Our last post went over the tools you are going to need to get great ride pictures at Disneyland or Walt Disney World. Now that you have your gear in order, here are some tips to get the best pictures once you are on the rides:

• On a ride like Pirates of the Caribbean, try and get in the front of the boat (just make sure to keep your camera dry on the drops!) This will give you a great vantage point for the entire ride.
• Try and take pictures of things that you are moving straight towards if possible. Shooting sideways as you move will make it harder to get sharp pictures.
• Try to keep your camera as zoomed out as possible. When your camera is zoomed all the way out, it can take a faster shot. You can always crop the photo later to remove parts of the scene you don’t want.
• Don’t use digital zoom, it creates additional noise and will make you pictures look muddy and blurry.
• Use the continuous shot feature on your camera and take pictures in bursts. The probably won’t all turn out, but you have a better chance that one of them will. Start shooting right before you get to the picture you want and shoot until you are past it. Delete the ones that didn’t turn out.
• Try pre-focusing on the scene you want my pressing the shutter button down halfway before you shoot. This lets you take pictures faster because your camera won’t have to focus first.
• Ride the ride a bunch of times and take a lot of pictures each time. Most rides can be sped up or slowed down based on the size of the line. Also, throughout the day many of the rides seem to be lighter or darker (especially Pirates and the Haunted Mansion). Shots that didn’t work when the ride was dark and running fast may turn out great when it’s lighter and running slower.
• Practice on lighter rides first. It’s a Small World and The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh are great places to start at least at Disneyland. The Haunted Mansion is probably the hardest ride to shoot on once you get in your Doom Buggy, but you can often get great shots of the elevator. Pirates of the Caribbean also has a lot of scenes with enough light to get some great pictures.
• Get a big card (SD, Compact Flash, etc.) that is fast. You are going to want to shoot a lot of shots (and probably throw a lot away) and you want them to write to the card as fast as possible.
• Turn off your flash. Your pictures will probably be better, but everyone else on the ride will hate you. Depending on your camera, you may have to do this every time you turn it off, so be careful.

Most importantly, have fun and don’t let taking pictures of the ride get in the way of enjoying the parks. I usually take at least one day off completely when we go, or at least leave my camera in a locker for a couple of hours. It’s always possible that you will miss a great shot, but the memories you’ll keep in your head may just be sharper.