Honestly, when I rented the Tokina 11-16mm, the one thing I was most excited about was photographing the Contemporary Resort. My goal was to try and incorporate the monorails gliding through the Grand Canyon Concourse. I learned a couple of things. The monorails move through the hotel fairly fast! It's not they are actually traveling fast, but when you have a composition you want, the monorails can move out of the frame REALLY fast! I changed my settings on my camera to Shutter priority as Aperture would not allow fast enough shutter speeds consistently. The Nikon's Auto Iso also allowed me to use a faster shutter speed and not have to worry about setting iso higher than needed or too low to get proper exposure. I also changed to shooting on continous High Speed shutter release. It seems crazy to shoot a monorail at 5 frames per second, but believe it or not, I could only get 3-4 shots per monorail that were in the frame properly. I had to start shooting when the monorail was just entering the frame, so that I could get one just as it was nearing the edge of the frame. Many, many shots had the nose of the monorail clipped off! In this first photo, I am standing at the North end of the Grand Canyon Concourse. I chose this place to stand because I wanted to be able to see the Mary Blair Mural as well as the monorail. This first photo took about 20 minutes to get. It was a combination of waiting for guests to clear out of the foreground and getting the monorail just right. This first photo is iso 1000, 1/180 sec, and the camera chose f4. Also, in this frame I was not shooting at Continous, but in Single mode. I have a few different angles including the Contemporary and monorails that I will keep posting to this thread as I get them ready. [This attachment has been purged. Older attachments are purged from time to time to conserve disk space. Please feel free to repost your image.]
Here I am standing on the outside public balcony on the north end of the Grand Canyon Concourse. Monorail Yellow is the Resort Monorail arriving at the hotel. In the background that is the Express Monorail Black on its way to the MK from the TTC. I am standing almost under the track as I wanted the monorail track to head into the corner of the frame. Shooting Shutter priority at 1/250. the camera chose f9.5 and iso 200. I also set the exposure comp up .5 to make sure the monorail wasn't underexposed, since there is so much sky. [This attachment has been purged. Older attachments are purged from time to time to conserve disk space. Please feel free to repost your image.]
Great shot of Monorail Yellow! You might want to try a square crop on that one. I usually don't like square crops, but I think it would look nice in this case.
I took this shot up on the monorail platform. I asked the platform castmember if I could go down to the end and stay and take pictures. He didn't mind as long as I stayed behind the fences. I was past where you are allowed to stand to wait for the next monorail. For this photo, I was leaning over the fence as far as I could and was about 8 feet away from the monorails as they cruised by. This shot has all the "extras" of the d300 working. It is shutter release high speed at 6 fps and continous focus on the nose of the monorail. I had the camera set to 1/60 shutter speed, iso 800, +.5 exposure, and the camera picked f3.3. [This attachment has been purged. Older attachments are purged from time to time to conserve disk space. Please feel free to repost your image.]
There is something about the last one, that makes it very...toyish. Like it's a model (but not the tilt-shift kind).....or something. Like them!
Thanks! Roger- too much sharpening? Poly- maybe one more from the other side of the "canyon" thanks Kiki!
Those are all great shots, especially like the one of monorail yellow (the two in one shot). I've gotta get me a wide angle lens...
