Two weeks to go... I think I'm ready!

[jann1033]

hey i know i posted a hysterically funny comment yesterday but it must have been deleted..or i put it the wrong place thread where it will make no sense at all ...i would like to know where picture # 2 was taken?

 

[DueyDooDah]

Well, I'm here... if there's a moral to this trip so far, it is: do not get sick just before leaving for WDW!

My DW and I always start taking Airborne about 2 weeks prior to leaving for any trip or when we feel something coming on. Works every time. Been doing it since it came out. Good stuff.

 

[Groucho]

Just got back from a long day of MK ending with dinner at Raglan Rd over at Downtown Disney... another, oh, 250 or so pics? Haven't checked yet. (My procedure has generally been to unload the pics off the memory cards then let the RAWs be processed overnight - it takes a long time with a couple hundred of them!) Good news is that health-wise, I feel just fine, besides the usual tired feeling after a full Disney day. The son's rash was also almost gone when I put the ointment on, so we dodged that bullet. Bad news is that one of my sister-in-laws started feeling very queasy after lunch (she blames the tuna at Columbia Harbor House - I had tuna as well and think it's excellent) and felt so sick that she got her dinner to go, even though it was the one she was most looking forward to. That was kind of a bummer, plus a few of us managed to get on each other's nerves a couple times... but that's hard to avoid in such a high-action trip as WDW.

Overall, though. a good day. I was even pleased that, after not definitively identifying any before, today I was positive of at least three Pentax DSLR sightings... a DS, a K100D, and I didn't get a good look at the other. Glad to see them out there.

hey i know i posted a hysterically funny comment yesterday but it must have been deleted..or i put it the wrong place thread where it will make no sense at all ...i would like to know where picture # 2 was taken?

I'm guessing you mean the one that was taken on a regular ol' WDW bus... I noticed that I happened to be sitting in a good location and it wasn't too crowded, so I rigged up the Clamperpod to the railing tight as I could, secured the camera, hooked up the Tic-Tac remote shutter, and shot off a bunch of photos as cars went by the other way or as we followed other buses. I thought it was kind of interesting... hardly high art, but definitely something I haven't seen done before!

Would you do anything differently next time in re: to your equipment?

Good question... not sure on the answer yet. I haven't put the 400mm on the camera yet. I'm kind of figuring that it'll go with me tomorrow to AK but probably won't see much use (honestly, probably none.) I could see leaving that behind the next trip.

I think I've shot more with the 50mm 1.4 than any other lens. It's a pretty good distance for most shots, and the speed helps in the dark and with short-DoF photos. The 18-55mm goes on when I need something wider and the 50-200mm when I need something longer (not very often) and the Zenitar can be a real champ for wide shots, and is faster than the kit lens. The Sigma 28mm sees very little use due to its manual focus (often no time for that here) but it's handy to have around, and it's so light and small that I can't really see leaving it behind.

I'm glad I brought along the film camera - I did a few fisheye Tomorrowland shots today that I'm looking forward to. I finished off a color roll and put in a B/W so I need to start using it for that. Overall, it hasn't gotten a lot of use, but it's not very heavy and usually sits on the bottom of one of the bag's compartments with a body cap, not taking up much space.

We borrowed my father's Sony miniDV camcorder - small but fairly heavy. Like last trip, it's going almost completely unused - unfortunately my wife hasn't been using the movie mode on herSD600 very often, so we're just not getting much video. I tossed it in the camera bag this morning, I think I forced myself to use it once for about 30 seconds, and put it back. My shoulders knew it was there every time though...without it, I've been managing pretty well, but with it, the bag feels very heavy.

The big question... the tripod/monopod... I'll definitely continue to bring the tripod, no doubt. Thanks to the carbon fiber, it's pretty light, and not too bad to sling across me when it's not in the stroller (which is most of the time.) Most importantly, it makes a HUGE difference for night photos, especially fireworks. It's reasonably painless and fairly quick to grab great-looking nighttime shots using the tripod and remoe shutter.

The monopod... hmmm... Most of the time, anything it can do, the tripod can do better, and I don't think that it saved any weight, and is longer than the monopod. The tripod can more-or-less pretend to be a monopod if conditions call for it, though.

I also had plans for using it a bit in a setup that I dubbed "the Groucho stick", where you secure the camera to the monopod, get it pointed more or less where you want, and slide your hands down the monopod until you're near the bottom, then put the camera in a place not normally accessible and use the remote to fire the shutter (that's why I put a 6' cable on my remote!) "Place not normally accessible" can be anywhere, most likely the air above you. I did use it for the Chinese acrobats and it worked fairly well, getting a clear view despite three rows of people ahead of me. You could also hang it over some flowers or near a topiary or whatever... or even raise it over a construction wall... wink-wink. But I've really not found myself doing that for whatever reason. Partially because I'm guessing that Disney cast members might be a little nervous if I start putting a camera on a stick over near something that's not normally touched, since they have no idea what my intentions are.

OK, gonna go through a few photos quick before hitting the sack. May add a few sometime between now and tomorrow morning, if I get the chance.

 

[Groucho]

My DW and I always start taking Airborne about 2 weeks prior to leaving for any trip or when we feel something coming on. Works every time. Been doing it since it came out. Good stuff.

Thanks for the suggestion but I am a strict skeptic when it comes to health products. "Alternative" medicine means "medicine that doesn't work" (if it worked, it would not be "alternative", it would be "real" medicine and used by "real" doctors who have real medical licenses) - it's never put through rigorous testing and thanks to intense lobbying efforts, is completely unregulated and items are only banned when they lead to death (like the muscle supplement that got banned a year or so ago.) Here is a new article specifically about Airborne. Anecdotal evidence says it works - but hey, this is the first time I've gotten a cold before traveling, I rarely ever get sick at all, and very rarely take medicine of any kind!

Generally, "alternative" medicine won't hurt you, but it won't help you, just make you poorer and the snake-oil salesmen hawking it richer. If there were truly a product that helped prevent colds, you'd see it being recommended by doctors and the gov't like flu vaccines are.

I'm sorry if you disagree but this is a topic that I feel very strongly about. I am very upset with the way that con artists take advantage of the public, especially when it comes to health or grieving issues. (And if it makes you feel better, I've been unable to convince my mother to stop buying into these things sometimes!)

OK, enough of that, back to the Disney.

 

[Groucho]

Regarding equipment, I forgot to mention - I really like having the lens pouch on my belt. It's really nice to have a lens always at hand without having to go into the bag, especially if I'm going on a ride and someone is staying behind (with my son or just skipping the ride) and I want to have two lenses at hand.

As for the tripod, you just can't take these kind of pics without one (or some sort of solid camera support:

I was pretty impressed by both the Lightning McQueen car and how the cast members were able to control the crowds when it was time to leave...

Rock 'n' Rollercoaster closed on the 2nd but you can still get a picture or two.

Here's a DoF shot from the Italy pavilion.

More later! Off to Crystal Palace breakfast with Pooh!

 

[handicap18]

Regarding equipment, I forgot to mention - I really like having the lens pouch on my belt. It's really nice to have a lens always at hand without having to go into the bag, especially if I'm going on a ride and someone is staying behind (with my son or just skipping the ride) and I want to have two lenses at hand.

I agree with this. I used one for the first time earlier this week. Took it from my old camera bag. I'll have to look for more as the 2 I have aren't big enough for my 70-300mm VR or my 18-70mm w/lens hood. But I'm going to look into this more and probably grab a few new/bigger pouches.

Also great pics thus far. Keep up the good work!

 

[Jeanne B]

Great pictures Groucho, keep posting!!

 

[jann1033]

never would have guessed the bus although i thought some kind of vehicle.
what aperture have most of the 50mm been, wondering if my f1.8 would be ok or not. and what did you use to convert the raw enmass, iranfan?..unless i just can't find it i don't think photoshop e 5 will do that.
like the top 2 night shots very much...espec. the lights behind the hat..very sharp...

 

[flowerfacade]

Your pictures are great and so is your commentary! Keep it coming!
Laura

 

[Groucho]

Hey all, thanks for the kind comments, glad to hear that you're enjoying the reports and photos.

We just got back from Downtown Disney with a belly full of Earl of Sandwich and Ghiradelli's. Overall, a good day. Although, did I mention the weather? Apparently it tied the a record of 84', and tomorrow we're looking at 82'. Orlando weather sure is unpredictable in the winter!

Side note: One great thing about SSR is that it makes resort hopping much easier than other resorts - you can hop around to whatever resort you want, then take their Downtown Disney bus and walk over to SSR. Very handy, much easier than any time we went between resorts at night last time, when we stayed at Pop. This evening, we found ourselves at Beach Club. The night before, Contemporary; before that, Poly; etc.

Today we did breakfast at Crystal Palace - very good - then headed over to Animal Kingdom. I was happy to find that Expedition Everest still had fastpasses left, so we grabbed those then got in line for the new Finding Nemo musical. We were about 45 minutes early and were nearly at the front of the line, and got a seat right next to the runway at the front of the stage. The show was excellent - extremely well done, definitely a must do.

After some other stuff, we went back to do Everest. We decided to let my sister-in-laws go first while my wife and I stayed with my son, then switch places. They got through the queue quickly while we hung out in the shop and I took a bunch of pictures (accidentally left the camera on ISO800 for most, argh). We came out and found that the ride was halted, with one car half-hidden on the first rise. It sat there for a while, with 2-3 cast members behind it examining it, before finally having the riders climb the fourteen stories down. Turns out that my sister-in-laws were in the first seat of that train!

To make a long story short, Everest was down for the rest of the day... so we'll have to make a special trip, probably tomorrow morning, just to ride it. (I don't want to miss it!) Then, I didn't realize that the restaurants would be closed when we tried to go eat 30 minutes before closing, hence us ending up at Downtown Disney.

Today was the first day that I used up both my 2gig SD cards and started on a 512m one.

what aperture have most of the 50mm been, wondering if my f1.8 would be ok or not. and what did you use to convert the raw enmass, iranfan?..unless i just can't find it i don't think photoshop e 5 will do that.
like the top 2 night shots very much...espec. the lights behind the hat..very sharp...

I've been trying to avoid 1.4 unless necessary, both for the razor-thin D0F and that the lens is just a touch soft that wide... usually 1.7-2.4. For tripod shots, usually 8.0 or so. With the tripod and remote shutter release, the night shots are pretty effortless. Aperture priority mode, ISO200, F8, let it focus, and hit the shutter with the remote. Bump up the exposure a little if you find it too dark. (I found that Spectromagic requires some exposure compensation if you want to be able to see faces, like in the Minnie pic I posted.)

The Stitch picture uses the "cross screen" (aka 4-point star) filter, in case you're wondering about the star effects.

For conversion, I'm just using Pentax's Photo Browser/Photo Laboratory. It uses Silkypix algorithms and works pretty well to my eye. But processing a few hundred photos is slowwwwww!

Here's a few more pictures.

I hadn't noticed this statue in the Tower of Terror queue before... there's a male version facing it.

The Liberty Inn at the American pavilion has its own gingerbread house, with chocolate chip cookie shingling.

Here's a good candidate for the HDR treatment.

We watched Wishes from the beach at the Poly the other night...

Last night, my wife found a pin for me (I'm not generally a pin collector but have one or two that I've gotten for free) for my camera bag - a car-related one. The white balance is a little off, sorry.

Probably more updates coming... only two full days left, time sure flies by quickly here!

 

[fitzperry]

To make a long story short, Everest was down for the rest of the day... so we'll have to make a special trip, probably tomorrow morning, just to ride it. (I don't want to miss it!) Then, I didn't realize that the restaurants would be closed when we tried to go eat 30 minutes before closing, hence us ending up at Downtown Disney.

It's worth a trip back--I loved it. When we were there T-giving week, my tiny 7yo must have had a post holiday growth spurt, because she was not 44" when we left home, but dh decided to measure her at MK one day, and she just squeaked by and got on Space Mountain. We were leaving the next day, but the first thing she says upon discovering her new stature is, "Can we go back to Animal Kingdom so I can ride Everest?" So we changed our plans and did (dh and I wanted to ride it again too).

Well . . . . I got us 4 fp's (using the 3yo's ticket too) and dh and I were planning to take turns riding with her, but she didn't like it! I was surprised and although I felt bad for dd, who had been very excited about the ride, I used the last two fp's myself! It is a great ride.

Enjoy the rest of your trip!

 

[Groucho]

Well, here's our Everest saga...

My alarm, set for 6am, didn't wake me until 7:15, so our original plan to get to AK near the opening 8am time didn't happen.

We arrived at AK around 9:30 or so, armed with a "good for two" re-admittance pass and two Fastpasses. My wife was really scared to ride it (she is not big on heights and especially not big drops - she won't do Splash Mt any more) so she bowed out.

We got there and... sigh, they were just taking people off the ride, including walking them off high-up. That sounded familiar... after hanging around a while, we decided that my wife would stay with my son and the other three of us would go on immediately if the line opened again.

We hung out in the area for probably a good hour or so before getting the vibe that it would re-open (empty trains were going through with increasing frequency), so we got in the fastpass line, which had maybe a dozen people or so. I noticed more cast workers buzzing around by the trains, the standby wait changed from "--" to "60", and a couple cast members walked quickly up to the front to start letting in fastpassers.

We were able to get on the very first train out and there were no problems, and the entire train was whooping and cheering for the whole ride. Yes, it was GREAT! What a terrific ride. Afterwards, it was decided that I could use the remaining fastpass (for my wife) and I hopped right back on and rode it again - still great! The first ride, I took a bunch of pics with the Zenitar 16mm (which can be iffy as it doesn't auto-meter thanks to no "A" aperture setting), and the second ride, I used the Pentax 50mm. I realized afterwards that that was a mistake, I should have used the Sigma 28mm, especially since I had them in manual focus mode anyway... the 50mm was just too narrow, but it did get a few good ones.

So, some hiccups but ultimately a happy ending! So just like you, Fitzperry, I got two rides right in a row. WHOO!

We then headed over to Studios, took care of a few things there, and headed over to Epcot for dinner at Le Cellier; excellent as expected. Another viewing of Illuminations, with tripod this time, and back here. We're going to start packing up our stuff before we leave in a couple days, then off to bed for a full day of Epcot tomorrow.

 

[Groucho]

A side note: I hadn't noticed dust on my sensor before, but I had noticed that my focusing screen would get really dusty and dirty, with little hairs on it some times. Very strange. Looking at my pictures now that have clear blue skies in the background, some dust spots are extremely obvious. Argh! All the things I brought, and I didn't get one of those. Hopefully Photoshop can help me.

Anyway, since we were talking about Everest... how about some Everest photos?

CMs checking out the stuck train.

Merchandise.

And a non-EE AK photo, from Safari. Not a good photo technically, but still kind of neat - a hippo going after some ducks.

 

[Groucho]

I'm here in the Orlando airport now; we got through checkin and security quite quickly and had about an hour and a half free. The wife, son, and sisters-in-law went off looking for something to drink, so here I sit using a weak wireless connection.

Yesterday, we did breakfast at Kona Cafe at Poly, planning on using a table service credit on the dining plan, but changed our mind after we were informed that we could only get a drink and entree, nothing else. That's a pretty lousy use of a table service, so we paid out of pocket. (In general, the service was fairly poor, though the Tonga Toast was good - but I don't think we're in a hurry to return.)

We planned to dine at the Turf Club Bar & Grille at Saratoga, but it was closed by the time we returned. Concierge checked around and found some lunch places in MK for today, we ended up at the Plaza, where I'd never eaten. As it turns out, it was a good choice. Good food, good service, and the mayor of Main St and his three female companions came in and did a presentation to the 100th guest, which was a lot of fun.

Now to go through the 2000+ photos................

 

[ukcatfan]

Yesterday, we did breakfast at Kona Cafe at Poly, planning on using a table service credit on the dining plan, but changed our mind after we were informed that we could only get a drink and entree, nothing else. That's a pretty lousy use of a table service, so we paid out of pocket. (In general, the service was fairly poor, though the Tonga Toast was good - but I don't think we're in a hurry to return.)

My 2 cents. I like Kona better for dinner and O'hana better for breakfast, but still like O'hana dinner. I also did not enjoy Kona bkfst. You might want to give Kona a chance for dinner next time. I really enjoyed their steaks.

Kevin

 

[fitzperry]

My 2 cents. I like Kona better for dinner and O'hana better for breakfast, but still like O'hana dinner. I also did not enjoy Kona bkfst. You might want to give Kona a chance for dinner next time. I really enjoyed their steaks.

Kevin

Not to stray too far OT, but we had a great dinner there a couple of months ago--probably the best meal I've had at WDW outside of California Grill. Service was above par, and I had some molten chocolate thingie for dessert that was quite yummy.

 

[Groucho]

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind for next time, whenever that is. (I suspect we'll end up at Disneyland next while visiting friends who live nearby, not sure about the next WDW trip, though no doubt it won't be TOO far off.)

We got home a little while ago and am slowly plowing through a big pile of email... but I think the main task is to rest up. I took tomorrow off from work as well, otherwise I'd really be a total wreck...! I'm planning to start processing the photos properly as well, fixing white balance, etc. Looks like I have a lot of work to do if I want to clean up the dust marks in the blue-sky photos, too...

A sensor cleaning kit is next on my list! Probably this week.

 

[ukcatfan]

A sensor cleaning kit is next on my list! Probably this week.

A Giottos rocket blower is on my list, but I am sure I should also invest in a complete sensor kit.

 

[Groucho]

The quantity and severity of dust spots mean that I definitely need a full kit... time to check that web site that has all the sensor cleaning info again.

It's not like my pictures are all ruined, but the ones with blue sky look sort of like prints with little smudges on them.

One more reason for me to go to a K10D with dust-cleaning sensor.

 

[Steve's Girl]

A sensor cleaning kit is next on my list! Probably this week.

Within the first few weeks of getting my camera, I noticed a big dark spot on the pictures. Couldn't believe that it was dust already. Got out the trusty manual, started reading how to clean sensor. Then, realized it was very late at night and I did not have a sensor cleaning kit. Since I am not very patient, started looking around for alternative. Found the baby thing they give you at the hospital to suck out their nose. Made sure it was clean. Mirror lock up, spotted dust particle and voila - gone! Fortunatley, my dust was one easy to remove particle. But for the future, should probably invest in a cleaning kit. On a side note, I did take the baby nose thingy to Disney just as a precaution. I did get a few odd looks when I had to pull that thing out of my bag to find something in the bottom. Make note to self - go buy sensor cleaning kit!