In my experience as an enthusiast photographer, the most challenging photography is not capturing wildlife in the distance, it is not trying to get a good portrait of a crying newborn, it is not capturing an Alaskan landscape in the rain. The most challenging photography is Disney Dark Ride Photography. Disney World and other theme parks include many rides that are filled with colorful vistas from the imagination and can make fantastic photographs. But at the title implies, the rides are mostly pretty dark, the photographer is in constant motion, the scene may be in motion, the lighting is constantly changing. Take for example a ride like Peter Pan’s Flight at Disney World. This iconic ride is filled with fanciful scenes that make great photographs.
The Disney World visitor may way 30-60 minutes for Peter Pan’s flight. The entire ride then lasts only 3 minutes. 3 minutes during which you are in constant motion and only have an instant to capture any given moment. Miss your chance, and it’s back to another hour on line. So here is the comprehensive guide to capturing great Disney Dark Ride photography images.
The Gear
Camera phones have come a long way and can take excellent photographs of still subjects in decent light. Don’t count on them getting a good shot on a Disney Dark Ride. You need a kit designed for low light. That means a large sensor and a wide-aperture lens. That also means forget about most point and shoot cameras, although there are some enthusiast 1″ sensor compacts that will let you get some success.
For the most part, you want an aps-c or full frame interchangeable lens camera (mirrorless of dSLR). Newer cameras, from the last 3-5 years, will have superior low light capabilities. You will want a camera with a usable ISO of 6400 at absolute minimum, preferably 25600 or higher.
The above-image from Haunted Mansion required cranking the ISO up to 51200. The degree of darkness will be extremely variable. So the better your camera can handle high ISO, the more difficult shots you will be able capture. A ride like Small World is very bright and can be shot with most cameras, but the scene above required good gear.
It goes beyond camera body, you will want a lens with a wide aperture that takes in a lot of light. This means forget about your zoom lenses. Prime lenses have wider aperture than almost any zoom. The best prime lenses have 1.4 aperture, but these lenses are heavy and very expensive. Compromising just a little bit to 1.8 lenses, you will still get great low light capability at reasonable prices.
You don’t want a long telephoto lens, as there is no chance to back up for composition on a dark ride. Thus, go for something wide or “normal view.” For APS-C cameras, that means a focal length of 24mm to 35mm. For full frame cameras, a focal length of 35mm to 55mm.
All the images in this post were shot with the Tamron 45mm f/1.8 (available for Canon or Nikon), Sony Zeiss 24mm f/1.8 or the Sony 35mm F/1.8 (For Sony APS-C mirrorless cameras).
Autofocus and Composition
You’re moving. The ride is moving. You don’t have time to “focus and re-compose.” Your senses are being overflowed by lights, color and sound. It may not be the best time to concentrate on the best rule of thirds framing.
Though focus modes will vary based on camera, I would recommend using center-point autofocus on most cameras. If you use “auto” or “wide,” then you lose control over the subject. You want to pick your subject. Unfortunately, you don’t necessarily have time to select or move the perfect off center focus point. Additionally, on many cameras, the center point may be more sensitive and accurate than outer frame focus points. So stick to center point autofocus. But BEWARE, center focused images are BORING. Thus, use cropping to re-compose your images.
Take this image of Captain Hook from Peter Pan’s Flight. You have only a couple of seconds to grab this image. You wouldn’t want the camera to focus on the pirate ship to the left. So I used center point to focus on Captain Hook and then I re-composed when cropping the photograph. The original image had a lot of empty black space on the right.
Since you are in motion, you must use continuous autofocus. On most cameras, it will be called AF-C. On Canon, it is called AI Servo AF.
This will give you the best chance of getting quick focus on the subject of your choice.
Metering
Metering is the system by which the camera judges the level of light in order to set exposure. Exposure is constantly changing in dark rides. There are times when the scene may be very dark, as in this image of London/Big Ben from Flight of Peter Pan:
While the scene is very dark, the clock face of Big Ben is lit up. Thus while this scene is very dark, care must be taken not to over-expose or the clock face would be just a bright mess with no detail.
Switching to a non-Disney theme park, take a look at these 2 photos of the Statue of Liberty head from the Spiderman ride at Universal Studios. A giant head suddenly appears in the ride, and it is actually brightly lit. You barely have a second to capture the image, so look at these 2 images taken on 2 different days:
Notice the image on the left was properly metered, preserving all of the detail. Also notice that the ISO was 200 — meaning this was actually a very bright subject. On the right, the camera over-exposed the image, washing away a lot of the detail.
Notice also, the subject is bright while the background is completely dark. Another example would be this scene of Dopey from the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train at Disney:
Dopey is bright… the gems are very bright but much of the frame is still very dark. In regular metering modes, there is a great danger that the highlights would be completely blown out.
The solution is to use spot metering. Spot metering will ignore the background and just determine the proper exposure based on your subject. This will make sure your subject is properly exposed while keeping the background pretty dark, just as it was intended in a dark ride.
But even spot metering may not be enough to protect your highlights. Looking at this image of Dopey, the gems are even brighter than his face. If you metered on his face, you may have still overblown the gems.
Protecting Highlights
Some cameras, including most recent enthusiast/pro level Nikon cameras have highlight weighted metering. This is my preferred metering mode for dark rides. It insures that no highlights will get blown out. Alternatively, if your camera doesn’t have a mode like this, then dial in 1 EV of negative exposure compensation.
The exposure compensation button dial should look something like this:
So dial in some negative exposure compensation into all your shots, effectively making the shots a little darker or a little underexposed. This will protect all the highlights in the image. The result will be a slightly underexposed image, but we will fix that down below.
Aperture / Shutter speed / ISO
You are in motion, the ride may be in motion. Therefore, you need adequate shutter speed to insure you are free of motion blur. Higher ISO will mean more grain/noise and less detail but that’s still preferable an image that is too dark or too blurry. You may as well keep your aperture as wide as possible. While this will result in narrow depth of field, you are typically concerned with a sharp image of your subject and not of the background. Take a look at this image of Wendy walking the plank on Peter Pan:
The wide aperture of 1.8 does leave the background characters outside the depth of field, making them “out of focus.” But I don’t think it takes away from the image at all. It actually helps you feel the depth of the scene.
Additionally, there often isn’t that much actual depth too a dark ride, allowing an entire frame to appear reasonably sharp even at wide aperture, as in these 3 images:
So there is no downside to shooting at wide aperture — 1.4, 1.8, whatever your lens allows.
To get adequate shutter speed to avoid motion blur, I aim for 1/125. You can go a little slower, but not much on many rides. And image stabilization/vibration reduction isn’t going to help when you’re moving.
The settings:
How to actually achieve these settings:
- Auto ISO, set with the upper limit as camera’s maximum value (whether 12,800, 25,600, 52,000)
- Many cameras allow a custom minimum shutter speed when in A (aperture priority mode). If your camera allows it, then shoot in aperture priority mode, with a minimum shutter speed of around 1/125 and aperture at 1.4 or 1.8 (or largest value — smallest number)
- Otherwise, set to Manual, with shutter speed of 1/125 and maximum aperture (1.4 or 1.8), while keeping ISO to auto. Thus, the camera metering will change the ISO in order to get the right exposure.
I strongly prefer being able to set a customized minimum shutter speed. As long as the ride is very dark, the camera will stick to that shutter speed. But if things suddenly get very bright, at least the camera can increase the shutter speed automatically to compensate. As in Splash Mountain when you’re coming out of the darkness and into the light:
If this image had been shot at 1/125, the sky would just be a white blown out mess. But the camera was set for a minimum shutter speed of 1/125 — So given the sudden bright sky, and as I was using highlight weighted metering — the camera raised the shutter speed to 1/4000 and protected the detail in the sky.
Shoot RAW, not JPEG
There are three critical types of editing we need to do to all our dark ride photos.
- Cropping
- Adjusting exposure — lifting shadows
- Reducing noise
For cropping, it doesn’t matter if you are shooting RAW of JPEG. But RAW is much better for the rest. We are shooting at high ISO. If you are shooting jpegs, the camera may apply heavy handed noise reduction resulting in smeared details. With RAW, you can choose the best balance of noise reduction yourself.
We discussed how difficult exposure can be in dark rides. RAW files give you far more latitude to fix exposure in post-processing. Above, we talked about underexposing the images slightly in order to protect the highlights. RAW files give you far more latitude in lifting the shadows in post production. Looking at the above image of Splash Mountain, the sky was perfectly preserved but we can’t see any of the cavern from which we are emerging. Since I shot in RAW, a very quick adjustment in Lightroom and voila:
Because I shot in RAW, there was a ton of details still in the shadows that I was able to recover.
So there you have all my secrets to how I shoot dark rides at Disney World and theme parks..
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You may also find helpful, my guide to nighttime landscape tripod photography and my two-lens travel solution.
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