May 2018 Trip Report

Yes, it was! A little quiet time walking around to ease into it. I’ve been tagging some photos and making quick edits to others so I can upload. Later I’ll go back for a more in depth run at edits to show the difference.

I have some pretty good ones, and ones I need to delete. I screened through a lot while we were still there, waiting to see some on a bigger screen. Some will survive and others won’t. Whatever the case, some massive uploads coming.

I hope my shots with my iPhone and DSLR come close to doing the parks and resorts justice. Got a ton to upload, and hoping to start on that in the next day or 2.

that’s a great story. I’m a VERY amateur photographer, and I guess you’d have to say photography is my mid-life crisis. There’ll be more on this in later trip report installments, but here’s my take on this:

We didn’t have that much rain last week, but the light and skies just weren’t very good overall. So there were times when I just kept my camera in my bag and focused (hahahaha!) on watching our surroundings and watching my wife and kids, making sure to burn those images into my mind, rather than onto an SD card.

Last Thursday we went to Animal Kingdom, and in the afternoon went back to Animal Kingdom Lodge. While we hit the pool, I ran 2 timelapses, one of the sunset over Kidani Village. But while it was just getting started, we decided to go back to Animal Kingdom. So I had a problem: interrupt a possibly killer timelapse and take my camera, or do the unthinkable and go with just my iPhone? So I left the timelapse running, and you know what? I had a ball walking around without a camera bag. And we had a great time. I got some OK shots with my phone, not nearly as good as I would have, but hey, I figure there’s always next time.

One day phone camera technology will get to the point where DSLRs are unnecessary for everyone except professionals. But in the meantime, to get the kind of shots I’d like, you gotta carry all that stuff. There’s definitely a time for it, but on our trip last week I did work hard to find a balance between too many shots and not enough. I came away with a kind of wistful thinking about the shots I’d still like to get. But the reality is I’d probably need to make a solo trip to do it. And that would be fun, and in a way I’d like to see what I could do with several days to shoot away, but even with that, I’d be really sad to be there without my wife and kids. So if I never get all my dream shots, well, that’s ok.

I posted both yesterday – I actually have a YouTube channel believe it or not, because I’ve written some iOS apps just for fun and also did those time lapses of Kidani Village, and one here in Baton Rouge. Both links are on my wall or should be but I’ll put one in this comment and the other right after in another comment. I tried putting both in the same post yesterday and it didn’t work for some reason. Here’s the afternoon timelapse:

one comment on the timelapse videos is next time I’ll weigh down the tripod – I was surprised by the amount of camera shake, but I’m very early in learning how to shoot time lapses, so part of the learning curve is taking care of avoidable flaws like that I guess. At any rate, it led to a fun afternoon and evening.

thanks! hoping to upload today. but of course my careful planning has gone awry even before 8 am, so we’ll see…

Thanks for the compliment! In my case, not too complicated on the setup: sturdy tripod (but as you can see, still some camera shake, so I should’ve weighed it down), DSLR capable of interval timed shooting, then I used Lightroom to put all the shots together.

Ok – camera settings. I have a Nikon D5300 that has interval timer shooting, and I set this based on what looked like proper exposure in Manual mode. I set either for every 5 seconds or maybe 10, depending on how long I shoot the timelapse. You’ll end up with anywhere from 300 shots (or for the sunset, I shot 999, the max my camera will do, knowing I’d probably just delete a bunch).

For these 2 timelapses I can’t remember the exact shutter speed, but it was pretty fast due to the bright skies. I set the Aperture at f/11 to keep everything pretty sharp, and I used autofocus to focus on Kidani Village, and then I turned autofocus OFF so the camera wouldn’t search (and maybe fail) to find focus while shooting, possibly screwing up the whole thing. That also lets the focus stay constant as long as you don’t mess with the lens. I turned my lens vibration reduction to OFF because I was on a tripod. If you have a lens with VR and leave it on while on a tripod, sometimes the camera will introduce some shake on its own because it thinks you’re shooting handheld.

Last, I shot these in .jpg format, knowing I’d not worry too much about a lot of post processing. File sizes are much smaller that way. Even with that, you’ll end up taking a lot of SD card space when doing a timelapse.

So then you start the timelapse! Maybe you shoot 30 minutes, or in the case of the sunset, I let it run for 2 hours.

When you’re done, import files into whatever program you use. In my case I use Lightroom, and there are timelapse templates you can use. I did a few minor edits to all the shots but nothing major.

Import the photos, let the computer sit for a while as it puts them together (best thing to do is start the program to work, then go eat or something), then tell the computer where to save your video. Then watch the results.

Hope that helps!