The Hat

[Karen]

Great Photo Steve. Want to let us into your secret on taking it? I would love to have a go, but doubt I would get one as good as yours

[mfairhurst]

That is realy good STEVE nice to put in a photo frame as all children like something about disney world and so bright .
MAUREEN
www.onlinefloridavillas.com/villas/1683.aspx

[brendawilliams]

Excellent and so 'alive' - what talents you have [clap]

[taylona]

Spectacular shot, Steve!

Did you zoom out on a long shutter speed? Or was the the effect of the lights?

Would make a good poster - as good as anything you can buy at Disney.

[Snapper]

Jaff, if you DM me your email address I will try to sort something out for you for a desktop background. If you want another option too I did a photo of the Osborne lights a couple of years ago specifically to use as a Christmas desktop background. Hang on and I'll see if I can find it. Got it, it's the 4th photo down on this thread: http://www.orlando-guide.info/forums/topic_16576.asp

Karen & Denise, if you want to have a go, here's how to set it up ...

You'll need an SLR with a zoom lens, sorry folks but the little snappys probably won't do this, and a tripod. The specific kit I had was my Nikon D70, a 24-120mm lens and my trusty Gitzo tripod that I love to death. The lens is the key part as everything you see is created by the optical system, so go for the best optics you have. 24-120 works pretty good, but give it a twirl with other lenses and see what you get.

Frame the shot at the wider end of your zoom range on the lens, I started at 24mm for these, the widest the lens would go, and then make sure you are focused on the hat. You are better off, I think, with the autofocus switched off to stop it hunting in the low light.

The exposure for this one was 10 seconds at f/11 at ISO 200. If your camera will get to ISO 100 I'd try this and then balance up the slower speed by dropping a stop to f/8.

To get the effect you zoom the lens while the shutter is open and this is what makes everything kind of explode outwards. It's a really nice effect if you catch the right subject. To make sure the hat was solid and visible I gave it a few seconds without zooming to bring out the clarity in the hat, so taking the shot goes a bit like ... setup ... wait ... snap (shutter open) ... count one elephant, two elephant, three elephant ... zooooooooooooooooom (really slowly) ... snap (shutter closes). I had to try a few times to get the wait right to make the hat clear and then also the speed of zooming right. If you zoom too slow you don't get the full-on explosion effect and if you zoom too quickly you run out of zoom range before the shutter closes and end up with the zoomed image starting to show through too clearly.

The other thing you have to do is watch the lights. The bands and stars around the hat all fade up and down and twinkle differently. If you can catch the bands with some light it helps fill out the photo with that nice orange light, and you want the lights in the star in the hat twinkling as these fill-out the top right corner and stop the dark sky getting too boring. Along with that the only good time I've found to take this is when the park is almost empty (8:30pm - 9pm after watching the Osborne lights is about perfect). You need to have everything set-up and ready to go and then it's a matter of patience. You watch the lights twinkle and watch the people walking past and hope for a spot where there are no people and the lights are looking nice. Then you go for it. Once you are all set up on a tripod you can more or less leave the camera's viewfinder alone as you can watch much more of what's happening if you aren't looking through a viewfinder. People often stop and linger at the windows under the hat and they'll quite often sit on the stage part of it. If they aren't moving they can get to be quite visible in the final photo and distract from it a bit.

Other than that it's just a case of trying heaps and heaps of shots and being prepared to have a look at them, work out what you want to change, and go back and try it again. I've been trying this one for a couple of years to finally get the one that I wanted. If you want to see a previous effort from back in 2004 it's at: http://www.orlando-guide.info/forums/topic_16594.asp and they've been getting progressively better since then. I still haven't cracked the same effect for that fer-lippin' dove at Epcot at Christmas yet. I need to have a re-think on the flash set-up for the dove. Another try next year I think.

[Karen]

Thanks for the info Steve. I have a Fuji Finepix 4900 that has a 35mm- 210mm optical zoom lens, but I have a wideangle lens that makes it 28mm, if I remember correctly. I have a tripod here, but will have to look into getting one of your Gitzo tripods. I remember you saying how light they are.

I have never had the time to master the manual functions on my camera, si I will set myself a task this week to do that, and then pluck up enough courage to got out and try it out on some of our neighbours Christmas lighting. Not quite the same as The Hat but it will give me something to practise on.

Re the Dove, would a delayed flash work better? I have used that on a couple of occasion, like ar concerts, and it worked well and made sure my digital camera did not take forever trying to focus.

[Magical Dreams]

Looks stunning!

Just how we see it in our minds!!

[taylona]

I've given up with my SLR EOS. We've just bought the Fuji finepix S9500 with wide angle lens - busy reading how to use the settings. Have to see what can be produced now!