Month: April 2023

Universal and SeaWorld to get their own photo section

When I got my first digital camera in 1996, I never could have imagined there would be a time when I’d be updating photo galleries with over 150,000 photos in them. Initially, all my theme park photos were able to fit in one master “DisneyFans Photos” gallery. Today, the number of files in that gallery far exceed what my web host account can allow. Because of that, I had to split the gallery up in to multiple accounts – Disneyland, Disney World and non-Disney Theme Parks.

Due to how much time it takes to update the non-Disney gallery each time I return from Universal and SeaWorld (due to having to go through all the other theme park photos), I am finally going to split off Universal Studios (Hollywood and Orlando) and SeaWorld in to their own sub-gallery.

This will group photos as follows:

  • Disneyland
  • Walt Disney World
  • Universal Studios & SeaWorld
  • …other Theme Parks

I am in the process up creating the new US/SW gallery (over 31,000 photos just from those parks) and will begin uploading it later tonight. I will then redo the Theme Parks gallery to remove Universal and SeaWorld. Hopefully folks will find them at their new location.

As one of the longest running theme park sites on the Internet (from my pre-domain days back in 1996, to the DisneyFans.com days and now this site), I hate to make big changes like this. Apologies in advance for the links that will be broken…

More updates soon…

Disney Skyliner, Aventura Hotel, Mardi Gras and more…

A few of the upcoming topics for this site will likely include:

  • Walt Disney World’s Skyliner.
  • Skyliner resort exploration.
  • Universal’s Aventura Hotel.
  • Unviersal’s food festival and Mardi Gras.
  • Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Disneyland versus Disney’s Hollywood Studios.
  • And how to save 35% on Universal Studios food……..

Universal Mardi Gras and Disney World photos coming soon…

Over 4200 new photos will be added to the gallery in coming weeks. They include photos along the Disney World Skyliner route (the resorts and area with stations), a half day visit to Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and a trip to Universal Orlando for this year’s Mardi Gras event.

We also visited the Universal Great Escape Back to the Future experience, which was a cool technical achievement. Actually, the higher end bar there is worth a look if you partake in adult beverages.

Blog posts coming, as soon as things are caught up…

How often do I use my camera’s zoom? I wrote a script to find out.

While picking up a camera lens cleaner today, the camera shop guy showed me a better camera than the old one I use. It could take better pictures, including low light, and use interchangeable lenses so a super zoom could be added.

But, zooming was manual. Right hand holding the camera, left hand controlling the manual zoom on the lens. Plus, you had to remove the lens cap and manually extend the lens before you could even take a shot.

As nice as it would be to have a better camera, the way I take photos (often with my camera in my right hand, while my left hand has a beverage or video camera), the thought of doing the extra work every time I wanted to snap a photo is not desirable.

Most of the time, my camera is off, with the built-in lens cover protecting it. I power it on, the cover opens and lens extends and I am ready to take a shot within a second or two. How many photos would I miss out on if I had to do more work every time I wanted to take a picture?

As to the zoom, I created (with help of ChatGPT) a script to scan through my photos and tell me how many unique zooms it found. If I rarely zoomed, the number would be low. If I often zoomed, it would be high.

Unique Focal Lengths Found: 76 in 2204 photos

In a specific folder of photos form one visit to California Adventure, I had 76 different zoom levels. But, this isn’t truly what I want to know. For instance, if 99% of the time I turned on the camera and zoomed in maximum, and the other 1% of the time I just turned it on and did nothing, it would show 2 zoom levels — even though I actually used the zoom 99% of the time.

More work on this script needs to be done. A few interacting with ChatGPT later, and now I have one that shows me a formatted listing, from most-used to least-used focal lengths, along with their percentages:

Scanning photos in 'CaliforniaAdventure2022'...
2204 photos scanned.
Unique Focal Lengths Found: 76
        44/5:  1858 ( 84.30%)
       184/5:   104 (  4.72%)
    9069/500:    28 (  1.27%)
  14549/1000:    16 (  0.73%)
    2693/100:     8 (  0.36%)
   10541/500:     7 (  0.32%)
    5873/200:     7 (  0.32%)
  12103/1000:     7 (  0.32%)
  16583/1000:     6 (  0.27%)
    5839/250:     6 (  0.27%)
    6381/500:     6 (  0.27%)
   13693/500:     5 (  0.23%)
  24453/1000:     5 (  0.23%)
    9189/500:     5 (  0.23%)
   10693/500:     5 (  0.23%)
    3289/100:     5 (  0.23%)
  25639/1000:     5 (  0.23%)
  10051/1000:     4 (  0.18%)
   15229/500:     4 (  0.18%)
  20211/1000:     4 (  0.18%)
  19393/1000:     4 (  0.18%)
      983/50:     4 (  0.18%)
    2479/250:     4 (  0.18%)
  13319/1000:     4 (  0.18%)
  27857/1000:     3 (  0.14%)
    6711/200:     3 (  0.14%)
  26487/1000:     3 (  0.14%)
    3163/100:     3 (  0.14%)
  10317/1000:     3 (  0.14%)
    3401/200:     3 (  0.14%)
    2877/200:     3 (  0.14%)
  25233/1000:     3 (  0.14%)
  23713/1000:     3 (  0.14%)
  22669/1000:     3 (  0.14%)
    6449/500:     3 (  0.14%)
  22013/1000:     3 (  0.14%)
  17671/1000:     3 (  0.14%)
    5797/500:     3 (  0.14%)
    7709/500:     3 (  0.14%)
    1579/100:     2 (  0.09%)
   10393/500:     2 (  0.09%)
    3679/250:     2 (  0.09%)
    2167/200:     2 (  0.09%)
  22337/1000:     2 (  0.09%)
    2099/125:     2 (  0.09%)
  19131/1000:     2 (  0.09%)
    6977/200:     2 (  0.09%)
    7801/500:     2 (  0.09%)
    4099/200:     2 (  0.09%)
    2037/200:     2 (  0.09%)
   12419/500:     1 (  0.05%)
       151/8:     1 (  0.05%)
   12039/500:     1 (  0.05%)
      753/50:     1 (  0.05%)
  15983/1000:     1 (  0.05%)
    2328/125:     1 (  0.05%)
  15237/1000:     1 (  0.05%)
   14951/500:     1 (  0.05%)
  26057/1000:     1 (  0.05%)
  16379/1000:     1 (  0.05%)
    1739/125:     1 (  0.05%)
    1778/125:     1 (  0.05%)
  11847/1000:     1 (  0.05%)
  16179/1000:     1 (  0.05%)
    2876/125:     1 (  0.05%)
   9499/1000:     1 (  0.05%)
    4983/250:     1 (  0.05%)
      241/25:     1 (  0.05%)
      293/25:     1 (  0.05%)
  13037/1000:     1 (  0.05%)
    7443/500:     1 (  0.05%)
    2712/125:     1 (  0.05%)
  28343/1000:     1 (  0.05%)
  12363/1000:     1 (  0.05%)
    1361/100:     1 (  0.05%)
  12627/1000:     1 (  0.05%)

I’m guessing that the 84% is the time I just turn on the camera and take a photo. This tells me that 16% of the time, I mess with zoom.

It does seem like going to a camera with manual zoom is not something I want to do, since I do use the feature enough for that to be a step back.

#TheMoreYouKnow

I’ll be adding this script to my GitHub with other photo scripts I’ve been working on, shortly. You can find work-in-progress ones here:

https://github.com/allenhuffman/ShowDatesInPhotos

%d bloggers like this: