Disney’s Hollywood Studios

Cloudy sky was the first thing we realized early in the morning while we waited for our shuttle service to bring us to Disney’s Hollywood Studios and yes, it did rain a few times during our visit there but we never let the weather dampen our mood as we jumped from studios to studios to indulge ourselves in the magical fun there. For my post here, instead of showing my photos taken there, I will give it a change and post a video that I have taken of the parade there.

Fortunately, it was only drizzling and the parade still went on, otherwise, from what I heard from the staff that it will be cancelled if the rain is too hard. I stood myself under a tree and close to it so as to make sure that I am not blocking anyone’s view of the parade while I’m recording the parade with my fisheye 8-15mm F4L on my 5D II handheld. I should have known to get a small and portable monopod with me as I stood there holding my camera in position to record the video for the whole parade, it was not easy. My arms started aching while I have to control my breathing to stop my camera from moving due to the movement of my chest. You can notice from the video that it is not totally stable, a monopod will definitely do the trick.

Please enjoy my video. Cheers!

 

Magic Kingdom night parade

It always seems like the clock is ticking away so slowly whenever I wait for the night parade to start in Disneyland. Thousands of LEDs will be flying past me in just few minutes’ time and I was still indecisive on which mode should I use for the night parade, pictures or video? Eventually, I somehow convinced myself to take video recording of the night parade with 50mm F1.2L and so, this will be my second time of taking video of the night parade in Disneyland, last one was Tokyo Disneyland night parade, the video that I took when I last visited Disneyland in Tokyo gave me wonderful memories indeed and this is also part of the reason why I have decided to also take a video of the night parade in Magic Kingdom in Orlando, Florida.

This time is a little different as the lens used in this video is 50mm F1.2L which is something that I have wanted to try for the first time. The night parade went on and I was there half kneeling while keeping my camera handheld for the whole parade. Well, the parade took longer than I expected and the night parade outlived the 4 GigaByte limit of my 5D II. With lots of handshakes as well in the video, I chopped up the videos into pieces and put them together as nicely as possible. Oh yes, this time, I have my ZOOM H1 sound recorder with me which is a great piece of equipment that I have. The sound quality is definitely much better than the mic on board the camera.

The night parade was still as amazing as I last remembered of the last night parade in Tokyo. The LEDs remained so mesmerizing in my eyes and familiar music filled the air while the parade past by. This is all how I like it, fond memories fresh in my mind and beautiful images and videos posted here to share with everyone my sentiments.

 

 

Magic Kingdom Park

As a part of our plan during our stay in Orlando, we visited Magic Kingdom Park in Disneyland. When we reached Epcot, we were overwhelmed by big crowds of visitors staying the line to have their bags checked by securities as a routine while getting in. Taking a sky train around Disneyland is already quite exhilarating for us, not to mention that we took a ferry across Seven Seas Lagoon (man-made lake) in Disney World. The warm weather was easy on us and made it a great day to have my photos taken while we were visiting Magic Kingdom Park.

It was a great choice on my side that I traveled light again as Magic Kingdom Park is so huge that walking around can easily tire us out. My choice of lens in my crumpler bag were 16-35mm F2.8L, 8-15mm F4L fisheye and 50mm F1.2 while fisheye lens still remained as my main lens for fun shots there. Most of the pictures were edited with photoshop and cropping was done as well. During our visit there, the park was somehow crowded and the line for the rides was really long and we experienced almost 45 minutes of wait for a Winnie the Pooh ride. But it was still a lot of fun for us there.

At the entrance

A parade happening.