Help with ride photos

[Tim]

i don't think digital has eliminated the art of photography but it seems to have 'watered it down' a bit. ; it seems like anyone with a digital slr that wants to call themselves a 'pro' and hang a shingle can do so. what separates the men from the boys (women/girls) is the final output. ; a truly great photo is one that will elicit strong emotion, either from the content or composition. ; spray and pray shooting will not do that. ; i often look at photos that i took a year earlier and now think they are not so good because my tastes and standards become more discriminating.

a poster on another photography site that i used to visit actually described himself as 'pro wedding photographer' but felt the need to go to a web-forum and ask how to set his flash so he could get proper exposures under mid-day light, how and where to pose them, blah blah. ; if you need to ask those kinds of things on the web, you probably shouldn't be taking people's money to shoot their events.... ; let the buyer beware.

 

[Tim]

Even worse, since so many "Disney Photography" fans are minivan moms with P&S cameras, people seem to be unduly impressed by HDR or Topaz shots that really aren't that impressive.

let's not paint with too broad of a brush at the risk of insulting the large majority of the people out there, my wife included. ; we, the serious park shooters, are a HUGE minority of the people taking picture in the parks. ; i still fall back on HW's advice to me a long time ago.... ; "As long you YOU like YOUR pictures, that is all that matters."

personally, i like when new people sign up and welcome point and shooters trying to learn with open arms. ; when i started taking pics in the park several years ago, i used a 1.3mp sony cybershot in full auto and thought the pics were fantastic at the time. ; unlike most, i spent many, many hours reading and practicing to refine my technique and 'eye' to improve and get better at something i truly enjoy. ; but, again, i am in the minority here ...

i remember when i first wanted to get better at disney photos looking at some of scott dommin's (Scott on the TMIP forum) photos on pBase that he took with a point and shoot and just being wowed. ; i used that as my motivation to learn and get better, but the point is he used a point and shoot with wonderful results.

 

[WDWFigment]

Great points made, Roger and Tim. ; Something I have heard before (film being more finite), but didn't consider when approaching this discussion. ; That certainly does have an impact, but I still contend that the art is still there.

let's not paint with too broad of a brush at the risk of insulting the large majority of the people out there, my wife included. ; we, the serious park shooters, are a HUGE minority of the people taking picture in the parks. ; i still fall back on HW's advice to me a long time ago.... ; "As long you YOU like YOUR pictures, that is all that matters."

personally, i like when new people sign up and welcome point and shooters trying to learn with open arms. ; when i started taking pics in the park several years ago, i used a 1.3mp sony cybershot in full auto and thought the pics were fantastic at the time. ; unlike most, i spent many, many hours reading and practicing to refine my technique and 'eye' to improve and get better at something i truly enjoy. ; but, again, i am in the minority here ...

i remember when i first wanted to get better at disney photos looking at some of scott dommin's (Scott on the TMIP forum) photos on pBase that he took with a point and shoot and just being wowed. ; i used that as my motivation to learn and get better, but the point is he used a point and shoot with wonderful results.

No offense intended to anyone (although I now see how it can pretty easily be interpreted offensively). ; What I mean is that a lot of the people viewing Disney pictures online (disproportionate to other areas of photography, I would wager) are just Disney fans who admittedly don't have a lot of photography knowledge, and probably don't care to. ; I think when a "non-expert" judges something, they often look at it from a different perspective than an "expert", and I think HDR can be a way to take an image that isn't compositionally good and make it look "cool". ; If you don't have the specialized knowledge of photography, ; you are likely to think more highly of the "cool" image than the technically "better" image. ; Now, I know photography is highly subjective so no one can say definitively which is better, but I think there are clear circumstances where "most pros would agree..." ; You certainly will find few film scholars who will prefer Air Bud 2 over Citizen Kane. ; Hopefully this explains my point in a better and less offensive way.

All of that said, my words were clearly poorly chosen--absolutely no need for me to (poorly) illustrate my point with specific reference. ; For that, I apologize.

 

[Grumpwurst]

I'm one of those people that crank out thousands of photos on a trip because I believe that the more I take the greater chance that one of them will come turn out OK, especially on dark rides.

I upload all of them up to Flickr knowing full well that 90%+ of them are crap to the nth degree. ; I am constantly amazed at the pictures people mark as their favorites. ; Many of them are horribly out of focus and give me headaches looking at.

I use Flickr as a way to share with family and to make it easier to post pics online. ; I don't upload to showcase.

But I think technology has created an environment where it's easier to produce content and showcase content. ; In turn, this has dilluted talent with a bunch of not-so-talented products.

Examples of this is the amount of podcasts, videos on YouTube, and photos on various photo sharing sites. ; Not all of these are high quality products.

I once heard Patrick Norton (of TechTV fame) say that the problem with technology is that it's creating new generations who don't know what quality is. ; The example he gave was the massive downloading of songs off ITunes which is nowhere near the quality of a CD. ; The kids that are doing this then learn that good quality music is equal to what they are downloading which isn't. ; So the new definition of good is bad based on our definition of good

 

[Roger]

a poster on another photography site that i used to visit actually described himself as 'pro wedding photographer' but felt the need to go to a web-forum and ask how to set his flash so he could get proper exposures under mid-day light, how and where to pose them, blah blah. ; if you need to ask those kinds of things on the web, you probably shouldn't be taking people's money to shoot their events.... ; let the buyer beware.

Egads....in the past you weren't a pro wedding photographer unless you were shooting with MF MF w/o built in meters...it's as if that part of learning is lost, as today's built-in meters are more accurate than ever before. ; And you don't learn the old way of photography....

 

[Tim]

interesting point on the quantity vs. quality argument, ray. ; there does seem to be a declining standard mentality. ; ansel adams would be mocked and ridiculed in today's market

i know how much effort goes into TMIP and went into MDP when i co-hosted it. ; 192kb on itunes is nowhere near the 320kb of a cd and an experienced ear can discern that. same argument for a slapped together podcast vs. a well produced, high production value podcast. ; when it comes to quality, you can "just tell".

 

[Craig]

i still fall back on HW's advice to me a long time ago.... ; "As long you YOU like YOUR pictures, that is all that matters."

excellent advice! and advice I follow too.

Nice discussion. I shoot more photos than I used to also. A week long trip to WDW with film only resulted in 5-6 rolls being shot. Now a week will net 1000-1500 shots.
But digital has given me the power to extensively shoot and document the things I care about (Contemporary Resort).
When Dina and I were in our twenties we simply could not afford to process tons of film.

 

[gary]

i'm going to side completely with the digital here, like craig, back in the day, i simply stagnated, it's not that i did not want to get better, but even with reading, studying and careful thought given to composition and technical settings, it was very hard for me to make any progress on film, i simply could not afford much practice, now i too come back from disney with many more photos, both my last 2 cruises went over 3000, not all keepers, in fact many were deleted, probably most, and i've noticed as i practice more, i end up being much more selective about what i do keep and post to my site, but i am also honestly seeing an improvement, in both technique and composition, although the latter progress is slower than i would like, i haven't been gifted with a large dose of artistic eye, i have to work for what i can find, although as they say, even a blind pig finds a truffle once in awhile
and at the end of the day if I like it, that's all that's important, if it's printed and hanging on my wall, then it's good enough for me

 

[Roger]

i'm going to side completely with the digital here, like craig, back in the day, i simply stagnated, it's not that i did not want to get better, but even with reading, studying and careful thought given to composition and technical settings, it was very hard for me to make any progress on film, i simply could not afford much practice,

BINGO! ; The promise of digital - in the old days unless you had a very expensive data back or shooting MF that did it anyway, you would have to write down your settings and then go back, look at the slides to figure out what you did wrong, or how the camera settings affected the picture.

Now, instant review and uhhh more "accuracy" via lifesize loupe enlargements thanks to the ability to pixel peep....

 

[Craig]

I am loving digital photography but there are some things about film that are still superior like Dark rides and night photography IMHO. Digital is getting better and better and hopefully it won't be long until it's low light gets equal with film.

I have to say I respectfully disagree with this. I shot a Nikon n2000 for years with a f3.5 lens and always Fuji 800 speed film. I always had difficulty shooting in lowlight without a flash or tripod. Since we are a Disney site, I will stay focused on Disney. With digital it is VERY convenient to be able to take photographs quickly without a tripod. I became very frustrated that I got barely any keepers in any restaurants or resort indoors at WDW. I never did any rides (it never crossed my mind). At one point I quit carrying a camera. It was not a fun hobby. digital has completely re-energized my love of photography. ; Now, I can take a great tourist shot in a very dark restaurant, like the Wave, by cranking the ISO up. I could never have gotten this shot with my 35mm. http://www.themagicinpixels.com/forum/http://wdw360.com/smf20_convertor/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=38091#p38091

In film, "black is black", in digital, black seems to be noise and not wholly black. ;

I think this is as much the fault of the photographer as the camera. I am able to easily get pure black in my photos, if I want it there. You have to know how to use your camera and you have to know what you want the photo to look like before you take the image. I blogged about it here:
http://cdbendele.blogspot.com/2009/05/flower-photo-in-kitchen.html

I mean NO offense by any of these statements...

 

[ImagineeringMyWay]

I have not been in this thread for a while and there have been some great posts and information shared here.

I used to shot unreal amounts for film in school and i was the primary sports photographer and rolled my own film the on the schools dime. Those were the days.

I shot a lot of film in the parks but never as much as when someone else was paying obviously. That's the great thing about digital you can really shoot a lot more and experiment more. No longer do you have to manually record in a log what your doing for later review. It's now tagged on the file. I love that! I do a lot of bracketing which is very convenient digitally.

Some have been clear they mean no offense we answering posts as I mean no offense either. We have had differing experiences, some for the good some not so good when shooting at the Disney parks. For as many good shots I made on film in the parks and dark rides on film, I probably have twice as many equally horrible ones. Shooting on rides can be a crap shoot. Each time I rode I tried something different. Always experimenting.

I can honestly say I drove my teachers nuts in HS because of my lack of metering when shooting and test strips in the dark room. Now granted yearbooks photography in not always the most technical shots in the world, yet we really thought we were really good in those days. What took my piers a couple if test strips in the dark room usually took me one exposure.

As mentioned Flickr can be frustrating at times. I do not participate as much in a few rating Disney groups as I used to because of the point and shooters acting like Ansel Adams. Sometimes very rude. So thinking I was missing something I check out their photostreams! YIKES. Most of those types leave after a while, but it can be distracting when you are truly looking for honest critiques.

I take it Craig means he could not take the photos he shared with us with film without a flash. I know it can be an extra piece of equipment, ; but I carry a flash for those types of photos were lighting is an issue, rides of course excluded for obvious reasons. The blog info was also good. A controlled environment can also returned much different results than dealing with existing light in the field.

I hope like most of us we love to learn more about our equipment. Honestly my digital cameras have not becomes an extension of my eye as I considered my film cameras and I am still finding new ways to experiment with digital. ; Digital sure does add another extension of editing that could be difficult if not impossible in the dark room. Something I am still exploring and experimenting with.

So some points I'll agree to disagree and on others, point taken.

I found Tim's comments on podcasting interesting. I routinely get e-mails from one podcaster who wants to know why I release at 192; insisting I waste bandwidth and cause longer downloads, yet its nowhere near CD quality. But then again most people who listen to podcast seem to listen thru headphones or on computer speakers and probably do not know what its like to listen on systems with Bose 401's, B&W's or other high quality sound equipment. And honestly spoken word podcasts probably don't need much higher anyways.

Similarly how many print their digital photos? Most people I know NEVER do. They share them through Flickr and similar online services and view them on a wide range of monitors. ; How many of us really try to get the right shot, correctly balance color, exposure, etc etc and then share them online with people using $100 monitors from Wal Mart and at 72dpi to boot?

Yet photography is a fun art and hobby. For as many "art" shots I might try to craft, I shoot 100's more fun shots of family and friends. Doesn't mean I cannot resist making sure backgrounds do not distract. Its never good to have a tree appear to be growing out of a friends head for example, but I am sure you get my point.

Finally the one thing I will not miss about film is a lab screwing up which has happen to me on a few occasions. To screw up prints is fixable, but not the original film. Granted its rare but it can happen. Short of a defective memory card, you'll know right away what you got to work with later. That I really enjoy!

Sorry for the long post.