Slightly OT, but I promise I will get there!

[WVDisGeek]

OK, first the OT part. They opened free dining for December for everyone today (I think). DW is out of town on business so when I spot this on the boards, I call her. I can't access the Disney site at work (Darn IT guys!!).

Anyway, we have a trip booked for Early Dec to POR. My wife decides to see if with the money we would "save" with fFree dining if we could upgrade. Long story short, I talked her out of AKL-Savanah View, the end story is we are now staying at WL instead of POR and it only cost me $200 more (instead of saving me $400!).

OK, here comes the back on point part. We stayed at WL last December and it was our first time staying there. We watched the nightly water pagent on the lake. Last year, I only had my 18-250 with me at the time and it only stops down to f/3.5. Oh, and I was shooting hand held (tripod back in the room!). This year I have my 50 f/1.4 and my new snazzy Manfrotto just begging to be used.

Have any of you ever had luck getting good shots of the water parade and if so, how?

See how I brought it back around! Now aren't you glad you looked!

 

[ukcatfan]

I have never shot it, but I suspect that you would use similar settings to Spectro.

We got the free dining this morning as well!!! We are still at POR. Giving up my AAA discount, it is basically going to cost us $300 to feed five for seven days! Not going to have to question buying the expensive things on the menu and two deserts a day!!! (Can you tell I like eating???)

 

[WVDisGeek]

We are still at POR. Giving up my AAA discount, it is basically going to cost us $300 to feed five for seven days!

We gave up our AAA discount as well, but the free dining is much better. Trust me, I like to eat as well!

When are you going? We love POR, but couldn't pass up the chance to go to WL again.

I am hoping the 50 f/1.4 and the tripod will help. The only thing I am concerned about is the reach. I am afraid the 50 may be a little short.

 

[ukcatfan]

We get there the Saturday before Thanksgiving and stay for a week. I was worried because the 3-4 days over the holiday have been reported to others as blacked out for the free dining. All I can figure is that we are checking in early enough to get it.

My gut tells me that the 50mm will be fine because the boat display really is pretty wide. It might even be too tight. With a tripod, you might get away with a slower shutter and a zoom. The boats do not really move once in place and the lights are slow moving. It might take some timing, but I doubt you will get motion blur unless zoomed in close.

 

[oregondaddyof2]

We have a package booked for September 15-28th, and our dream was to go during December... I am a little upset that they opened up free dining now, cause it would cost me another $800 to change my airfare over to December dates... I guess we will just go in September this year and have fun... Besides, I have exactly 50 days till I leave, and if we changed, it would be like 150...

 

[ukcatfan]

We have a package booked for September 15-28th, and our dream was to go during December... I am a little upset that they opened up free dining now, cause it would cost me another $800 to change my airfare over to December dates... I guess we will just go in September this year and have fun... Besides, I have exactly 50 days till I leave, and if we changed, it would be like 150...

Go twice!!!

 

[WVDisGeek]

We have a package booked for September 15-28th, and our dream was to go during December... I am a little upset that they opened up free dining now, cause it would cost me another $800 to change my airfare over to December dates... I guess we will just go in September this year and have fun... Besides, I have exactly 50 days till I leave, and if we changed, it would be like 150...

This will make our third December trip. We like it because of the lower crowds, the (usually) lower temperature and the Christmas decorations.

The 130+ day wait right now seems awfully far away. Your 50 day wait seems MUCH better! We used to go in October, but with my job September/October is still one of my busier times wrapping up our company budget. I guess the 130 days will will have to work.

ukcatfan, sorry we will miss you by a few weeks. Would be nice to have another Pentaxian to shoot with in the parks!

 

[ukcatfan]

This will make our third December trip. We like it because of the lower crowds, the (usually) lower temperature and the Christmas decorations.

The 130+ day wait right now seems awfully far away. Your 50 day wait seems MUCH better! We used to go in October, but with my job September/October is still one of my busier times wrapping up our company budget. I guess the 130 days will will have to work.

ukcatfan, sorry we will miss you by a few weeks. Would be nice to have another Pentaxian to shoot with in the parks!

Shhhhh!!! This is my sanity check area. You are not allowed to use the "B" word! (I am an accountant)

Sorry we will miss you. We are mainly bound by school schedules. Thanksgiving is one of our favorite times. Thanksgiving Day and Friday are busy days, so it is best to take in the holiday specific stuff those days and not try too many attractions.

 

[WVDisGeek]

Sorry for the use of the "B" word! Not exactly my favorite time of the year either!

DW and I have discussed Thanksgiving as a possibilty. Are the Christmas decorations up at that time? We had friends that went over Thanksgiving a few years back and I can't remember if they were up before they left or not.

Does Disney do anything special for Thansgiving? I know they have the Christmas stuff and Halloween stuff, but I haven't heard too much about Thanskgiving.

 

[ukcatfan]

Sorry for the use of the "B" word! Not exactly my favorite time of the year either!

DW and I have discussed Thanksgiving as a possibilty. Are the Christmas decorations up at that time? We had friends that went over Thanksgiving a few years back and I can't remember if they were up before they left or not.

Does Disney do anything special for Thansgiving? I know they have the Christmas stuff and Halloween stuff, but I haven't heard too much about Thanskgiving.

Many of the restaurants have a special meal for Thanksgiving, but there is not much else specific to the holiday. It is the first official day of the holiday celebration though, so all the decorations and activities will be going on by then. Many decorations are up before then though.

 

[SC Mouse Fan]

I have never shot it, but I suspect that you would use similar settings to Spectro.

We got the free dining this morning as well!!! We are still at POR. Giving up my AAA discount, it is basically going to cost us $300 to feed five for seven days! Not going to have to question buying the expensive things on the menu and two deserts a day!!! (Can you tell I like eating???)

We got the free dining also. We only had a small 40% discount for one of the nights of our stay so this is saving us $1200.00 for the 4 of us. We are checking in Nov 20 and staying until Nov 29 at POR. I love to get discounts.

 

[alan]

I shot the water parade last month... I didn't even know that it existed, so I was delighted (it came out for us as we waited for a boat trip back to MK after the Hopp-de-Doo Revue).

Anyway, I haven't processed the pictures yet - expect to do so some time this week - but from a quick glance I reckoned that I did okay with my 24-105mm f/4.0 hand-held.

Of course, I wasn't able to show a panorama of all of the barges, but I was able to get fairly close in and show each one in turn.

As I say, I've not looked at the pictures in detail yet - it could be that they are all horribly camera-shakey! But I expect to be getting round to those pictures within a week, so I shall try to remember to post them here too.

regards,
/alan

 

[WVDisGeek]

As I say, I've not looked at the pictures in detail yet - it could be that they are all horribly camera-shakey! But I expect to be getting round to those pictures within a week, so I shall try to remember to post them here too.

regards,
/alan

I will be very interested to see how they came out.

I have been thinking about this and this time, I will at least take the monopod, if not the tripod and in addition to the 50, I will take my 28 f/2.8. Hopefully, these will allow some keeper shots.

 

[ukcatfan]

We got the free dining also. We only had a small 40% discount for one of the nights of our stay so this is saving us $1200.00 for the 4 of us. We are checking in Nov 20 and staying until Nov 29 at POR. I love to get discounts.

You get there a day before us and stay a day longer. We have to stay at POR because we are a party of five. We like there anyway though

 

[SC Mouse Fan]

You get there a day before us and stay a day longer. We have to stay at POR because we are a party of five. We like there anyway though

POR is where we stay most of the time too. There are only 4 of us but since my boys are 17 and 21, we get two conecting rooms. We are all just too big to fit in double beds together. Just 3 weeks until we can make ADR's.

To keep this photo related, I hope I can get some better picture this trip. I am a little more experienced since my last trip 2 yrs ago and look forward to trying the 50mm 108 on some of the dark rides. I won't see the water parade but will try some pics of Spectro again. Last time many of mine from Spectro were blurry. I think the high ISO on the Nikon D90 will help too. Last time I had a D40.

 

[alan]

Okay, here goes. This was what I got on 06-Jul this year.

The equipment was a Canon 350D (Rebel XT) with 24-105mm f/4.0 lens. 1600ISO, generally near the longer end of the lens (the EXIF is intact). Hand-held at 1/20s, f/4.0 manual settings.

Postprocesing is:

• Lightroom for colour balance, rotation and crop. also, generally, boost exposure by about 0.6EV and increase "Blacks" to 12 - enhances the contrast
• Neat Image for noise reduction (run in batch)
• Resize to 1024 pixels on the long side
• Apply 100/1/0 unsharp mask

The final two sections are done in Paint Shop Pro in a home-made PSPScript script.

I generally shot in burst mode, so I'd have three of each picture. My keeper ratio was about 66%, in as much as I'd be happy with at least one shot in 66% of these bursts.

The shots were taken from the end of the pier at Fort Wilderness resort. I could have done with a longer lens for some of them.

Enough waffle. Here are some pictures

















We took the water taxi to Magic Kingdom after this, and were lucky enough to see Wishes as we crossed the lagoon. I'll put this all into a trip report, though, and I shall "announce" it on this board, if that doesn't sound too full of myself

Comments welcomed

regards,
/alan

 

[WVDisGeek]

Okay, here goes. This was what I got on 06-Jul this year.




We took the water taxi to Magic Kingdom after this, and were lucky enough to see Wishes as we crossed the lagoon. I'll put this all into a trip report, though, and I shall "announce" it on this board, if that doesn't sound too full of myself

Thank you! These two are my favorites. I hope to be able to get similar results in December. Thanks for sharing!