SpectroMagic

[mSummers]

Here's a few from my favorite Disney parade...

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http://www.pbase.com/msummers/image/825 ... iginal.jpg

 

[zackiedawg]

Nice work Michael. That parade isn't easy to shoot! Hard to find a balance between getting all the lights without blur or motion, yet not blowing them out. You seem to have controlled them very nicely! The third one with the trumpeters is especially cool.

 

[gary]

nice shots, we will be at dl, grand californian?, 2 nights post cruise in may, i devoutly hope that parade is an option then, there's something about seeing it there, knowing as others have said on here, whever i walk or sit, walt himself might have walked or sat, to me there's something almost spiritual about that
plus i haven't been to la since 1978 and karen has never been, so i feel it's only proper she get introduced to where it all began

 

[Roger]

Disney's Electrical Parade, not Spectro in SoCal. Spectro can't run in Anaheim. Well maybe over at Walt Disney's California Adventure. But DL's walkways aren't big enough.

 

[prettypixie]

These are so cool. If you don't mind, can you explain to a novice night shooter how to capture this so clearly? What type of camera lens, settings etc.

 

[mSummers]

Thanks everyone!

If you don't mind, can you explain to a novice night shooter how to capture this so clearly? What type of camera lens, settings etc.

These were all shot with a Nikon D2Xs with a 28-70mm f2.8 lens. The camera isn't really that important as long as you can shoot in manual mode and have a fast enough lens. My sister got pictures that are just as good with her D70s.

The camera was in manual mode and set to f2.8 and 320iso. Depending on how bright the floats were, I switched between 1/50s, 1/60s and 1/80s shutter speed. Most of them came out sort of dark, so I adjusted the brightness and contrast to make the images look like what I saw at the parade using Nikon Capture NX. Shooting in RAW allows you to make those adjustments much better than JPEG does. You could also increase the ISO so you don't have to tweak the brightness, but then the pictures have more graininess, and I didn't want that.

 

[PolynesianMedic]

Michael when did you take these? I had thought I heard that the trumpeters and other similar characters were supposed to be face characters now because people thought they were too creepy or something like that.

 

[mSummers]

Michael when did you take these? I had thought I heard that the trumpeters and other similar characters were supposed to be face characters now because people thought they were too creepy or something like that.

They were all taken in April 2007. I hadn't heard about them changing the trumpeters... Can anyone confirm this? I thought they were pretty cool with the blue faces.

 

[Roger]

They are face characters as of this fall I believe. Kevin Yee did note that.

 

[DisneyGeek92]

Great pics. Lights like that are hard for me to shoot.