As of January 1, 2019, we have closed our forums. This is a decision we did not come to lightly, but it is necessary. The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk. The server software itself must be updated, and it cannot be without removing the forums.
So it is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to our long-running forums. They came online in 2000 and brought together so many wonderful Disney fans. We had friendships form, careers launch, couples marry, children born ... all because of this amazing community.
Thank you to each of you who were a part of this community. You made it possible.
And a very special thank you to our Guides (moderators), past and present, who kept our forums a happy place to be. You are the glue that held everything together, and we are forever grateful to you. Thank you aliceinwdw, Caldercup, MrsM, WillCAD, Fortissimo, GingerJ, HiddenMickey, CRCrazy, Eeyoresmom, disneyknut, disneydani, Cam22, chezp, WDWfan, Luvsun, KMB733, rescuesk, OhToodles!, Colexis Mom, lfredsbo, HiddenMickey, DrDolphin, DopeyGirl, duck addict, Disneybine, PixieMichele, Sandra Bostwick, Eeyore Tattoo, DyanKJ130, Suzy Q'Disney, LilMarcieMouse, AllisonG, Belle*, Chrissi, Brant, DawnDenise, Crystalloubear, Disneymom9092, FanOfMickey, Goofy4Goofy, GoofyMom, Home4us123, iamgrumpy, ilovedisney247, Jennifer2003, Jenny Pooh, KrisLuvsDisney, Ladyt, Laughaholic88, LauraBelle Hime, Lilianna, LizardCop, Loobyoxlip, lukeandbrooksmom, marisag, michnash, MickeyMAC, OffKilter_Lynn, PamelaK, Poor_Eeyore, ripkensnana, RobDVC, SHEANA1226, Shell of the South, snoozin, Statelady01, Tara O'Hara, tigger22, Tink and Co., Tinkerbelz, WDWJAMBA, wdwlovers, Wendyismyname, whoSEZ, WildforWD, and WvuGrrrl. You made the magic.
We want to personally thank Sara Varney, who coordinated our community for many years (among so many other things she did for us), and Cheryl Pendry, our Message Board Manager who helped train our Guides, and Ginger Jabour, who helped us with the PassPorter-specific forums and Live! Guides. Thank you for your time, energy, and enthusiasm. You made it all happen.
There are other changes as well.
Why? Well, the world has changed. And change with it, we must. The lyrics to "We Go On" for IllumiNations say it best:
We go on to the joy and through the tears
We go on to discover new frontiers
Moving on with the current of the years.
We go on
Moving forward now as one
Moving on with a spirit born to run
Ever on with each rising sun.
To a new day, we go on.
It's time to move on and move forward.
PassPorter is a small business, and for many years it supported our family. But the world changed, print books took a backseat to the Internet, and for a long time now it has been unable to make ends meet. We've had to find new ways to support our family, which means new careers and less and less time available to devote to our first baby, PassPorter.
But eventually, we must move on and move forward. It is the right thing to do.
So we are retiring this newsletter, as we simply cannot keep up with it. Many thanks to Mouse Fan Travel who supported it all these years, to All Ears and MousePlanet who helped us with news, to our many article contributors, and -- most importantly -- to Sara Varney who edited our newsletter so wonderfully for years and years.
And we are no longer charging for the Live Guides. If you have a subscription, it's yours to keep for the lifetime of the Live Guides at no additional cost. The Live Guides will stay online, barring server issues and technical problems, for all of 2019.
That said, PassPorter is not going away. Most of the resources will remain online for as long as we can support them, and after that we will find ways to make whatever we can available. PassPorter means a great deal to us, and to many of you, and we will do our best to keep it alive in whatever way we can. Our server costs are high, and they'll need to come out of our pockets, so in the future you can expect some changes so we can bring those costs down.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for your amazing support over the years. Without you, there's no way us little guys could have made something like this happen and given the "big guys" a run for their money. PassPorter was consistently the #3 guidebook after the Unofficial and Official guides, which was really unheard of for such a small company to do. We ROCKED it thanks to you and your support and love!
If you miss us, you can still find some of us online. Sara started a new blog at DisneyParkPrincess.com -- I strongly urge you to visit and get on her mailing list. She IS the Disney park princess and knows Disney backward and forward. And I am blogging as well at JenniferMaker.com, which is a little craft blog I started a couple of years ago to make ends meet. You can see and hear me in my craft show at https://www.youtube.com/c/jennifermaker . Many PassPorter readers and fans are on Facebook, in groups they formed like the PassPorter Trip Reports and PassPorter Crafting Challenge (if you join, just let them know you read about it in the newsletter). And some of our most devoted community members started a forum of their own at Pixie Dust Lane and all are invited over.
So we encourage you to stay in touch with us and your fellow community members wherever works best for you!
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Well; my DGF and I both resolved to get new cameras, what with our impending trip to Disney. (Woo! ONLY THREE MONTHS! Woo! ) Well, a visit to the Southwick Zoo in Mendon, Massachusetts this past weekend seemed like a good opportunity to practise, and get to know our cameras better, in a sort of "touring in a park setting" environment. We took far fewer pictures than we will at Disney, I think - Southwick is miniscule in comparison to anything Disney has on offer - but we still got a few nice photos.
Which, yes, I am about to inflict on you all. BWA HA HA!
DGF's pictures were taken with her brand-new Nikon Coolpix L18, a point-and-shoot with 8 megapixels, 3x optical zoom (and 4x digital zoom), no viewfinder but a gloriously-crisp-image, 3" LCD screen (honestly, I'm envious of that screen). She has very little direct control of the camera's settings, but it's designed for people who, as she put it, wants to TAKE pictures, not think about HOW to take them ... and it does pretty darned good at just that. (Native size of her images is 3264x2448)
My pictures were taken with my now-three-month-old Fujifilm Finepix S5700, a point-and-shoot that looks like a little DSLR, but has a fixed lense. 7.1 megapixels, 10x optical zoom (and no digital zoom), and electronic viewfinder and 2.5" LCD screen, and a good mix of automation and manual control. Mostly, I stick to the automated stuff for now; this camera was picked for me to "grow into", and I haven't done much growing yet. Heh. (Native size of my images is 3072x2304)
Everythign was resized from their native sizes (see above) to 800x600, so as not to break the forum (and, to avoid Photobucket's horrible, malicious, image-mangling forced resizing ...!)
Anyway ... on to the pictures! (Just a few, I promise ...)
DGF's pics
This image is, IMO, the best she took that day; I for one am impressed with how well it came out ... and it's half luck that she got anythign decent at all. It's a kookaburra, and the fence of it's enclosure was playing merry heck with both of us, due to autofocus issues. However, the Nikon's lense is narrow enough to fit through the chain-link fence's openings, and with a bit of "best guesstimate" aiming, she managed this beauty:
This is somethign called a "Cavy" ... some kind of rodent:
Given the sunlight on very light-colored dirt, and the slight back=lighting ... I'm frankly surprised this came out so well. None of mine did ...
We both got nearly identical shots of this alligator; it's difficult to tell her shot apart from mine, to be honest, other than which memory card the image is on:
She also can claim the only usable image of the Giraffes; at that point, the sun was shining very fiercely on HALF of their area, and not at all on the other half ... so everything came out with horribly over-exposed areas, for both of us. Still, this isn't half-bad, IMO:
And lastly, just because it's not a halfway-bad pic of me, here's ... me! (I swear, the cat-hair didn't show up this bad in REAL life ... I think her camera hates me ... heh!)
(The T-shirt is from Schlock Mercenary, a webcomic I read daily. Great, funny stuff, IMO.)
My pictures
Okay, now it's my turn!
Between the two of us, we must have taken some twenty pictures of this Leopard - a gorgeous fellow sunning himself on a large rock - and this one is the only remotely-decent one; the darned fence was more than a slight problem:
I'm especially happy with how well this close-up of the zoo's lioness came out - this is maximum zoom, and through another of those darn fences - I had to aim at th ground behind me ad guesstimate distances, to lock the focus ... but she still came out great:
(I can't wait for Animal Kingdom ... and the total, glorious LACK OF FENCES on the Kilimanjaro Safari ...!)
Another one I think came out great is this close-up of a giant Tortoise; slow as he was, he actually turned his head to focus one eye on me while I took this. A very photogenic critter!
This is the same animal, but a full-body shot:
Just to put this in perspective, you remember that pic f me? Yeah, teh fat guy with the webcomic T-shirt? This sucker's bigger than I am, around the middle. TWICE as big, at least. He's also at least five feet from the front edge of his shell, to the back edge. In a word: big.
And finally (for this thread), I managed a nice shot of a monkey ... I forget the specific species ... which, unlike all the OTHER shots, is actually family-friendly. (He was a very naughty monkey ... who felt the need to make dominance displays to all passers-by. We, of course, laughed ... which turned out to be a one-up on his displays, and he walked away hooting back at us ...! Silly monkey!)
Anyway, that's all I'll inflict on you here. If you want to see more, you can check out the whole album. That's not ALL of our pictures, just the ones I think are "keepers" ... about 1/10 of what we shot that day.
...
...
Well, thanks for letting me show off. ^_^ I can't wait to get to Disney, and take thousands of pictures. Per day, if I can manage it!
Both cameras are great cameras, versitile and each has it's place. She hit the nail on the head for hers, it's for someone that wants to take pictures...
The fence issue can be resolved by setting the focus point to center focusing. This will make the camera focus on whatever is in the middle spot on the screen, which helps you ignore the fence in the photo. All of my cameras are set for center focus only as I have to shoot through fences and bushes/trees a lot...
The mixed lighting presents it's own problems. If my subject is in the bright area, I focus with the majority of my screen in the bright area and let the camera set it's adjustments, then once focus/aperture-shutter is set, reposition the camera and shoot. I almost always take pics with the camera set in both the light and dark areas, and sort them out later on the computer...
You've got the right idea, get out there and practice, practice, practice...
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First off, thanks to everyone so far who likes the pictures.
Second off:
Quote:
Originally Posted by LizardCop
The fence issue can be resolved by setting the focus point to center focusing. This will make the camera focus on whatever is in the middle spot on the screen, which helps you ignore the fence in the photo. All of my cameras are set for center focus only as I have to shoot through fences and bushes/trees a lot...
Hmm, I'll have to see if either/both cameras can do that.
I know hers specifically looks for human faces, and tries to focus on them if it finds any (a neat feature for taking portrait-style snapshots - "here's us in front of ___, and then in front of ___, and then [...]" stuff). It's really nifty to see it in action.
About This Page: 
) Well, a visit to the Southwick Zoo in Mendon, Massachusetts this past weekend seemed like a good opportunity to practise, and get to know our cameras better, in a sort of "touring in a park setting" environment. We took far fewer pictures than we will at Disney, I think - Southwick is miniscule in comparison to anything Disney has on offer - but we still got a few nice photos.
(Native size of my images is 3072x2304)
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