Photo TR: Joe Finally Posts Some New Photos!

[Joe Schwartz]

I know I haven't updated my Joyrides site in like, forever, but I do occasionally post some new photos to my Flickr page. Here are my best shots from a week-long coaster trip that I took last month to Darien Lake, Canada's Wonderland (for Behemoth Bash), Waldameer, Cedar Point, and Kennywood.

 

This won't be a typical Photo TR, because I rarely shoot to document my trip. I usually spend most of my time trying to take publication-quality photos, which often means shooting train after train of random people and waiting for some good expressions. Most of these shots were relatively simple, but I'll comment on the photos below that were particularly interesting or difficult to shoot.

 

Thanks to Robb for organizing Behemoth Bash (especially the photo walkback!), and thanks to David Taylor (taytig) for being my park guide at Canada's Wonderland.

 

[Edited to include camera and lens details below]

 

My camera is a Canon 1D Mark III, a professional DSLR that's total overkill for coaster photography. I actually bought this camera to shoot roller derby, which is much more technically challenging, because it requires shooting fast unpredictable action in low light. When shooting roller coasters, it's usually in bright sunlight, and although the action is fast, it's entirely predictable, so you can often pre-focus where the train will be. Any modern DSLR is suitable.

 

My main coaster lenses are a Canon 24-105mm f/4L IS and a Canon 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS. These are relatively "slow" lenses -- their maximum aperture is only f/4 -- but I'm usually shooting coasters at f/8 or smaller, so they're more than fast enough for outdoor use. Image quality with Canon's "L" pro lenses is noticeably sharper than their consumer lenses, but the 70-300 is no slouch. It definitely helps to have image stabilization (IS), especially when using a long lens or slow shutter speed.

 

Canon and Nikon both make excellent DSLRs and excellent lenses. If roller coasters are your main subject, you don't need an expensive body -- it makes more sense to get a lower-end body and higher-end lenses.

Here's another case where my first impulse was wrong -- I thought a horizontal orientation would be best...

More great light, more reaction shots. In case it's not completely obvious by now, I usually try to compose (or crop) my photos so that the action starts from one corner of the frame and/or leads into another corner.

The first drop isn't quite long enough to appreciate the "95-degree" effect. I'd like to see Intamin try a TOGO-style twist and dive at the top of a launched lift.

I was pleasantly surprised by Maverick, enough to make it my favorite coaster at Cedar Point (followed by Top Thrill Dragster and Millennium Force). Go, Intamin!

Moving on to the clichéd Maverick shots. Plenty of good photo ops from the entrance plaza, exit platform, and nearby walkways.

Days 4 and 5: Cedar Point. I love the bright colors and great views at this park. Everything is easy to photograph, so everyone takes the same shots, but so what? Let's start with a clichéd Raptor shot.

Not quite sure what's going on at the back of the train -- I think she's either taking a photo or texting someone.

"Maybe if we paint the bridge blue, it'll blend in with the sky and nobody will notice it. Mustn't distract those drivers..."

Another from the observation tower, shot at 300mm focal length.

Taken from the observation tower at the Tom Ridge Environmental Center.

But I think it works better as a horizontal shot, because including the bridge improves the composition and tells more of the story. I actually went back to Waldameer on Day 7 to get this shot and a few others.

At first I thought the best shots of this drop would be verticals, like this photo.

Day 3: Waldameer. I took these photos from outside the park, just past the bridge.

Sledge Hammer looks much more extreme than it actually is, but I like the alien claw effect.

This photo barely made the cut. Concrete enthusiasts, rejoice!

One of my favorite shots of the trip -- I love the expressions and I'm happy with the composition, although I wish I could have avoided that fence in the corner.

I noticed a fair amount of vibration during the night ERT, which was noticeably worse over the "wheel seats" (the outer seats). The front car remained very smooth, though.

I definitely preferred the staggered seats on Behemoth over the usual cars on other B&M hypers. The longer train seemed to give a stronger pull in the back, and the inner seats are much more open.

Several times during this trip I captured people using cameras on rides -- see the guy in the upper right corner. My advice on this is: don't do it without permission, but if you're gonna do it anyway, make damn sure that camera (or cell phone) doesn't leave your hand. At least this guy is wearing a wrist strap.

Woohoo, time for the photo walkback! Cloudy skies be damned, I'll lower my standards for the occasion.

Ryan considers the choice of lovely trivia contest prizes.

Sad Robb and happy Robb during the lunchtime trivia contest. I used a large aperture (f/4) to keep the background out of focus.

Wetness achieved.

Wetness will commence in 3... 2... 1...

Colorful tower and entrance sign. I used a wide angle (24mm) and small aperture (f/16) to get both in frame and in focus.

This might be the prettiest Boomerang I've ever seen.

Ooh, a Top Scan! I have no idea why the innermost rider on arm 6 is wearing a face mask.

Silver Streak is nothing to shout about (and why isn't it silver?), but I'll shoot pretty much anything if the light is good.

I always enjoy seeing fearless kids with frightened parents.

Nice sunlight on The Fly, so I tried to get a few reaction shots. This was the best of the bunch -- good expressions, and the ponytails give a sense of motion.

For shots like this, I usually pre-focus on the track before the train arrives, but it caused the camera to expose for the sky, which left the train seriously underexposed by about 2 stops. Fortunately, I was shooting in RAW mode, which let me correct the image far better than I could have with a JPEG.

Day 2: Behemoth Bash at Canada's Wonderland. Took a few excellent rides on Behemoth during the morning ERT, then grabbed some new credits, starting with Time Warp.

I rarely bother to shoot SLCs any more, but as I was leaving the park the light was just too good to resist.

Tight crop of another 300mm shot from the ferris wheel.

Shot from the ferris wheel with a 70-300mm zoom lens.

Rode the ferris wheel a few times to get some more action shots.

Back to the high-speed photos (1/1600 second in this case).

My favorite panning shot of MotoCoaster -- this one at 1/60 second -- cropped to highlight the riders' faces.

Day 1: Darien Lake. Took a ride on MotoCoaster, then spent a few hours taking photos of it. This shot is one of many attempts to pan the camera in sync with the train, using a relatively slow shutter speed (1/40 second) to blur the background. The first two cars are reasonably sharp, but the others are blurred because they're farther away and therefore appear to move slower relative to the camera.

One last shot of the Aero 360, and that's a wrap!

Besides being a really fun ride, the Aero 360 makes great use of Kennywood's classic logo, not to mention the "aero" pun. (Nerds love puns!)

More obligatory reaction shots. I really dislike the "no single riders" rule on Thunderbolt, but at least it tends to produce a nice full train for photos.

Day 6: Kennywood. I spent most of the day riding instead of photographing (and I'd forgotten how much I liked Phantom's Revenge!), but I took a few minutes to reshoot this popular Thunderbolt scene. Shutter speed was 1/640 second to blur the train a little.

Finally, the clouds drifted away, and the sun peeked out just long enough to illuminate a single train. Mission accomplished!

My final goal for Cedar Point was to reshoot this scene, which I'd photographed in 2000 with a cheap lens on grainy 400-speed film. I patiently (i.e., obsessively) stood behind the petting zoo for two hours, waiting for the right combination of sunlight and clouds. This was almost what I wanted, but with too many clouds.

It's easy to lose perspective of just how freakin' tall that tower is, until you see an itty-bitty train in comparison.

Again, but at 1/20 second. This is about as slow as I can shoot without a tripod and still get critically sharp.

Similar to the previous shot, but at 1/40 second.

I also experimented with using a slow shutter (1/60 second) to blur the train, but without panning the camera. It helped to shoot in burst mode, because I didn't know exactly when the train would enter the frame.

Similar to my MotoCoaster panning shots at Darien Lake, I used a slow shutter (1/60 second) and tried to track the train as it launched. It took about ten tries to get one this good. Given how far I had to pan the camera (see the green lines in the trees), I'm surprised I was able to do this well.

I've probably taken this shot on every visit to Cedar Point. What the hell, I'll take another one. And why is the blue train always in the lead?

Ooh, shiny Enterprise! Must take photo.

OK, I've run out of things to say about Maverick. Comments will resume after the train has come to a complete stop.

But it feels much more dynamic as a vertical shot.

[Olsor]

Absolutely incredible photos, Joe! I've been a fan of your site since way back in the '90s. I had one of your Mantis pictures as my wallpaper on my very first PC in college.

 

Those were some amazing photos. I appreciate them all the more because I went to many of the same parks on my August trip and took a lot of the same pictures from the same spots... with a far inferior camera.

 

Joe's camera:

 

My camera:

 

I especially loved your Maverick photos. I had a hard time getting any good ones of the side of the ride closest to Mean Streak. The sun was just in a weird location. Speaking of which, I enjoyed your commentary on lighting and composition. There's definitely an art to taking a good photo. In lieu of owning a high-end camera, I've had to become adept at Photoshop instead.

 

Great stuff, Joe! I hope we see more of it up here.

[revilolee]

Amazing photos Joe. I especially liked the ones of Behemoth .

[Erik Johnson]

Awesome photos. Thank you for taking a close up of our pain while riding Time Warp.

 

[natatomic]

Your photos are amazing. Especially those shots of Maverick - they're beautiful! You're definitely inspiring me to invest in a new lens. The stock lens my camera came with just isn't doing it for me anymore.

 

Anyway, great job.

[Millennium Force 44]

Awesome photos. I am speechless.

[STR8FXXXINEDGE]

WOW!

Your photos are AMAZING!

Thanks so much for sharing them.

This really makes me want to invest in another SLR and not rely on my point and shoot.

Thanks again!

[Luka]

Awesome pictures, absoloutely awesome!

Could I get a camera name?

[Guest]

As everyone else has said, these are really amazing pictures. I've been a fan of your photos since I got into coasters and do check your Flickr pretty often (you have some of the best New Mexico Rattler pics I have ever seen), but I thought I'd comment/reflect what everyone else was saying. Keep up the great work.

[AllenA07]

Amazing pictures as always!

[Joe Schwartz]

Thanks for the compliments!

 

My camera is a Canon 1D Mark III, a professional DSLR that's total overkill for coaster photography. I actually bought this camera to shoot roller derby, which is much more technically challenging, because it requires shooting fast unpredictable action in low light. When shooting roller coasters, it's usually in bright sunlight, and although the action is fast, it's entirely predictable, so you can often pre-focus where the train will be. Any modern DSLR is suitable.

 

My main coaster lenses are a Canon 24-105mm f/4L IS and a Canon 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS. These are relatively "slow" lenses -- their maximum aperture is only f/4 -- but I'm usually shooting coasters at f/8 or smaller, so they're more than fast enough for outdoor use. Image quality with Canon's "L" pro lenses is noticeably sharper than their consumer lenses, but the 70-300 is no slouch. It definitely helps to have image stabilization (IS), especially when using a long lens or slow shutter speed.

 

Canon and Nikon both make excellent DSLRs and excellent lenses. If roller coasters are your main subject, you don't need an expensive body -- it makes more sense to get a lower-end body and higher-end lenses.

[the ghost]

beautiful. I wish I had had you as a photo teacher last year instead of my photo teacher. You understand that any photo can look good no matter what the subject but she would get mad if she did not like what was in the shot. She once gave me a C because i photographed a picture of a plant and there was a bird in the shot and her comment was birds are better than plants.

 

Anyway sorry for that brief rant, and these pictures are beautiful.

[hipbrianhop]

Amazing qaulity pictures, You are very patient to wait for the right moment to take the pic.

Well, I saved almost all of your pictures on my computer. Thanx....

[PKI Jizzman]

I just found out allll this stuff on how and where to control my apature and shutter speed on my D40...now I know what the result will be! Thanks for the great photos!

 

-JZ

[nowaymang]

Stopped by this thread to say how wonderful these photos are.

 

 

 

 

/goes off to learn patience to then learn photography.

[Team Thriller]

Best. Pictures. Ever.

 

You are the best photographer! Everyone of your pictures are like masterpieces. You must take a lot of time in each one.

 

Can't wait to see more from you!

 

--James

[BeemerBoy]

Being a fan of Joyrides back in the day, it was great to see you post these shots in here, Joe. Excellent work, but thanks even more for taking the time to explain your equipment and techniques. Great job!

[coastercub]

Wow man those are some beautiful shots....

 

You sure do know your stuff with cameras...

 

Keep em coming....

 

Great work

[Nosferatu]

Very nice pictures! The colors and lightning in some of them is just beautifull! I'm a huge fan of "blurred background" pictures and took a few myself this summer of Storm Runner. They ain't easy, but well worth the effort when you get it right

[Rousfv]

These pictures is tooo cool!

 

I haven't seen pictures with that quality before, it's too great to see!

[bigjohnson51]

Just thought I'd join the fun and tell you how incredibly awesome these photos are. Great job man!

[shrekmizen]

Awesome pic's dude im playing around with my camera to see what shots i can do waiting to pop to Thorpe Park (UK) to try outs some shots from rollercoasters

[Mr. Volcano]

Hey Joe! Thank you for sharing your pictures with everyone! They are always so beautifully captured and have great quality to them.

 

You're Millennium Force photos always turn out amazing, I try every time to catch a photo likewise, but am always un successful!

 

-Justin

[coasterdude5]

Incredible pictures man! You have some real talent there.

[zjerre]

do you upload them somewhere in wallpaper formats?

 

i really want some of those maverick shots or the launch of TTD