We currently have a Kodak Easy Share and it doesn't take very good pictures for Disney.
You know how at night Disney is all lit up and if you are taking pictures of parade if you use the auto setting the picture comes out dark. If you use the night setting it comes out blurry. Very frustrating!!!!!!!!!!!! :hammer:
We can take great pictures by day, but at night, forget it! :shrug:
What camera do any of you have that you are very happy with? Price? Model, etc.
I want something that I can take pictures during the day, night, parade, fireworks, action shots, etc everything you would at Disney with them all coming out great! Is that too much to ask!!! haha!!!:sohappy:
There is no "magic" camera that will make all your pictures great. There's no "magic" button or anything to make your pictures exactly the way you want them.
Its all about technique and learning the technical side of things. The lighting on MSUSA and the Castle as well as SSE is somewhere in the 1/60th @ f/2.8 @ ISO 800 (within a stop) range. Whether you have a point and shoot or a DSLR, it wont change the exposure value of what it is.
Fireworks photos, they vary on your style. Mine is long exposure at f/14-f/16 and ISO 100. Do it handheld and you're talking 1/10th at 2.8 at ISO 800.
Basically you can buy whatever camera you want and spend as much money as you want on gear but if you want good pictures, you need to at least learn the basics. If you're going to spend hundreds of dollars on a camera, so whats another $15-20 on a book that tells you how to get the most out of it?
The National Geographic field guide to photography is a good place to start.
(One of these days, I'm going to do a book on theme park photography, and most of you will have already read the stuff on my posts here)
So in answer to your question..... The latest Nikon or Canon P&S cameras are a good way to go.
All P&S cameras that have a zoom lens will have a variable aperture, meaning that in the dark that when you zoom in, the shutter speed will increase, which gives rise to increased risk of blur or camera shake or whatever. Its a fact of P&S cameras and something that you just have to put up with. For example, lets say your shooting Spectro in a very dark spot. At ISO 1000, the average float's exposure (no flash) is somewhere around 1/10-1/15 @ f/2.8. With a brand new P&S, lens as wide as it will go, that picture will be 1/30th at 2.8. (My D700 shot was 1/100 at f/4 at ISO 10000. Extrapolating down, that should be roughly 1/10th, 2.8, ISO 1000) But when you zoom in on Cinderella, your lens' largest aperture would change to 5.6 which makes it down to somewhere in the 1/2-1/4 range. Thats just how those cameras work.
A lot of shooting Spectro (Any night parade really) is where you choose to shoot. Anywhere where the stage lights on the parade route hit (around the hub, some spots in frontierland) are great because the light hits the float, the exposure jumps up a couple of spots and what was 1/10th is now 1/60th and you've got a picture thats not blurry. That's my best advice there, pick your spot carefully.
When i lived in Florida (and could smuggle in equipment through various ways) my best night parade stuff came when i had a remote flash on low power aimed down and shot it at 1/30th of a second to get the lights on the costumes. It was great but when you consider all the work that went into it, its something that the commercial Yellow Shoes photographers might do, but generally not. Besides, one gets funny looks when one super clamps up a Nikon flash to a lamppost and aims a camera flash down on the street in anticipation for a parade (I would not advise anyone to try this).
So, long story short. Want good night parade shots? Stand where the lights are.
