Only one more day to go - trip report now complete

[Mckymousefn]

Thanks... something to check out.

 

[Groucho]

Groucho.. i was wondering how you get your own personal copyright on your pictures. I mean, how do you make it and put it on the picture.. Photoshop?

Actually, I created the watermark itself offline (it's just a transparent PNG file, pretty much any image creation program can make one) and my web gallery adds it. When I upload photos, I can choose whether or not to add the watermark, and can even choose between different ones. I only use the one style, which I tried to make pretty unobtrusive as I find large watermarks... "distracting" is the nice way of saying it, I guess. Mine could probably still be a little less obvious but I just haven't gotten around to tweaking it further.

My web gallery is Gallery by Menalto. It's just a web script that you put on your own web page, not an image hosting service like SmugMug, Photobucket, Flickr, etc.

 

[Groucho]

Here's a few more mildly adjusted photos, then I'll continue the trip report later.

Here's the new DVC add-on at the Contemporary.

 

[LMarge]

Beautiful work Groucho - I really love the one of the carrousel behind the castle!

 

[WVDisGeek]

Awesome pictures and great trip report. The pictures are inspiring me.
I just ordered a new K200D w/ the kit lens and an 18-250 as a "walk around" lens. It gets here Tuesday and I can't wait!

What lens were you shooting in the HM shots? Those types of low light shots are one of the main reasons I am buying a DSLR. You are the man!

Can't wait for the rest of the trip report and some more shots!

 

[Groucho]

Awesome pictures and great trip report. The pictures are inspiring me.
I just ordered a new K200D w/ the kit lens and an 18-250 as a "walk around" lens. It gets here Tuesday and I can't wait!

What lens were you shooting in the HM shots? Those types of low light shots are one of the main reasons I am buying a DSLR. You are the man!

Can't wait for the rest of the trip report and some more shots!

Thanks! Congrats on the K200D, I'm sure you'll love it! I see it got just an Editor's Choice award from Digital Camera Review. The shots inside HM were either taken with the 50mm F1.4 (a terrific lens which is extremely fast and a steal at only $200) and the 31mm F1.8 (which has been called the best autofocus lens ever and has a price tag to match, yikes) - the 50mm is a half-stop faster than the 31mm but sometimes you want the wider prospective of the 31mm. Other options for wider lenses are the Pentax 35mm F2.0 and the Sigma 30mm F1.4. The kit lens and the 18-250mm just won't cut it for doing on-ride photos in the dark rides like Haunted Mansion.

 

[Groucho]

Continuing the trip report...

Day six had us taking our time getting up and walking over to Epcot. We wandered in to the Int'l Gateway at maybe 10 or so and ended up in the Never Land play area, where Jack worked off some energy while I took photos. We stopped into Innoventions and visited a few of the displays - which we rarely do, but I was trying to hunt down the 25th anniversary display area so we had to stop a few times along the way for Jack. Usually I never bother looking at these. We played a "built a pizza" game and did the new Waste Management game, which is actually more fun than you might expect, with a few different games you play that push the reduce, reuse, recycle idea. Jack liked it a lot as he got to push around a wagon-sized Waste Management truck to each station!

While we were in the neighborhood, we rode Spaceship Earth for the second time - I don't think I mentioned, but we rode it near the end of our first Epcot day and Jack hit the Deutsche button on the LCD screen in front, so all our narration was in German! My high school German is a little rusty so it was hard to follow - this time we made sure to hit English before he could reach it. The updated ride is fine although I do feel that the Wozniak scene is kind of shoehorned in, similar to the way there's now a quick shot of the Macintosh introduction in the American Adventure - I smell the hand of Steve Jobs via Pixar getting a little megalomaniacal with our attractions! On the other hand, I'm willing to put up with the scene if they agree to never put that darn wand back on the ball. Spaceship Earth looks sooooooooo much better now!

Anyway, there were lines for most of the postride activities so we left and stopped into the Art of Disney store - I love those places. After some browsing, we hunted around Innoventions some more and found the 25th anniversary display - fun though I think it could have had a little more in terms of actual objects on display. It was fun to see one of the robots from the well-loved Horizons ride, and I said "I have that!" when I saw the record album.

I grabbed fastpasses for Soarin', and we were getting pretty hungry now and after having checked menus online before we left, we had decided to try the Lotus Blossom Cafe in China. I'm generally a "meat and potatoes" guy but that have a beef sandwich that sounded good. It actually turned out to be quite good indeed, a little heavy on the onions but the bread was delicious! We then explored the rest of China (including hunting down the elusive rat F&GF display, thanks for the heads-up, ukcatfan!) and worked our way through World Showcase. We did spend extra time in Japan (again) and this time, accomplished one of our big goals for the trip - we were able to get Miyuki (the Japanese candy artist) to make a candy crocodile for Jack! Very good. Already the tip of the tail broke off, but by and large, it's surviving OK - although Jack wants to eat it instead of just look at it!

We were able to also hightail it to Canada to see most of Off Kilter, but Jack was fairly tired at this point and mostly sat quiet instead of dancing like he had last trip. He did find a similar-age girl to run around in front of the stage with though!

We headed back to Future World to get our Soarin' ride in before Future World closed. This was more for Jack than anyone else - I find the ride insanely overrated, it feels fairly dull and uninspired to me. I do know that many people love it, but I just don't understand it. I'm happy to skip it most of the time. We did skip it on the last DL trip (though we have ridden it there in the past) even though it probably had very little line.

At this point, we were extremely starved and went hunting for a pretzel, even though we were only a little over an hour from our dinner. We found one then had time to hit the updated ride in Mexico, which was, as expected, about as exciting as watching paint dry. It's no surprise that it was a total walk-on.

I had hoped to get to Norway and ride Maelstrom again, but we just didn't have time - our Le Cellier reservations were for 8:40 so we had to boogie over there. This also meant to chance of seeing Illuminations. Anyway, it was very good as always but I was feeling just sick enough to not be able to enjoy it properly.

We headed back, packed up our luggage, and passed out for the last time in our room... only one day left!

 

[Gdad]

Okay- good thing the Magic Kingdom closed early tonight- this is enough to make me drive two hours over there and buy this.

 

[DebºoºS]

Thanks for the trip report and pics. You'e amazingingly creative. Each shot is beautiful and unique. The POC shot is one of my fav thus far. Taken @ 2:20am and there's a wheelchair parked outside. Luv it!

I'm leaving in a few hours for the airport. That cherry turnover looks sooo good. It's beckoning me

 

[WVDisGeek]

Thanks! Congrats on the K200D, I'm sure you'll love it! I see it got just an Editor's Choice award from Digital Camera Review. The shots inside HM were either taken with the 50mm F1.4 (a terrific lens which is extremely fast and a steal at only $200) and the 31mm F1.8 (which has been called the best autofocus lens ever and has a price tag to match, yikes) - the 50mm is a half-stop faster than the 31mm but sometimes you want the wider prospective of the 31mm. Other options for wider lenses are the Pentax 35mm F2.0 and the Sigma 30mm F1.4. The kit lens and the 18-250mm just won't cut it for doing on-ride photos in the dark rides like Haunted Mansion.

I have an old Pentax 50mm f/2 from my film days. I know it won't be as wide as the 31mm, but do you think it will be fast enough for the dark rides?
I appreciate all the help for a newbie!

 

[Groucho]

Thanks for the trip report and pics. You'e amazingingly creative. Each shot is beautiful and unique. The POC shot is one of my fav thus far. Taken @ 2:20am and there's a wheelchair parked outside. Luv it!

I'm leaving in a few hours for the airport. That cherry turnover looks sooo good. It's beckoning me

Don't resist it, they are superb. BTW, the PotC shot was actually 1:22am. I would have ridden it but I was running out of time for some of the other night photos I wanted to take. (I still didn't get nearly all of them done.) Thanks for the compliments!

I'm going to pause from the trip report here and do a few observations and "lessons learned" from the trip.
I think that on your first trip with a new DSLR, you're always going to learn things that you didn't know beforehand. I certainly knew my camera a lot better in the last half of the trip than the first. Now that I'm starting to look at some of the photos in Lightroom, I'm seeing things that I could have/should have done differently. For example, for most of the shots, I left the expanded dynamic range turned on, which slightly increases shadow noise. So far it isn't a serious issue but there are some times where there the extra noise is noticeable on a 100% crop level, even if it's probably invisible when viewed at a normal normal size or on a print. But if I were doing it again, I leave it off except when needed. (I think the same is true for most/all of the current expand-DR functions on newer DSLRs - otherwise it would just be on, period.)

I found myself using my 31mm F1.8 much more than my 50mm F1.4. This was not a slight against the superb 50mm, but just that it was more useful to shoot wide than narrower, so I chose the wider of two great lenses. There were exceptions, and I wouldn't leave behind the 50mm (especially as it's pretty small and light), but for someone on a non-Pentax system considering their first fast prime and wanting something better than the <$100 cheapies, the Sigma 30mm should probably get some serious consideration vs their OEM's 50mm.

I also found myself using my manual-focus 105mm macro more than expected. There are definitely times where it's too long, but it's surprising the number of times that it worked very well, especially for merchandise photos, where the 30mm is just too wide and the 50mm is often good but can't focus close enough for smaller items. Lack of autofocus was generally not too big of an issue.

In fact, I often found myself really enjoying myself and appreciating the 31mm, the 105mm, and the 10-17mm. I think that any of the three would be a great challenge (and a lot of fun) to use exclusively for a while, and often once I mounted one, I'd use it longer than expected. Yet, I still changed lenses countless times depending on the circumstances.

My 28-75mm F2.8 was very rarely used. It was too long for close photos (leaving me to use either the fisheye at 17mm or borrow the 18-55mm K100D kit lens) and at the lens' wide end, I used the 31mm instead and at the long end, used the 50-135mm instead.

Speaking of which... I'm very happy with my decision to go with the 50-135mm F2.8 rather than a 70-200mm F2.8. The smaller size and much lighter weight meant that it was no issue at all leaving it on the camera and hanging from the next strap regularly. Furthermore, I think the extra range of 50-70mm is much more useful than the lost 135-200mm, which you can generally get back via cropping. Starting at 70mm is just too long for many situations IMHO and may really limit the lens' day-to-day usefulness. The 50-135mm was a very useful range (as it should be, being basically the same range as the classic 70-200mm on a 35mm camera) and a very nice level of quality - comparing the feel of the zoom ring to the one on the Tamron is like comparing a Mercedes to a Kia. And the optical quality is certainly very nice, and it sports 9 aperture blades, which I like a lot.

Plus, there's the whole weathersealing issue!

It actually got much wetter than that (this was at the beginning of the rain) and it was great to be able to leave it out in the rain or use it on Splash Mt with no fear of damaging the camera or lens, and this would be similarly handy in dusty environments, at the beach, or any other potentially nasty environments.

Based on this, I'm quite sure than I'll be selling the Tamron 28-75mm F2.8 and replacing it with the Pentax 16-50mm F2.8 (once my wallet has recovered from the trip and the 50-135!), which will give me a wide weathersealed lens and a lot more width than the Tamron, and 2mm more width than the kit lens, to boot. This will probably mean that I'll use the 31mm a little less, for when I want the ultimate image quality or need the low-light ability.

Finally, I'm very happy with the K20D overall. It definitely feels a lot more advanced than the K100D and is quicker to use, and the extra external controls make a really big difference. It's great to be able to switch metering, AF.S/AF.C/MF, AF points, etc without using going into any menus, the backlit LCD is great, and feel is great, the larger brighter viewfinder is great... It's just a great camera and rarely if ever left me wanting more. (OK, maybe better focusing in Haunted Mansion and Pirates but everything struggles there! )

Gotta go eat breakfast and enjoy our last day in Cape Coral. Then it's home tomorrow and the arduous task of processing all the photos properly. Yikes!

 

[Groucho]

I have an old Pentax 50mm f/2 from my film days. I know it won't be as wide as the 31mm, but do you think it will be fast enough for the dark rides?
I appreciate all the help for a newbie!

It will be a lot better than the kit lens certainly, and really not much different than the F1.8 of the 31mm. The manual focus may be slightly tricky but I didn't find it to be as bad as I feared - usually you're pretty close to infinity anyway. Quality-wise, nearly all the Pentax 50mm are superb, so you should get very good image quality in general. I'd keep it handy for any time you want indoor or small DoF shots.

 

[allie5]

Just wanted to say how much Ive enjoyed reading your report and your pics. The 3 above stand out for me, and if you have the time in the future, Id be really interested in the EXIF for those .

Ive never thought Id want a fisheye - but now I crave one! Superbly creative shots!


Thanks for taking the time to post these and your report.

 

[ukcatfan]

I have an old Pentax 50mm f/2 from my film days. I know it won't be as wide as the 31mm, but do you think it will be fast enough for the dark rides?
I appreciate all the help for a newbie!

These were taken with the SMC-A 50mm f/2. Not the greatest, but it is capable.

 

[Groucho]

Just wanted to say how much Ive enjoyed reading your report and your pics. The 3 above stand out for me, and if you have the time in the future, Id be really interested in the EXIF for those .

Ive never thought Id want a fisheye - but now I crave one! Superbly creative shots!

Thanks! The photos all still have their exif data attached. If using Firefox (and if you're not, you should be ), grab the Fxif add-on. For IE, there's Opanda Exif.

For those specific ones:
Crystal Palace: 10mm, 1/250s, F4.5, ISO 100.
Contemporary: 10mm, 20s, F9.5, ISO 200.
Tomorrowland: 10mm, 15s, F9.5, ISO 200. (These two are ISO 200 as that's the lowest you can use when you have the expanded dynamic range turned on.)

These were taken with the SMC-A 50mm f/2. Not the greatest, but it is capable.

Those actually are better than many of the ones that I got. Based on what I've seen in the past and what I've found on my last trip, manual focus on the dark rides may not be as much of a handicap as I had thought. At the very least, you'll get some shot, without the camera wasting any time whatsoever looking for focus itself.

 

[DVC Jen]

Here's a few more mildly adjusted photos, then I'll continue the trip report later.

Here's the new DVC add-on at the Contemporary.

OK i LOVE these - especially the fish eye. The first one is amazing.

 

[handicap18]

Don't resist it, they are superb. I found myself using my 31mm F1.8 much more than my 50mm F1.4. This was not a slight against the superb 50mm, but just that it was more useful to shoot wide than narrower, so I chose the wider of two great lenses. There were exceptions, and I wouldn't leave behind the 50mm (especially as it's pretty small and light), but for someone on a non-Pentax system considering their first fast prime and wanting something better than the <$100 cheapies, the Sigma 30mm should probably get some serious consideration vs their OEM's 50mm.

I agree with you on the 31/30mm lens. My Sigma 30mm f/1.4 saved my butt big time on our last trip. Overall I ended up taking over 1,000 images at this focal lenght. Which is about 1/3 of the total images I took.

It is the digital equilivent of the 50mm lens. General purpose with excellent IQ.

Speaking of which... I'm very happy with my decision to go with the 50-135mm F2.8 rather than a 70-200mm F2.8. The smaller size and much lighter weight meant that it was no issue at all leaving it on the camera and hanging from the next strap regularly. Furthermore, I think the extra range of 50-70mm is much more useful than the lost 135-200mm, which you can generally get back via cropping. Starting at 70mm is just too long for many situations IMHO and may really limit the lens' day-to-day usefulness. The 50-135mm was a very useful range (as it should be, being basically the same range as the classic 70-200mm on a 35mm camera) and a very nice level of quality - comparing the feel of the zoom ring to the one on the Tamron is like comparing a Mercedes to a Kia. And the optical quality is certainly very nice, and it sports 9 aperture blades, which I like a lot.

This is excellent information. Even though the 50-135mm f/2.8 is a Pentax lens, Sigma makes a 50-150mm f/2.8 that has gotten excellent reviews. Its less expensive than the 70-200mm f/2.8's.

Your experience with your 50-135mm will put the 50-150 on my radar screen now. Definately something to seriously consider over the 70-200's for price considerations.

Thanks again for the report. Wonderful job and once again, outstanding photography!!

 

[ukcatfan]

Groucho, your PM box is full. Call me on my cell if you can.

 

[Groucho]

This is excellent information. Even though the 50-135mm f/2.8 is a Pentax lens, Sigma makes a 50-150mm f/2.8 that has gotten excellent reviews. Its less expensive than the 70-200mm f/2.8's.

Your experience with your 50-135mm will put the 50-150 on my radar screen now. Definately something to seriously consider over the 70-200's for price considerations.

Tokina's 50-135mm is the same optical formula as the Pentax, though in a different mount (including adding a tripod mount, which the Pentax doesn't have and I think really doesn't need). I'm not sure how the Sigma compares, but I have seen one or two reviews of the Tokina and it's well reviewed.

Thanks again for the report. Wonderful job and once again, outstanding photography!!

Thanks! (And thanks to everyone else, too.) Lots more once I start processing them properly soon.

ukcatfan, I'll clear out some PMs and give you a call. I think our running around is mostly over so maybe tonight may be the best time to meet up.

 

[WVDisGeek]

These were taken with the SMC-A 50mm f/2. Not the greatest, but it is capable.

Those look pretty good to me! Certainly much better than anything I would have been able to get with my P&S. I checked online, and my K200D is going to be here a day early! I can't wait to start experimenting! Now I just have to practice my manual focusing. I guess this is one time I am (somewhat) glad we have some time before our next trip to become more proficient.

Thanks for all the tips guys! I do appreciate it!