Photo TR: Cedar Point 6/6/2010

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!)

OMG

Are you a professional?

Seriously dude, your pictures are the best on the site. Every time I see a TR from you or a post from you in a picture thread, I get excited. These pictures are fantastic. Cannot wait for the next set!

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

^Yes please on the SeaWorld pictures! I love me some Manta!

^Jordan, you are obsessed. Haha

But seriously, Steve, these photos are outstanding. In fact, the picture below may be my favorite picture I have ever seen. Could I please get a larger, hi-res version of it? (Preferably without the watermark, but I completely understand if you don't want to do that. I'd just like to use it as my desktop background.)

http://themeparkreview.com/forum/files/img_1866.jpg

Thanks for sharing these! You have made me even more excited (if that's possible) for my trip to Cedar Point on Thursday.

Amazing photos. I hope to someday be as good.

I had friends there the same day who only get to visit once a year and they were super happy to find such short lines.

Makes me wonder, why does Maverick need OTSR?

These photos are absolutely astonishing! Thank you for sharing them. I especially love the ones of Mantis and STR!

  DBru said:

But seriously, Steve, these photos are outstanding. In fact, the picture below may be my favorite picture I have ever seen. Could I please get a larger, hi-res version of it? (Preferably without the watermark, but I completely understand if you don't want to do that. I'd just like to use it as my desktop background.)

 

http://themeparkreview.com/forum/files/img_1866.jpg

 

 

Thanks for sharing these! You have made me even more excited (if that's possible) for my trip to Cedar Point on Thursday.

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

WHOW AMAZING !!! great pictures !!

hope i can see more from youre work in the future

Looks like a 300mm zoom? But then again I haven't taken the time to walk back to MF's exit to take pictures, looking at your shot at the top of the hill. Any color editing again?

Nice stuff.

First off, absolutely terrific pictures. I take photos of theme parks as well and yours top everything I have seen or done myself. You mentioned before adjustments in your camera for the colors (because the blues were amazing), what do you do?

Do you use photoshop or lightstudio?

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.

Wow! Spectacular Photos. I look forward to the next TR from you.

These are like HD Pics! wow.

Awesome pics!

First off, incredible pictures! I do have a question, though. Is the park normally this empty on late-May/early-June weekdays? Because I passed up on an opportunity to go to Cedar Point last Thursday, as I feared that with only six or seven hours to spend, it wouldn't be worth the drive. However, your photo TR as well as PKIjizzman's photo TR seem to suggest otherwise. A two train wait for Millennium Force?! I don't think I've ever waited less than two hours--nevermind two trains!

But yeah, great photos man.

Amazing pics, thanks for sharing!!

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.

  Invertalon said:

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.

Ok, I still have yet to try to shoot in RAW. I meant to say Lightroom, I don't know why I said Lightstudio. I am going to look into the filters. I use a Nikon D90 and am trying to shoot in manual mode. I use an 18-105mm lens, but I'm not sure if I want to get fixed focal length yet. Thanks for the insight!

Unbelievable photos, you have a very good eye for photos, composition is amazing!

I am looking into either a Nikon D5000 or a Canon 450d/500d but I cannot make up my mind as to which one to go for!!! It is a minefield of figures and details when looking at DSLRs, then you have the lenses! I was even more blown away about the lenses, back in the day I had a Canon SLR with 2 lenses, a TeleZoom and a Standard Zoom (cannot remember which levels though)

I hope I make the right choices with lenses/body, maybe I can eventually shoot some photos like yours (I am not too bad with a camera, but feel I am held back with standard cameras!)

Cannot wait to see your other TR's

@ Invertalon:

I see. Thanks for the reply. I'd fall into the "once a year" crowd, so as you mentioned, I don't really have the luxury of skipping out on rides with more than a 15 minute wait haha. Also, being a poor college student, staying onsite probably isn't much of an option. Guess you just have to be lucky to get a day like you had. My past visits to Cedar Point have all included two full days in the park, so I have never been too worried about the place being crowded as I have a lot of time to spend.

But I'll have to keep your advice in mind. Where I go to school is just a short drive from Cedar Point, so I think I'm gonna have to press my luck on a rainy day, because well, going to Cedar Point on a day where it is that empty just looks sick.

These are some of the best photo's I've ever seen. I need to know what you use camera and lens you use. These are by far the best I've seen of any amusement park pictures. Is there some secret I'm missing here? I mean I have a decent camera and lens, but I couldn't take these kinds of photo's if my life depended on it.

EDIT: Didn't see the other two pages. I'm sure you've probably answered the question. But again man, these are freaking amazing.

wow. I am speechless! More photos please! They really are spectacular!