Quality of Photopass photos, how were yours

[NedFlanders]

Recently got around to logging in to our photopass photos from our recent trip to Disneyland. In the past I've had good experience with this at WDW, and always have the kids pictures taken both by myself and by the photopass photographers as a backup in case my pictures turn out to be ________.

I was half-tempted to leave my camera at home and just rely on the photopass, pay for the disk and not worry about taking any pictures. Fortunately I didn't do that this time as I have never seen such poor quality photos in my life. At least half the pictures are taken where my kids are standing straight up yet the camera was turned 10 to 15 degrees off so that they are crooked... even more amazing the standard photo of them in front of the castle is also crooked beyond belief.

Has anyone else noticed bad results from photopass before? Was this just a Disneyland thing and Disneyworld has better photographers or was I just lucky in the past to get good results?

 

[Flip83]

I don't know what camera you have, if it's a small camera or one of them bigger ones. If it's a small one, or if someone in your family has one....bring that. Even if you didn't want to bring it out every day, you don't have to, and just lock it up in the room safe. June 2009, I proposed to my girl and since a CM got a Photographer to get shots of the whole thing, we decided to get many photos from all over the Parks. They generally take as many photos as you want. If they take 6, you would get at least 3 good ones. After all the pictures we got from them, we went home with our Photo Pass Card and we were able to add the graphics and crop some pictures, then we purchased the CD that gives us the Copyright to all the photos. The CD can be expensive, but it's worth it. You will easily get a bunch of amazing photos.

That being said.... Even when you do the Photo Pass, I always suggest a small digital camera you can keep in your pocket or backpack... You can always get good personal shots in unique places that the Photographers are not at. But this all matters of what type of camera you plan on bringing

 

[tink282010]

I have gotten some good and bad quality photos from the photo pass images. Of course, I am a freelance photographer so my standards are a little on the higher side quality-wise. I still always bring at least a point and shoot, but this past trip, I brought my dslr with me and was thankful that I did, even though I didn't get a lot of the photos I wanted. I found that a lot of the images from the photo pass photographers looked off. Looking off by: 1. images being crooked 2. night images being WAY too flashed (flash is way too bright on the person and just looks wrong) 3. the photos often have person with eyes closed (not always something that can be helped on the photographers part), just to name a few things.

I, however, still think it is worth the investment because they are great for memories (scrapbooking, putting in the photo album, etc...), but I don't use them for much more than that.

Last year when we went, we got better results for some and we got better this year for others. It all depends on the photographer you get to do the images. I do think that maybe some of the photographers could/should be better trained when it comes to use of flash, but that is just my opinion.

 

[ThinkTink721]

We have always had good luck w/ our Photopass pics.
Although there have been a couple w/ some of the subjects not looking at the camera, etc.
But, overall, most of them have been good. :wave:

 

[EPCOT.nut]

Crooked pictures? Well, that stinks! I have never had 'terrible' pictures, in fact they have almost always been perfect. Even at the water parks which I expected wouldn't be as good because they are taken moving! I had one Holiday where the pictures taken at night weren't the greatest, but every other time at WDW Parks I have been completely thrilled with the photos. I've never been to DL, so maybe they aren't as good there!

 

[amjt660]

Has anyone else noticed bad results from photopass before? Was this just a Disneyland thing and Disneyworld has better photographers or was I just lucky in the past to get good results?[/QUOTE]

Went to DLR in August and used Photopass. Also had them take my picture using my camera
Glad that I did because in on sequence of photo with Mickey at the World of Colour kiosk "my pictures" on photopass were of a different family.
Not impressed at all

Max

 

[Pioneer Hall]

Usually I get pretty good stuff with the photopass photographers. With anything there will be some poor shots, but that is why they end up taking around half a dozen photos in each situation.

 

[dreamfinder]

There always seem to be some people who just happen to get terrible shots on a given trip. Not sure why, but it seems to happen. We have had a few bad pictures, but usually a good/artistic crop can save it. Unfortunately the Photopass editing doesn't have a rotate feature, otherwise you could save most of your pictures. Of course rotating can be done at home, but then you won't have the borders on them. It is a shame when that happens.

Unfortunately, most of the photographers really don't have formal photography training. Of course, sometimes this can be good in terms of composition and the like, but can make the actual photo itself iffy. In my understanding, usually they are just given a preset setting to use, and don't know enough to adjust to compensate for a overly cloudy day, or other things like that. And other times, they just want to crank through the picture, so they won't fully compose it properly, which yields skewed images. Just hit up every photographer you see, you never know what you will get.

 

[drtbmx]

The photopass people will take your picture with your own camera.....on our last visit we had them take pictures with their cameras and our own (we even used our iPhones for a bunch) and then we had a greater sample size to pic from, out of all the pictures taken we only found one or two that were worth buying over the free picture they took with our own camera or iphone.....this method is certainly what we will be using on my future trip and I recommend it highly..

 

[PurpleDragon]

I've had mixed results from my experiences with various photopass photographers, but for the most part they've been good. But my with experiences recently most of them will take 2-3 pictures with their camera to be sure you have a selection of shots to choose from. As others have said, they will also take a picture with your camera if you ask them to, sometimes they will volunteer it if they see you holding a camera, depends on the CM.

I have 2 photos on my desk here at work I purchased from the Photopass site. They were great shots, my 3 year old son actually smiled at the camera on queue and everything. :lol:

 

[foreverbelle]

I always wondered how they would actually turn out, which is why I have never ordered any myself....its good to know that I shouldn't just rely on them and will still be packing a camera with me.

Thanks for the info all!

 

[PurpleDragon]

I always wondered how they would actually turn out, which is why I have never ordered any myself....its good to know that I shouldn't just rely on them and will still be packing a camera with me.

Thanks for the info all!

For the most part I've had good experiences. Also the uploads are usually within an hour or so of being taken, so you can view them from your smartphone while still in the park and decide if they're good or not. If you're unhappy with them you can always go back and get another photographer to do the pictures over again before you leave.

 

[Shadowdawn]

We've used them along with our own camera for the past 3 yrs that we've been and there have only been 2 ourt of the almost 200 they have taken that weren't good.

 

[Offy]

We've used PhotoPass three times now and while we were very happy with the results the first two times, the bad results and poor customer service from this past time just may have been enough to keep us form ever using the service again. We had cooked pictures, pictures that were taken while the camera was moving so that everything was a blur and just plain poorly composed pictures. Stuff like a picture of Goofy from straight on so that all you can see is the front of his nose and his hat. Things that should be avoided by people taking pictures of these characters every day for a living.

The customer service aspect of things was even more frustrating. The overuse of copy and paste replies will set me off every time. They skimped on the photographers on our night at Mickey's Halloween Party and the same person was taking pictures of both Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. I e-mailed and asked if the pictures in my account with Sleeping Beauty in them could have the border selection changed from Cinderella's signature to Aurora's. The reply that I got back was obviously a copy and paste and asked me to be more specific. I restated all of the facts from my original e-mail and asked how much more specific they wanted to be and never got a reply. So, now I have pictures with facsimile autographs for all of the pictures of my daughter with characters except for those with Sleeping Beauty.

The only thing that ended up making it worth while this trip was that we added the pictures from another family we know that was down there the same time as us and got all of our pictures together in one package.

 

[Susan Savia]

We used to use the Photo Pass each trip, but the pictures weren't any better then what we took/had taken with our own cameras and so we stopped doing it and found it saved a small bit of time. Waiting on a CM to finish taking pictures of other folks, posing us, etc. If we want pictures with a character we hand one of our cameras to a CM to take our picture.

 

[Lisalyn]

We used photopass a couple years ago. The photos were fine. The problem was actually finding photopass photographers! They were pretty much few and far between. Out of 8 days of parks, we only managed 113 photos from photopass photographers - they were hard to find! Luckily, I had brought my own digital also and logged over 400 of my own lol

That being said, if you can find them - they don't do a bad job. I was pretty happy with what photos they did take and kind of like the fact that they can insert a baby dumbo or tink into your hands!

 

[cowanfamily]

I've always had positive results from them.