Disney Starlight: Dream the Night Away Parade (Part I)
All photos were taken with a Nikon Z9 mirrorless camera and Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 Di III VXD G2 lens. I used Joanie's advice from her recent experience of photographing the "Paint the Night" parade in Disneyland. Joanie used a Nikon Z9, too. I set Exposure to Center-weighted metering which worked really well. Focus settings were Wide-area Auto Focus (AF) and Auto Subject Detect while she used People detection. It seemed to pick up the people at the top of the floats really well.
I did use Auto ISO with a Maximum of 10,000. Joanie manually adjusted her ISOs. The only time it hit the limit was when I had my shutter speed too high or the subjects were too dark (see ground entertainer photo examples). If you see any photos with an ISO over 7200, I used Lightroom's new non-destructive AI Noise reduction on it.
I photographed both the 9PM and 11PM parades.
First up is the 9PM parade. First photo shows you where I was in relation to Main Street USA. When I arrived at the Magic Kingdom around 3:30PM, people were already staking out location up and down Main Street USA. With a heat index of over 110 degrees F, I was not going to do that. Instead I rode a few rides and enjoyed a Dole Whip snack. I got to this location at 5:50pm. Luckily, clouds had moved in but thankfully rain never materialized.
I processed all the photos in latest version of Lightroom Classic and made extensive use of all the Masking tools when appropriate.
This was my shooting location. Again, since I did not stake out a location, I had to settle for the best I could get. About 30 feet past Casey's. A bit past the garbage cans nearest Casey's.
1/40s, f/8, ISO 560, 28mm FL
The Blue Fairy Float leads off the parade in a very impressive manner. I lightened up enough of the background so you can see the Ice Cream Palor to judge scale. There are two other characters on this float, Pinocchio and Geppetto, dancing behind a screen which clears and then goes opac. I did not get useable images of them.
1/500s, f/2.8, ISO 720, 28mm FL
Frozen II Float featured Elsa and the rest of the cast in screens about the float. Elsa is well lighted here as she is looking down. You can see the three lights illuminating here at the front of the float. Most of the time Elsa and other other characters would have their heads up and get a lot of shadowing about their faces.
1/400s, f/2.8, ISO 900, 28mm FL
Princes and Princesses float was next featuring some of our favorite royal couples dancing and waving to guests.
1/125s, f/2.8, ISO 320, 28mm FL
Here is Princess Tiana and Prince Naveen on the float. Naveen has some motion blur due to the shutter speed I selected.
1/125s, f/2.8, ISO 1250, 75mm FL
Coco is a colorful and beautiful sounding float. Trick here is to get the white balance on Miguel correct. I had to fix that in post.
1/200, f/2.8, ISO 1000, 34mm FL
