Photography tips please.

[Alpop]

Hi Everyone,

I've been looking through photosmagiques and the quality of the photos are fantastic. I understand the principles in high res imaging. SO i know that is one reason the phots are crisp, but there is more to it. Can anyone offer me tips and advice for taking photos in the park.

Things like, fireworks, dark rides (without flashing and blinding everyone), neon lights, etc. would be most useful.
Did photosmagiques used to have a photography tips section?
One set of photos that impressed me the most were on ride at Buzz Lightyear. The vibrancy of the colours in an obviously low light area.

[Epcot_Boy]

Hi Everyone,

I've been looking through photosmagiques and the quality of the photos are fantastic.

Things like, fireworks, dark rides (without flashing and blinding everyone), neon lights, etc. would be most useful.

For fireworks look here.....http://digital-photography-school.com/b ... fireworks/

This is really helpful..........also don't waste your time using a flash for fireworks......the flash would have a very limited distance for effectiveness and certainly wouldn't help with fireworks........or with photographing Fantillusion

Also try http://www.ehow.com/how_1361_photograph-night.html

Also have a look at http://www.photoxels.com/tutorial_learn ... light.html

Hope this helps

Epcot_Boy :ears:

[CafeFantasia]

It's hard to know where to start. But here are a few basic tips off the top of my head...

Turn off your Flash. The average person leaves their digital camera on Automatic, and ends up Flashing the majority of their subjects. The light from a Flash is obviously artificial and overrides the actual lighting that you see on your subject. Plus, if you're taking a photo of ANYTHING in the distance, your little camera Flash is never going to light it up. I've seen SO many people at Disneyland taking a photo of the castle with their Flash on. Duh.

If you have a "Rule Of Thirds" grid on your camera, use it. It will help you arrange the elements in your shot in an aesthetically pleasing way. Take care to make sure all the horizontal and vertical lines in your shot run parallel with the lines, that way, when you get home, you won't have to waste time Straightening your photos.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thirds

Make your subject BIG. If you're taking a photo of, say, a person, don't make them this tiny little dot placed randomly in your shot. Either walk towards them or use your Zoom to make them larger. You really want your subject to fill the frame, so it's 100% obvious what you took the photo of.

You asked about taking clear photos on Dark Rides. When Disney do this themselves, professionally, they get to do it the easy way. And the easy way is, you put your camera on a tripod and you put the camera in a static position, NOT on a moving ride vehicle. Disney's photographers can obviously close the ride down, get out of the vehicle, and put their tripod WHEREVER they want. Then all you have to do is turn off the Flash, and do a long exposure of the subject. Your camera will make it look great, automatically.

But, for the average guest who doesn't have this luxury, and IS on a moving vehicle, the best way to do it is to get a high quality DSLR camera, with a large image sensor, and then set the camera sensitivity (ISO) to something like ISO 400 or even ISO 800. That way, you should be able to snap a photo in the dark, on a moving vehicle, without using a Flash, and get a decent exposure with minimal noise.

Anyway, that's all for now. Hope that helped.

[Alpop]

Thanks for the advice, I'll have to check my camera, when my wife comes back with it.
I'm not sure if i can set the iso value, but the rest has certainly given me food for thought.

thanks

[Javey74]

Has anyone got any links on good tips, maybe a tutorial of using particular settings for different types of shots on the Fujifilm S1000fd Digital Camera... :?:  

I've had a bit rake on YouTube, but most of them tell you about what the camera can do, rather than showing a particular type of shot, then telling you the settings used on the camera to get the best results.. :roll:

I'd appreciate any links showing settings on that particular camera, with various shooting scenes.. :wink:  

[Barnsey313]

Hi, Just to cover some basics/intermediate techniques you may want to take a look at:
 http://www.dslrtips.com
James.

[CafeFantasia]

A great book is Scott Kelby's The Digital Photography Book. It's the 2nd Bestselling "computing" book on Amazon.com. It costs $11.99 over there, and £11.89 over here. Check it out:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Digital-Photogr ... 767&sr=8-4

[youtube:32mmn5cq]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69hmavov-44[/youtube:32mmn5cq]

[Javey74]

Thanks for those links Alan and Barnsey313, much appreciated..

Looks like I've got some more watching and reading to do now... :mrgreen:

[CafeFantasia]

I just want to add some more tips to this thread, which should be useful to anyone visiting Disneyland Paris:

- Before you go, remember to set the date and time on your camera correctly, to French local time. Photos are extremely good at helping you to remember where you were and what you were doing, at what exact time. But if the time embedded in each of your photos is incorrect, they're not going to be as helpful.

- Remember to charge up your camera every night while you're sleeping. It's not much fun being in the parks and then discovering the battery in your camera is low on power. So whenever you're in your hotel room, charge up your camera. Even if you haven't used it much, charge it up.

- Take photos of details you don't want to forget. For example, take a photo of your hotel's map. Take a photo of the room number outside your room. Take a photo of all the food you eat. Take a photo of merchandise in the shops that you'd like to buy, even if you don't buy it.

- Take all of the Memory Cards you have with you. Even if you have one massive 8GB or 16GB SDHC card, it's always a good idea to use multiple cards. If that one card goes wrong, or shows some kind of read/write error, that's all of your photos gone. By spreading your photos over multiple cards, you avoid the risk of losing all of them.

That's all for now :-)

[CafeFantasia]

A few more tips I thought of:

- Every day (e.g. in the morning in your hotel room) check your camera's lens for smudges or drops of rain. Any kind of dirt or debris on the lens can blur photos and add white spots to your photos when you use a flash. Watch out for any drops of water, or mist created by some of the attractions, getting on your camera's lens.

- Before you go, reformat all of your memory cards in your camera. Don't just delete the photos off the card, or attempt to format the card by inserting it in a computer. Do a full low-level format in the camera.

[Javey74]

Can anyone tell me how much rain is too much rain on the external body of a digital camera. I make sure to keep rain off the lens, but I often wonder how much water is acceptable on the main body of my camera. Whether it be exposure from light misly rain, to a light shower, obviously not heavy rain.. :-k

I own a Fujifim S2980 - 14MP x 18 Zoom camera..  

[grovesie]

hI,

A few more tips-

If your camera has A mode(aperture mode) or S mode(Shutter mode). I would use these. With A Mode you set the aperture an dthe camera does the rest, with S Mode you set the sutter speed and again the camera does the rest. For every day objects I would use F8( most cameras optimal setting), this will keep subject in focus and some of the back ground. If you want the subject in focus and the back ground blurred then lower the F number.

Change the white ballance also, an auto white balance will not give as nice a shot as using a cloudy or shade setting.

depending on camera don't be affraid to use a hi ISO setting for low light pictures.

Most photos can be revamped after your trip with  photo editing software.

As siad before ensure batteries and charged and that you have enough storage, not amusing if you run out of both

If you have the room on a memory card just shhot away, photos look very different when view on a larger screen of a computer.

Try to use a tripod for firework shots and use S Mode, try long expoeure 2 -3 seconds and shortening the shutter speed. If your camera has the option to use a remote shutter release or cable then use this to reduce camera shake.