From Disneyland's 50th Anniversary, Mickey Mouse at the front entrance in Flowers

From Disneyland's 50th Anniversary, Mickey Mouse at the front entrance in Flowers

Mickey Mouse in the finale of Fantasmic! (the best show ever)

Mickey Mouse in the finale of Fantasmic! (the best show ever)

Mickey and Minnie on the double decker bus waving to all the guests

Mickey and Minnie on the double decker bus waving to all the guests.

Mickey Mouse in the Magical Map

Here is Mickey Mouse in the Magical Map at Disneyland.  He becomes a great painter and takes on the responsibility of the Magical Map.

Mickey Mouse holding Walt Disney's hand as part of the Partners statue

Mickey Mouse holding Walt Disney's hand as part of the Partners statue.
This is at the Hub right in front of Sleeping Beauty's Castle.

Mickey Mouse waving from the top of the Matterhorn

Mickey Mouse waving from the top of the Matterhorn.

Floral Mickey and Train Station 1965

Floral Mickey 1965

The train station looks the same but clearly Mickey has changed over the years.  He always seems to have flowers but I am not sure are really his best color.

Mickey's Soundsational Parade

Mickey Mouse

Mickey's Soundsational Parade.  1/250, f/8.0, ISO 100, 200mm
Great shot of Mickey getting the parade going.

Stream Boat Mickey in Fantasmic!

Steam Boat Mickey

This is from Fantasmic.  I changed it to black and white since it was a black and white cartoon.
This was taken with a Nikon D600, 1/500, f/2.8, ISO 2500 set at 200mm lens.

I have to wonder how he got his gloves all dirty.  I do not remember that in the cartoon.

Tea anyone? Alice in Wonderland ride at Disneyland

Tea anyone?

This is from the Alice in Wonderland ride at Disneyland.
This was taken with a Nikon D800, 1/100, f/1.4, ISO 1600 with a 35mm lens.  It had a little noise in it, next time I will try an slightly lower ISO and maybe a faster shutter speed as well.  But all in all, not bad.

America on Parade in 1976

America on Parade

1776 to 1976  Disneyland is celebrating with America on Parade.  I think these three fit right into the theme for that year.  Donald looks like he just came back from the fighting.  Mickey; of course, looks perfect!

Mickey, Donald and Pluto on Main Street in Disneyland from the 60's

Mickey, Donald and Pluto

Mickey, Donald and Pluto on Main Street from the 60's, waving hi to everyone.  The costumes have changed over the years but they will always be cute.

The Pearly Band outside of the Mickey Mouse Club

Pearly Band

This is the Pearly Band outside the Fantasy Gift Fair.  The Pearly Band has been around for a lot of years.

The Disneyland Band, which has been part of the park since its opening, plays the role of the Town Band on Main Street, U.S.A. It also breaks out into smaller groups like the Main Street Strawhatters, the Hook and Ladder Co., and the Pearly Band in Fantasyland. (From Wikipedia).  

The band is in front of the Mickey Mouse Club with Toys, Books and Games. (Games, what games?).  

Mickey and the Dragon in Fantasmic at Disneyland

Mickey and the Dragon in Fantasmic!

What a great show!  This is a picture of Mickey Mouse fighting the Dragon, (who was the evil queen or became the wicked witch). This shoot was taken with a Nikon D600 and the settings were: 1/500, f/2.8, ISO 1600, 70mm.
Even with the ISO at 1600 the picture still retains some of the details without having to much noise.

Disneyland a Photographer's Dream now in Kindle store

Disneyland A Photographers Dream

Exciting news: "Disneyland A Photographer's Dream" is now available on the Amazon Kindle store

Check it out.  

Disneyland is a great place to take a camera and lot of pictures!  This e-book has over 600 pictures of Disneyland covering rides, events, shows, parades and more.  It is broken down by “Land” with some bonus features like Fantasmic, Parades and Characters.  If you lover Disneyland this is the book for you.  It is about 300 pages with insight into the Park, some pointers on taking great photos and a lot of great pictures.  The great feature of this book is that the pictures follow right along with the ride or the show.  The pictures are high resolution so it might take a little longer to down load the book.  Please enjoy.

Only $5.99. Download a sample. 

Here is the link:

http://www.amazon.com/Disneyland-Photographers-Dream-Mike-Pierce-ebook/dp/B00RF0SBKO/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1419479165&sr=1-1

Also available on Apple's iBook Store:  https://itun.es/us/itjT3.l

Mickey at the start of Fantasmic! (one reason for a lot of Megapixels)

Mickey in Fantasmic 

Fantasmic has to be the greatest live show in the world, or dead show of all time, in the universe, for all time to come.  OK, maybe I like it, what do you think?

Here is Mickey at the start of the show with sprays of water coming down on him.  Click on the picture so you can see the detail.  

I took this with a Nikon D600, 1/400 of a second so I could stop the motion of the water, with an f/2.8 (so the only thing that was going to be in focus was Mickey, but it also opened the lens as far as it could to let in as much light as possible) ISO 1600 to off-set the high shutter speed (I might have gotten away with a slower shutter speed and a lower ISO setting but I can try that next time) with a 200mm lens zoomed in all the way.

Even with the longer lens I still had to crop the picture by about 60%.  If you crop pictures a lot then having a high megapixel camera really helps out to keep a lot of the detail.  The original picture was 24.7mbs in RAW format and the final cropped one in JPG is only 993KB.  A lot of the drop in size is converting it from RAW to JPG but with so much of the picture cropped out that reduced it a lot as well.  So if a picture starts off with 24MP and you crop it by 60% and then increase what is left to the same size as the original you end up with a picture that is about 10MP and you need ever megapixel you can have to keep as much detail as possible.  If you started with a picture that was 16MP and cropped it in half you would end up with a picture that was only 8MP.  So when someone asks if having a camera with a high number of MPs matters now you know that it can if you are going to crop a lot.

The old and the new. How things have changed and stayed the same.

 Daily Disneyland: Mickey's Ferris Wheel and from the 60's the Matterhorn, Skyway, Monorail and Autopia.  There is a lot to appreciate with these two photos.  First is the new, the Mickey Ferris Wheel with all of the colors, the big roller coaster in the background and the fact that the area where this is was a parking lot when the picture on the right was taken.  Which brings us to the vintage Disneyland photo.  We have the Skyway as it is going through the Matterhorn, the old Autopia (it was a traffic jam back then as well) and an older version of the Monorail.  

Apple iBooks “Disneyland A Photographer's Dream” https://itun.es/us/itjT3.l  (over 600 photos only $5.99) Download a free chapter today!!   Tips on taking great pictures, facts about the Park, detailed pictures of rides and shows.  

The picture on the right is from the Bill Cotter collection.  To order any of his Disneyland sets go to : http://www.worldsfairphotos.com/themeparks/disney.htm