Camera Labs

**Finally got all of the countries posted in the thread...each is a separate reply with additional countries**

I was on vacation last week at Disney World, so I had a chance to take a break from my usual bird and wildlife shooting, and instead enjoy my Disney photography...a nice mix of landscape, scenic, macro, wildlife, architecture, portrait, candid, and night shooting all available.

One thing I always enjoy doing is night shooting in Epcot, especially the World Showcase pavilions. So I figured I'd post some of last week's results, separating them by pavilion in one thread so as not to bore everyone with separate threads! To kick off, I'll start with Morocco.

Epcot center's Morocco pavilion is the only pavilion paid for and built under the supervision of the government of the country it represents. So the architecture and details have a certain depth and realism that really make it stand out to me - and when they light it at night, all those muted reds and yellows and brick colors make it very pretty too!

So, here's Morocco, with wide angle lens (Tamron 10-24), Sony DSLR-A550, tripod mounted, night shots:











Comments, questions, critique welcome.

Hi zackiedawg

I think you captured the colours really good and I like the set. The EXIF said aperture priority, did your camera work out the long exposures for you.

Cheers

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Nikon D7000, D40X, Nikkor 18- 200 VR II, f3.5-5.6, 70-300 AF non VR, Kit Lenses.

Fantasic pictures!! Really well captured...

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Nikon D300S
My Photography Website
My Flickr

Thank you 4xxxx and AL.

4x, yes, the camera in A priority mode went with the longer exposures - in order to force what I wanted, I manually set the ISO to the lowest value. I usually shoot all my night shots in either A or M mode...M when it's really challenging light, A when the light is a little better like here.

The next pavilion I'll post is Japan:





There was a great, bright full moon this night, which you can see through the clouds in the background here:



The funny spots in the sky aren't flare...they're spotlights on the clouds from one of the other parks nearby:



This one was tough - a very dark tea garden area but with bright lights - in hindsight, I should have gone with manual exposure, but I didn't realize it until too late:

I have to say I love the very dark tea garden, really good effect...

What settings did you use on that one?

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Nikon D300S
My Photography Website
My Flickr

Thanks AL. For the tea garden, I used my camera's built-in HDR mode at F6.3, metering off the bright lanterns hanging across, which made the camera choose a 5-second exposure for the highlights and a 10-second exposure for the shadows, merged in camera automatically. Pretty much the same effect could be done in post processing, by taking a 5-second and 10-second photo, and blending them in layers in post processing or using an HDR software - I enjoy that I have the feature in camera, so I don't have to do any post-processing later. The 15-seconds of total exposure is why the sky clouds are so streaky, since they were moving fast that night.

I think I need to read up on how to make HDR images, you can do it by cheating cant you, making layers of the same pic?

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Nikon D300S
My Photography Website
My Flickr

You can, but to really get it to work, you need to shoot in RAW, so you can process the same pic - one to control the highlights and one to pull the shadows up, then merging the two photos in HDR software. It'd be pretty tough to process a JPEG with that much dynamic range difference.

But as long as you think about it when you're shooting, it's pretty easy to just take multiple shots. Shoot an exposure bracket at say +-1EV, and that'll give you a 3-stop range of 3 shots, which is fine for realistic HDR processing. If you want to go for that far-out fantasy HDR look, you need to stack more shots or go more extreme in the exposure range, like +-2 or +-3EV.

Great love the tea garden, keep it up...
great place to shoot,

Another great set of night shooting, that Sony has a great feature of inbuilt HDR, I was not aware this was available.

Cheers

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Nikon D7000, D40X, Nikkor 18- 200 VR II, f3.5-5.6, 70-300 AF non VR, Kit Lenses.

It is indeed a pretty neat feature, which I think you'll be seeing on more and more cameras in the future. I believe Pentax was the first DSLR to offer a version of it - theirs requires a tripod as it does not have the ability to align handheld shots. The Sony version debuted in the A500/550, and added alignment capabilities for handheld use. I've seen the feature in a few of Sony's newer P&S models, and in som Ricoh models too.

I agree, lighting looks awesome!

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Canon 5D Mark II
Canon 24-105mm f/4.0 L

Thanks Murdock!

Here are two more showcase countries, Italy and Germany:

Really like them actually, well done!