Spin, Whirl, and Ghostly blur at Magic Kingdom!

zackiedawg

zackiedawg

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Back yesterday from Mousefest, and still have lots of photos to process and resize for web...it'll probably take me a few days to get them all done. But I did start on a few yesterday, including some more of my experimental daytime slow shutter stuff from around Magic Kingdom.

Rather than just people, I decided to play around with some of the rides. The Dumbo ride sounded like a fun one to try...so I gave it a go with a 2 second shutter (ND400 filter applied, which is just about the only way to use that long of a shutter in the middle of a hot, bright afternoon):

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A girl stepped into my field of view, and I was going to wait for her to pass...but she was staying so still, I decided the effect might be even more interesting with her not blurred but the ride spinning away behind:

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It works pretty well for landscape shots too...because of the long shutter and low ISO, the saturation is rich and the waters smooth nicely...the waterwheel has blurred itself in this 5 second shot of Harper's Mill:

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The paddlewheeler was extremely bright and white, so I could only get away with 2 seconds...but I like the richness of the sky and smoothing pattern on the water with the slower shutter:

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Handheld on the Peoplemover (TTA), the ND400 let me use a 3 second shutter to get motion blur effects of the surrounding landscape:

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I tried a Frontierland people blur shot...shooting through the shade of the trees I pushed 7 seconds. In hindsight, the sky has some blowout as well as some of the points of sunlight...so this would have worked better with the sun behind me instead of shooting into it!:

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Once again, I didn't think about using the filter until the last day...I need to remind myself to play around with it more while I'm up there. Based on how the Dumbo effect came out, I think I will try this on some of the other moving rides when I'm there in January!

Comments, critique, questions welcome.
 
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Cool effects, Justin! I like the girl in front of the Dumbo ride the best.

It got me wondering though, is there a way to freeze the Dumbos in the blur so you can see what people are riding on? Being in daylight, a flash probably wouldn't be strong enough. Double exposure maybe? Is there a way to do that with a digital camera?
 
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double exposure would probably require a tripod and a long exposure stacked with a short exposure....
 
very very nice Justin. I'm definitely bringing my ND with me in 6 weeks. Heck I may not be bringing any of my own lenses at this point! ;D
 
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Exactly...double exposure with digital is technically more easily done by just stacking two photos in post processing. It would certainly be possible - you would just have to coordinate the short exposure so that the ride cars are on the same plane as the long exposure shot. Certainly a flash wouldn't be effective in daylight - that technique works well at night, or possibly even in late-day light...but not this bright in the afternoon.

I may try that in January...I hope to take more shots like this, and hopefully the parks will be less crowded so I can take some wider shots too without too much people interference...so I'll try to remember to snap a few short exposures right after the long ones.
 
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"rlongenbach" said:
very very nice Justin. I'm definitely bringing my ND with me in 6 weeks. Heck I may not be bringing any of my own lenses at this point! ;D
Click to expand...

6 weeks...when are you going to be up there next? I'll be up there again from Jan 25th to Jan 29th, which is about 6 weeks from now. Maybe we'll be up there the same time. We can do an ND shooting day! ;)
 
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I'll just miss you. Arriving very late on 2/1; conference is on M/Tu/We, then leave Friday.
 
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How do you take those long exposure shots in the daytime. I can't get my setting correct so that I can use that slow of a shutter speed.
 
Which model do you have? Some (again, some) have the ability to add a special adapter to take filters.
 
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It's not a name brand. I think it's Norcent I bought it before I was well educated on photography and before I new the megapixels weren't everything
 
You can get the effect with most cameras, if you can get an ND filter with alot of light-stopping power. An ND400 and similar filters are good for 8-10 stops of light - which is a bunch - so the camera is essentially shooting as if it were nighttime - long shutters required.

You could fool a P&S with these filters, or anything dark and see-through that you can hold over the lens (the lens of a welder's glass, those celophane gel squares they give out when watching eclipses, etc.). Obviously, the better the optical quality of the thing you put in front of the lens, the better the result.

Of course, don't forget to check the maximum shutter length your camera can shoot before spending any money on the accesories - if your P&S has a maximum 1-sec shutter...you're not going to be able to shoot long enough to overcome the filter or get much of an effect.

Thanks all - PBase, the site where I have my galleries, is having a catastrophic server failure this weekend that may take days to fix...so many of my posted photos aren't working right now. If you can't see any of the above links, that could be the reason...so please be patient with my spotty posting until they've got the problem solved over there.
 
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Nice work Justin!

"Scottwdw" said:
It got me wondering though, is there a way to freeze the Dumbos in the blur so you can see what people are riding on? Being in daylight, a flash probably wouldn't be strong enough. Double exposure maybe? Is there a way to do that with a digital camera?
Click to expand...

I don't think a flash would be strong enough in daylight, but at sunset it could look awesome. I have tried this at night, but the results weren't the best. I didn't have a flash that worked on my camera the last time I was down there, so I was taking 1 second shots while pressing the test button on my old Minolta 360PX flash. Now I have a SB800, so I expect better results next time. If you have the time, its definitely worth a try. Here's the best one from my last trip...

original.jpg
 
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Thank you Medic...it was alot of fun. Gotta try it more next time in January.

Michael, That's a great result - you can make out the horses yet it still implies and catches the motion.

I agree that in bright daylight, no flash will likely be enough to stop the action...but dusk and night would be no problem at all. I've done a few slow-synch flash shots at night to get light trails streaming off of moving objects, but haven't tried it with rides yet.

For daytime images - next time I'm playing with the ND400 filter, I'm going to take a few shots at normal shutter speeds too - and see how well they blend together in post processing when layered...that might produce the same look as slow shutter & flash.
 
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