Here a few random thoughts about our long trip to WDW this past August. This isn’t a trip report (probably boring to everyone), but more thoughts I had while carrying the camera everywhere for ten days. - Dina and I have been going to WDW together for 14 years now. We have always dealt with rain and it was never a big deal. This past August, though, we have never dealt with rain all day every day. We are quite used to the nice normal summer Florida pattern: rain for a little while, followed by a nice lower temperature with humidity through the roof! This year we timed our trip to coincide with TS Fay. It has always been a gamble for us to plan our yearly big trip in August, but we love the summer weather and gambling on hurricane timing is like buying a lottery ticket. * Normally, when it rains at WDW I just stash my camera back in the bag and wait for it to stop raining. If it is raining really hard, I put it in a ziplock bag first. This trip, though, this meant taking no pictures! So, it meant taking pictures in the rain. Here are few observations I had. -There is a limited number of times you can take your camera in and out of a ziplock bag and your camera bag while wearing a poncho before getting frustrated. I found it much easier to just wear the camera around my neck under the poncho, and lifting the poncho, whenever I wanted to take a picture. -It doesn’t matter how weatherproof your new camera is, water spots on your lens look terrible in a picture! I always made sure to have a napkin or Kleenex in my pocket, so that I could wipe the lens (with a filter on it!) before taking a picture. * I have my camera strap hooked onto my camera with small key rings. I love this setup. I only used the neckstrap when in a theme park. Anytime we were walking around a resort, or using a tripod I could quickly remove the strap. But my favorite use of the keyrings, is at all meals. I could now have the camera sitting on the table, and not have the strap falling off the edge of the table and having its weight pull the camera towards the table edge, or worry about someone pulling the strap by accident. The key rings work really fast, and I don’t have to worry about them coming off on their own. * Always check your batteries. Tim wrote a quick-tip article on checking your settings. Don’t forget your batteries. I have gotten very lazy about the camera battery. Both my D80 and D300 easily shoot all day and night on one battery. I then have a second battery that lives in the room in the charger. Every morning I swap batteries. I completely forgot about checking the batteries in my flash. We were able to make arrangement to take pictures of a couple of different room styles at the Contemporary for our Contemporary Website. Checkout is at 11am and check-in is at 3pm. But, you also have to give housekeeping time to clean these two larger rooms. At this point, we have two different castmembers helping us get into these rooms, and halfway through my sb-400 flash just dies. It is beyond just waiting a few extra seconds to warm up, it is dead! I had to excuse myself, and run back to the room to get fresh batteries. * I found out that it is easier to shoot rides with the camera set to continuous shutter release over single release. This way the camera would already be focused and would not have to refocus, just because I am taking several pictures hoping for one good one. * Don’t be afraid to use continuous high speed shutter for different stuff. It worked great for shooting monorails close up while they are moving. They can move out of your camera frame very fast when you are up close.
Near the end, did you mean continuous focus or shutter release? Other than that, very good report Craig!
continuous shutter. I have my camera set up to only fire when it is focused. so using single shot on a dark ride, meant that the camera would have to focus hunt all over again. But, continuous focus might work well too, once it grabs something it can focus on.
Okay now I understand. S = Shutter depress + focus + open shutter once + shutter release Cl= Shutter depress + focus + (open shutter + close shutter)/\ n (where n = 1 + n, beginning with n=0, until n = buffer and/or memory card capacity) while shutter release depressed So in focus mode S (single), the first shot will be in focus but on Cl/Ch subsequent shots may not be [in focus] if the subject or you are moving. In focus mode C, the camera will continue to focus and release will be dependent on release custom functions.