So, working at Universal Studios Orlando has given me lots of opportunities as far as my photography goes. There's lots of good places and people to take pictures of, sometimes I just wish I could block off the tourists so I could get some great shots without them cluttering up the photo.
One place in particular I'm always really drawn to is the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. The architecture and lighting is phenomenal, and the area really comes to life after the sun goes down. The cool colors that Universal chose to illuminate the castle with really brings out the contrast between Hogwarts and the night sky. But the presence of the guests still really puts off any really good shots that I was thinking about.
So
and I went to Universal yesterday and I brought my tripod with me planning to get some long exposures of the castle and the Hogwarts Express outside of Hogsmeade Station. We waited until the park had closed at 7pm so the guests would leave (they usually tend to peace out around 6:45).
After several attempts, I finally got some great exposures of both the castle and the station. I also got some cool shots of Zonkos and Honeydukes while we waited for guests to clear the Hogsmeade platform.
Something I had noticed though is some extreme banding and artifacting in the sky most notably in the shots of the castle. I usually notice this sort of thing on jpegs after compression has occurred, but these were on lossless raws. So I'm kind of hoping that the in-camera compression to display the raws on the camera is what's causing this, and not a bad sensor. I would post them here for people to judge, but I'm at
s house so it'll have to wait until I get home and run them through lightroom.
Oh and we also rode the updated Spiderman ride and it's AMAZING.