Camera Equipment

Disney Park Photography Tips

Festival-Of-Fantasy-WDWTaking photographs at Disney is one of my favourite things to do. It’s also sometimes quite daunting to make sure you get that perfect shot.  Maybe you want to Photograph the parade with fast moving characters or maybe some nighttime snaps without the use of a tripod. I’ve put together some tips that I’ve learnt over the last few years of going to Disneyland with a DSLR Camera to hopefully, help you on your next trip to get that magical shot.

Equipment

I have found using a DSLR Camera can get you the clearest photographs but, you can even use Phones these days as technology has advanced so much. If you are going to be using an advanced Camera, I would highly recommend purchasing a spare battery, so one can be charging whilst you carry on snapping away. Also, multiple SD cards are essential for a Disney trip as you don’t want to run out of space!

Recently I purchased a device for the iPhone which came in handy on my last trip. It connects via the lightning cable and, you can put in your SD card direct to your phone. Your iPhone will read it without the use of an App, so you can import your Photos on to your Phone on the go! I was really impressed with it and it only cost £8 from Amazon.

Some lenses I recommend are the standard 55mm lens which, comes when you purchase your camera. I also like a 55-200mm zoom lens as it can get great depth of field shots.

Settings

The settings on a DSLR can vary by what kind of model of Camera you have. I have been a Nikon user for years but, hopefully these tips should be quite straight forward for other makes to. It’s taken me a while to get to grips with Manual settings on my Camera. I still find it tricky now but, on my recent trip I decided to play with the settings a bit more and got some great results. These tips may not be the right way to go about it but, I’ve found it works for me and hopefully will help you too.

Objects

Macro is a great setting for close up shots of objects. A Macro lens is even better if you’re looking to invest. Most cameras these days will have a Macro setting which, by itself is quite impressive and would highly recommend changing to this when Photographing objects as, you will get stunning details.

Big Thunder Mountain Disneyland Paris

Parades

The parades are one of my favourite things to shoot at Disney! Also one of the hardest I find. The characters and floats are fast moving objects which tend to blur easily. With a few experiments I have found you can avoid this with certain F numbers and Shutter speeds.

Anna-Elsa-Stars-On-Parade

Characters

Characters are a lot of fun to photograph. Why not ask them to pose on their own next time you meet them? They love a photoshoot! You can also use the Camera’s built in settings. For characters I like to use Portrait mode when I’m hunting for them.

Captain-Jack-Sparrow

Cinderella-Princess-Pavilion

Landscape

Landscape photography is a great place to start with. The Castle makes for a nice subject to line up with.

Disney-World-Florida

Night-time

Night-time Photography is something that I have been focusing on a lot more recently. I started to look into it more during my November Disney trip to get the twinkling lights. It’s quite hard without a tripod but, I tent to look for objects around me to lean on. Using things around your environment always helps. It’s tricky because you normally need a tripod to capture objects in low light, but with a bit of patience it can be done without the use of one. I managed to get this shot of Tinkerbell on the Gazeebo in Town Square by just using my hands and being a little patient so it would not blur.

Tinkerbell-Disneyland-Paris-25th

PhotoPass

Meet-Mickey

PhotoPasses are great to have at Disneyland Paris and especially at Disney World, where you can have Memory Maker to keep all your magical snaps from your trip. With Memory Maker it connects to your Magic Band so you can view them straight away on your Disney World App. Don’t worry if you don’t have a Magic Band though, you will get given a card with a unique code on to download your photos.

PhotoPass + at Disneyland Paris works in a similar way. Just make sure to get the Cast Member at the meet and greet to scan your card and they will show up on your App once you connect it.

Photo-Pass-Disney

Editing

For editing my Photos, I like to use Photoshop. This is a software I have been using for over ten years now and I highly recommend investing in it or an equivalent like Photoshop Elements. It has all the tools you need to make your Photos stand out even more.

Here’s a couple of editing tips I like to use when I need to brighten a few of my snaps. Again, this may not be the right way but, what I have learnt when using Photoshop.

Photoshop-Tutorial

Photoshop-Tutorial

Photoshop-Tutorial

For editing on the go, I like to use VSCO Cam or the filters included in the Instagram App.

VSCO-CAM

 

I hope these tips have helped you to some extent and,  if you have a trip coming up I’d love to see your photos. Experiementing taking Photos at Disney can be quite fun, just remember to take a step back and live in the moment!

Blogger about all things Disney Parks related. Finalist for a Photography award. Living in London but, you can find me in Paris most of the time.

3 Comments

  • Jess

    This is so helpful! I’m hoping to get a DSLR for my birthday in August and then we have a trip planned in December so hopefully I’ll be able to take some beautiful photos using these tips! Thanks for writing such an informative post!

    Jess xx

  • Jess

    This is so helpful! I’m hoping to get a DSLR for my birthday in August and then we have a trip planned in December so hopefully I’ll be able to take some beautiful photos using these tips! Thanks for writing such an informative post!

    Jess xx

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