Ahoy, Landlubbers!

Light Meter by Lisa K. Berton

If you’re like me then you’re always trying to find new ways to photograph things, especially in the parks. Although countless others have done what I’m about to suggest, you might not have, yet.

One way of getting a different perspective of Frontierland is to shoot from the Liberty Belle steamboat. Not only will your view change of Big Thunder Mountain, but you’ll pass Splash Mountain, Tom Sawyer’s Island and the Haunted Mansion as well. I have to warn you that if your camera has a short zoom of 3x or 5x optical then you might not be as impressed with the results but, it’s worth trying something new.

If your camera doesn’t offer manual settings which allow you to adjust the shutterspeed and aperature, then use the Sports Mode.

For this project I used the Canon PowerShot S5 IS (10x optical zoom) and set the camera to Manual. The ISO was 200, f7, 1/250. This kept the camera from washing out highlights from being confused by the partially cloudy skies. The shutterspeed was fast enough to catch still and moving objects while we sailed past. The aperature was closed down enough to help keep things sharp even at great distances.

Let’s take a look at my results and keep in mind, at most I took 2 shots of the same thing and I stood in the 2nd row of people.

A nice clean shot of Splash Mountain, very simple and colorful.

Here comes a train. I enlarged this and it’s still pretty darn sharp.

I was just amazed with the fact that no one was on the bridge so I grabbed the shot before someone came along.

This is my favorite shot from my cruise. I can see lots of detail, it’s framed just right (my only shot) and is something that I think is only visible if you sail the Liberty Belle.

A family of Native Americans was visited by a turtle. I don’t know if you can make him out in this picture.

Being able to zoom in on different sections of the Haunted Mansion was really cool.

When I disembarked, my view of Haunted Mansion was “fogged” by all the steam coming from the boat. I took a few shots and waited for the boat to release more steam. It would have been even spookier around sundown with some purple highlights, I’m just saying.