Honolulu Festival Parade 3/15/09

This year's parade down Kalakaua lasted longer than previous year and we diehards stuck it out thru light rain and darkness. I used my 50mm for most of these shots because of my continuing AF problem. The 50mm made the subjects closer so I had a larger focus spot. Unfortunately, in order to not cut off the subject, I had to take all my shots in portrait format. Here are my collection of portrait shots.
As it got dark, my XT gave me lots of problems because I had to shoot at wide aperture and the flash pretty much washed out the subject, like this aboriginal performer.
A performer from Japan decided to do an impromptu flip for us.Here's the float from the convention center. It is much more colorful when lit.
After watching the parade for more than 4 hours, the finale -- the fire breathing dragon...pretty cool and worth the wait, even though it went by pretty fast.
Here's a sample of what I call my 'wandering AF' problem..kinda like the 'wandering eye'..where you are focused on everything other than the subject right in front of you....I need to get it fixed.