on pictures (well, pics and videos):
Day 1 (late night at Downtown Disney): 107
Day 2 (all day at Star Wars Weekends): 1,624 (!!!)
Day 3 (Chef Mickey's then Magic Kingdom including MSEP and Nightastic): 915
Day 4 (late start, SWW then back to Magic Kingdom): 252

I've got my work cut out for me. There are definitely a few I'm eager to share, though, including a few that I can almost guarantee that no one else has.

 

[DznyFan]

can't wait to see the pics!

 

[WillowBelle]

HOLY COW that's a lot of pictures. I can't wait to see them processed!!!

 

[Groucho]

Oh, and one last note before I head to bed - I realized on the third day that I had never changed the clock in my camera since daylight savings time! Thank goodness for Exiftool, which makes it fairly trivial to correct that... but I also have to go through and change all my pics from the past couple months, too. Remember - change the clocks in your cameras as well as the one on your nightstand on daylight savings! I'm sure that someday we'll have wifi-enabled cameras that can automatically sync to an internet time server... but we're not there yet.

 

[Gianna'sPapa]

Welcome back! I can't wait to see you images. Tomorrow we start on the first leg (overnite stay in Milwaukee) and then to WDW on Wednesday for ten days! This is what we are taking plus two P & S' and a video camera. (taken with cell phone )

 

[Groucho]

Looks good! You've got some big lenses there - is that a Sigma 70-200?

 

[Gianna'sPapa]

Yes, there is a Sigma 70-200 and a Sigma 100-300 f4. On the right side camera (mine) is a Sigma 28-70 f2.8. next to that is a Pentax M50 f1.4 and a DA 18-55 AL. On my DW's is the DA 18-55 AL II and next to that is the DA 50-200. Being the mule I carry the heavy stuff.

 

[WDWFigment]

Hurry up and get the pictures posted. I need to...uhhh...borrow...some of your unique shot ideas before I leave on Sunday!

 

[zackiedawg]

Didn't see you there - I was looking for a red KX on anyone, but never saw one! Our day 1 and day 4 overlapped...I too was at Downtown Disney all night the first day, and MK all day the last day. Day 2 for me was AK, and day 3 was Epcot.

That's a serious load of shots. My whole trip I took 650 shots...and 120 of those were at the MSEP. I did much night shooting - when the sun wasn't trying to bake me! Though it wasn't much cooler at night either.

 

[Groucho]

Gianna'sPapa: You have the quite the taste for big Sigma glass. I went relatively lightweight this trip... I only took the 10-17mm, 16-50mm, 50-150mm, 31mm, 50mm F1.4 (never used), and the LensBaby. I really wanted to bring the huge old 300mm F4 but just couldn't handle the idea of lugging it around in the heat! I also looked longingly at the 105mm macro but barely used it last trip in 11 days and it's pretty heavy... I worked it so that when I did go back into the parks solo, I could fit the lenses I wanted in my belt lens pouch and in the pockets of my cargo shorts and not need a camera bag, just the tripod. My wife also brought the "kit" 50-200mm for her K-x but never used it.

I did one night of shooting until about 2am... but that's not big quantity-wise.

WDWFigment: I'll try to get a few but no guarantees.

zackiedawg: We definitely weren't the other red K-x there... I saw at least one other, and we were behind someone with a white K-x at Hyperspace Hoopla. My wife didn't have hers out all the time though... but most of the time. I don't think I saw anyone else with an R-Strap, so I suspect that we would be easy to spot - two R-Straps, two Pentaxes (one red), my blue Subaru bucket hat, and pushing a new orange Joovy stroller (which was worth every penny!!!) I'm sure that we were quite the fashion plates.

I did one night of night shooting, until 2am on Friday night. I had planned to do Sunday as well but an 8:15 M.E. pickup kind of killed that idea, after getting little sleep any of the nights! And even at 2am, it was still hot enough to keep me sweating!

The high quantity of photos were due in a large part to Star Wars Weekends... I got a zillion photos during the parade and some of the other Star Wars stuff. The big number on the next day was MSEP and Nightastic - I'm going to have to do some serious cropping as I was zoomed way out to make sure to catch the perimeter fireworks. Plus, someone bumped my tripod early on so not only was it crooked, but it cut off the little bit of crowd that I had in the foreground, so I won't have much room for straightening. Oh, the things we go through.

I've got no new WDW pics online yet but I did get pics online from the Rochester airport... they recently (since our last trip in January) added a kid's play area, which was a very good diversion for Jack and Leila, especially when our flight was delayed an hour. I wish there was something like that in Orlando, what with the early Magical Express drop-off plus delays.

 

[Groucho]

The first evening is done and first full day's photos are tagged (all 1,618 of 'em!) - it's relatively easy to tag when most are parade or show pictures!

Checking in at Pop...

We went straight out for dinner.

I got the chicken pot pie again, which was even fluffier on top than before. Very good!

Apparently one of the dinosaurs attempted to eat Jack. (The kids is bonkers!)

 

[Golf4food]

Keep 'em coming. Always fun to see your photos / reports.

Sadly, I only took 1,849 photos in four days last month. Granted, I left the camera in the car (on purpose! gasp!) on our last half day after breakfast - my back hurt and it is nice to spend some park time sans camera to just enjoy the park without trying to line up shots (though it still happens in your head...). It was as much for my DW as anything.

 

[Groucho]

Left the camera behind? Perish the thought! I have nightmares about that!

1,849 is a pretty darn big number, too!

Now, I'm heading back to Lightroom to make a dent in mine...

 

[NYY2SMP]

Groucho I have a question for you. Where can you buy a pentax dslr from besides from their website?

 

[Groucho]

Pentax has chosen to focus on online sales so they don't have as much of a presence in brick & mortar stores, but they are available from almost all online camera retailers - Amazon, B&H, Adorama, Beach, Buydig, NewEgg, Abe's, etc, etc.