Invertalon

Thank you everybody for all the compliments! I do have some more photos I may be able to throw up later on today.. I have another photo TR I posted two weeks ago I believe it was, HERE which you can take a look at, although the shots from this week are a bit better due to lighting and such IMO. But worth a look anyway! Glad you are all enjoying the photos... I will have more as the season goes on. I will probably just add them to this post though so we don't have a dozen CP photo TR's by the time the season is over from me. I will have some from the shows, at night and of course Halloweekends ( I am very prepared this year for it ). So sticky this thread for updates throughout the season! Thanks again everybody... If anybody has any questions just let me know. -Steve

zburns999, Honestly, I go many times a season (basically once a week) and you can never guess the crowd level at this place. Usually, it always is busy (to be honest), however the best days to go are those with rain in the forcast. Rain scares people away, but you also risk too much rain to ruin your day. For us, we never wait more than 10-15 minutes for a ride at CP... Anymore, we just skip it. I know this is not an option for most who go once a year and such, but early morning and evenings are your best times for riding. Mid-day, the lines are usually 45min or more. Best option though is to stay at resort or have a platinum pass for early entry. We usually can knock out a maverick ride, MF, Raptor, and get to TTD before the gates open at 10... After that, you can make a quick lap on Magnum and other "smaller" rides with minimal waits in the morning. In late evening, busses usually pack up and leave and families get tired and head out. Beyond 8pm the lines slowly dwindle away usually, so they end up a bit shorter. This is not always the case, but is just what I have noticed.

I shoot in RAW (meaning the camera does NO processing to the image... I get basically a photo negative to work with) and do the editing in Adobe Lightroom 3. Most of the images had no color adjustments done to them, but only exposure/level adjustment. The nice blue hues from the sky come from circular polarizing filters, not editing or saturation push. The lens used was a 300mm prime lens, there is no 'zoom' on it. Zoom is simply a ratio of the maximum to minimum focal length of the lens... For example, a 50-100mm lens is a 2x zoom... a 200-400mm lens is still a 2x zoom... Same with a 12-24mm. Big difference in focal length though. Zoom has nothing to do with how far you can reach, but in point-and-shoot cameras is marketed as such. Prime lenses are usually faster (wider apertures), render better colors/contrast and are sharper than zoom lenses. Many photographers prefer prime lenses because of this. You do lose the versatility though of zooming though, so it makes you think about your composition more before taking the shot.

I worked on Steel Venom at GL and to my knowledge from talking with maintenance, it has never touched the bumpers. Anytime the ride went above the designed speed it would e-stop itself and fault out. This would also happen if the computer "lost" the train or the LIM's misfired. I don't know if any of the other impulses have done it though.. I am guessing they have not though.

Sure, I would be happy to send you the full image. Just let me know what your desktop resolution is so I can resize accordingly before sending to you. Send me an email or PM here with your email address so I can email it to you. Thanks for the comments everybody! -Steven

Hey, I really appreciate that, thank you! And no, I am no professional by any means. Just enjoy taking photos! I will have to maybe post up my SFoG and SWO photos eventually... Maybe I will work on doing that later this week. Thanks again, -Steve

UPDATE: PAGE 5 - Including Snoopy on Ice and a cool shot of MF. Stopped by the park yesterday... Grabbed some more pics during the middle of the day. Crowds very, very light. Rain was the cause of lack of crowds, although we only had about two "drizzle" periods of maybe 15minutes. Anyway, made for excellent riding... Throughout the few hours we were there (9am to 3pm) rode MF 2x with a two train wait (1-2 + 9-2), Dragster once (walkon 1-1), Maverick walkon (1-2), Blue Streak walkon (1-3) plus the cable cars, train, the arcade for some bowling (love that game) and a stop at the petting zoo of course. The rest of the day we just walked around taking photos, enjoying the nice cool weather. Beautiful Day! Had lunch at the midway market which was quite good, and cheap ($12 all you can eat) compared to the $17 for dinner serving. All in all, was a great day at the point. Will be back possibly Friday to check out Starlight and may bring the tripod along for some night shots around the park. Depends how I feel though For those interested, for these shots I used my Canon 7D along with my 300mm f/4L IS and 24-105 f/4L IS lenses. Most of them with the 300mm though. Also, I do sell full size prints of these images (and any in my flickr account) in almost any size if interested up through about 20x30" in size depending on the photo. PM with any questions or pricing. And of course, no watermark on ordered prints. Photos are printed from an excellent online lab with amazing print quality and shipped directly to you within a few days. Here are the photos from the day... Enjoy! Main Gate Banners Raptor Snoopy! Down we goooo! TTD launching Up and over! 3..2..1.. GO! Hair up! Looks like they had fun! Corkscrew Geek Shot These guys make me laugh... TTD Hello Snoopy Mean Streak.... Quite rough this year (more than usual) "insert caption here" Another Candid Teach her good driving habits young! Upside down? Or right-side up? Airtime! Epic Uniforms... Nice sign, at least... STR Geek Shot STR Geek Shot #2 Where it all begins... Seriously Twisted! Get Ready... Here We Go! This is my turkey... I name him every year and feed him when I visit. This year, his name is Mr. Sheffield. Hello up there! He was doing something... Not sure what though. Nice overview... And no, I did not go crazy with blue-saturation... That was out of the camera using special filters. I did not touch the saturation View of MF from STR MF overbank - Geekish Shot Mantis Trim Brake! Note all the empty rows... Those are actually pretty awesome... But I buy them at the store versus the park.. Plus, I don't want to walk around with that in front of thousands of people. Skyride Geek Shot Scenic Shot How times have changed! Giant Wheel Plunger! Maxair Riders <3 Donuts Weee Raptor Brace! And I will close this TR with this shot... Can anybody guess from where this is located? (easy!)

If you rode Storm Runner, Kingda Ka you will have NO trouble with. I find the acceleration on Kingda Ka to feel slower then that of Storm Runner. It is not worse by any means. It almost feels like the ride is 'switching gears' like a car, gradually increasing in power. Dragster on the other hand, is much more intense and consistent throughout the acceleration. But yeah, the launch is no different... The duration is just longer. As far as heights, honestly, you are up there for such a short amount of time you are already down before you think about it. I have ridden Dragster endless times by now and very rarely ever notice the height. Kingda Ka felt less tall actually, due to the lack of scenery compared to Dragster. Looking down at Millennium Force, other rides and lake is much more impressive than a parking lot and forest. It really is not bad... GO for it. You will wonder why you ever even thought about being scared afterward. Looks much worse than it is.

Some of my latest shots:

My homepark was GL/SFO/SFwoA/GL 2.0 in which I went almost every single week (live 20mins away)... However, since the closure my new homepark has been CP. We usually end up going about every weekend, but do little riding. We may ride in the morning for platinum entry and on non-busy days, but we will go see the shows... take photos... go to the beach... people watch... all that type of stuff. We will enjoy starlight and especially halloweekends when it begins. At times, it does get boring... However, by staying shorter periods of time and doing other things then just riding coasters really keep it interesting. It sucks the drive is an hour for me now, versus 20mins, but it is better than nothing!

"Meet Phil Dawson, Kicker for the Cleveland Browns Friday June 4th in front of the Game Day Grille"

Added a few more photos

Thanks! Yeah, different monitors can give very different results with photos. I have my monitor calibrated for photo editing and so when I send for printing they come back identical to what I see on the screen. Many monitors come way too bright and vivid... When I calibrated my monitor the difference was crazy, but my prints come back flawless now. I can't wait to play with my new 300mm f/4L IS coming in tomorrow at the park this weekend. I just love the candid's you can get with a telephoto like that. Not to mention, on the 7D with the 1.6x "crop factor", my equiv. reach compared to standard film is 480mm. Add in my 1.4x teleconverter, I have the ability to 'reach' 672mm at f/5.6, which is quite awesome. I am looking forward to the shots I can get up to the top of Dragsters top hat, I just hope the weather is clear and nice again.

Hey everyone, Appreciate all the comments! As far as the colors go, I did some minor tweaking to some of the photos but many are right out of the camera. The lenses I used render beautiful colors and contrast and really don't need much post-processing at all. The hardest part was dealing with the harsh sun that day, but the photos turned out pretty well considering. The camera I used was a Canon 7D with 135mm f/2L (most of those shots above with this lens), 24-105 f/4L IS and Tokina 12-24mm f/4 lenses this time around. Nothing too crazy telephoto wise. Again, thanks for the comments everybody! I will have plenty more as the season goes on.

Just have some photos from my weekly trip to the point... Not too many, but I will have plenty more as the season goes on (if enjoyed). Enjoy! Blue Steak Raptor Raptor Geek Shot (looks cooler full size!) Raptor Rollin' Turnpike Cars This amazing statue by the MF gate... Wicked Twister Area Raptor... Again.. Rollin' Zero-G Wildcat Riders The "MF" shot... Everybody has it Cardinal over by the petting zoo! Usually only see seagulls around these parts! This is Mr. #8085... Very cute goat! Frontier Town Rapids Maverick Brace for impact! Airtime! Loop-de-Loop Wheel Geek Shot Cute little goose... Plenty of them all around the park! Skyhawk Skyhawk #2 - Got to love the expressions... TTD... Broke of course! CP Main Gate Maverick Maxair Midway Overview of the Wicked Twister Area. B+W Blue Streak Wetness! Airtime! MF Drop Raptor Another Candid of Blue Streak

From this past weekend in Pittsburgh:

Knowing CF, it will def be a stop/go deal.

Hmmm.. You sure? I would figure at f/16 you may have too shallow depth of field... You may want to try f/22 at the same shutter and ISO. Would get excellent results! To the original poster, if you really don't want to learn what you need to operate the camera properly, just leave it in Auto... It will be best that way. If you want to learn how to actually use the camera, read the manual and practice practice practice. Start out in shutter or aperture priority modes and get used to how they work and the results you get from them. Photography is not something your equipment does for you. Even with the best body and lenses you can still take horrible photos. Your best bet is to start off by throwing it into shutter priority mode (Tv mode on Canon, might be S for Nikon?) and set it to 1/1000, Auto ISO and throw it into Evaluative Metering to start. Try that out and see how they work for you. Once you get comfortable with playing in that mode, throw it into Aperture Priority (Av Mode) and play with the Depth of Field, using Auto ISO for now. Once you are comfortable, then start setting ISO manually and eventually play in Manual mode to see how ISO, Aperture and Shutter Speed all work together to create your image. You by then should have good idea what you can do with your camera and how to create compositions you want in your photos.

Some of my photos from this past weekend at Thunder over Louisville in Kentucky: First photo is our location along the river, followed up by some firework shots.

I had some Windows 7 issues for sometime in the beginning with BSOD's, but it was some driver issues that once corrected made Windows 7 stable as can be. If I have issues with "Program Stopped Responding" like I had with some video software I had, I put it into XP or Vista SP2 capability mode and it runs fine. It's not perfect, but there are ways to fix the issues (most of the time). I really enjoy the OS, more than XP and MUCH more than Vista. Running Windows 7 Profressional 64 Bit.

I think you mean the 500D (or Rebel T1i)... The 50D has NO video capability. At this time, only the T1i, T2i, 7D, and 5D II have the ability in the SLR range. Just wanted to correct you in case people were interested in the cameras. For myself, I use the Canon 7D along with the Canon 70-200mm f/4 L IS, Canon 24-105 f/4 L IS, Tokina 12-24mm f/4 and Canon 50mm f/1.8 lenses. I also have teleconverters, various filters, tripod/monopod, flash units, etc... Love the camera, it is perfect for park shooting. I usually take tons of photos but plan to do more HD video shooting this summer. Once they release (if they do) a firmware update enabling some audio control, I will buying some auxiliary mic's for my shooting as well. Until then, its not worth it.

I emailed Ole about multiple CPU compatibility and this is what he wrote back: "Hello, yes, NL2 will make use of multicore CPUs. E.g. the dynamic clouds make use of any core that is available. It runs up to 20% faster in average on my dual core CPU compared to single core mode. I haven't testet more cores, but I do not expect any large benefits from more than 2 cores because the program is limited by the GPU in general. Regards, Ole"

I can't wait... Got my Q9550 overclocked to 3.5ghz with my 275 GTX ready for it... Hopefully Ole wrote it so it utlizes dual/quad cores!

You got some killer photos though.. Not bad at ALL! Love the snake shot, myself!

Changed! How could I forget it?