how to take great photos?

[SDW]

I recently bought an 80 gal tank and I want to take some pics of it. My pictures don't turn out real great though, and I've seen some great ones that some of you have posted. Any advise how to take? My camera is not great, but it is not super cheap either, 8 mp...thanks in advance.

[dakar]

There are definately some tips and tricks to getting decent and great pictures of your tank and inhabitants... Many will depend on your camera and features it supports, what do you have?

Some general tips that apply to all;
- thoroughly cleaning the glass both inside and out.
- disable the flash.
- macro mode.
- use a tripod.
- getting your camera lens as close to the tank as possible to allow it to focus on the subject you want and not the glass makes a huge difference.
- for shooting critters that are not in motion try the self timer or a remote trigger to prevent camera shakes.
- moving critters require a faster shutter speed of not less than 1/60 second or you get a big blur, even some can't be avoided so bumping up the ISO may help a the loss of super fine quality.
- if it's an auto-focus type try moving your subject slightly out of the center of the frame if it's not focusing in well.

If you have a higher end camera like DSLR, or even a 'point and shoot' type that supports full manual adjustment of things like ISO, shutter speed, & F-stop (aperature) there are a lot of ways to increase the odds of getting a crisp clear picture. The same principles from the analog SLR days still apply (yes I still own an old 100% manual SLR (but the processing fees make it cost prohibitative, electrons are free!) pretty sure I still have these straight (i'm sure Perpetual98 will jump in here to lend a hand if I goof them up, or not he's got macros down to a science). But longer exposure times and/or increased aperature results in a longer focal length (more of the foreground and background will be in focus), shorter exposure times will result in the subject being completely in focus and back/foreground to be out of focus (shorter focal length) ie..fish swimming or corals waving in the water. The lower the ISO setting the slower the shutter speed but more detailed the image, and of course the inverse holds true as well, a higher ISO means a more granular image and narrower depth of field.

Some of the best settings for a given shot can be found by setting your camera up on a tripod fixed on the same subject. Take a couple of shots and record the settings, each series make your adjustments and write them down, continue until you have a good amount of samples, pull the down to your machine and from there determine what works best for that type of shot and move on to the next type of shot. A lot of trial and error here, but you can really improve your odds in getting some really nice photos.

Also remember this, even if you have 1000's of watts of light over your tank, the ambient light in the tank percieved by the camera is going to be a very low light shot.

Hope some of this makes sense and can be of some help. I really didn't mean to write a book, but this can get rather detailed.

Why not post your camera make/model/specs and some sample pics with any known settings (even the ones you don't like) and we can help diagnose from there.

[SDW]

Thanks a bunch for the great info....hopefully I can put it to some use and get some pics on here. I have a Fuji Finepix digital camera, not great, but not bad. I had some problems with a leak in the sump of the new tank, which tied me up for a few days....everythings back up and running and I am hoping to get the inhabitants in there next weekend. Thanks again.

[perpetual98]

Yup, Dakar pretty much hit it right on the head. About the only thing that I would add to his post is ALWAYS shoot perpendicular to the glass. The more of an angle that the lens is to the glass, the more distorted the picture will be. A camera lens will pick up the distortion much more than our eyes will even.

Depending on what I'm shooting and where it is in the tank, I actually put my lens ring right up against the glass. This ensures that I'm perpendicular to the glass and distortion will be minimized or eliminated.

Here's some of my macros that I like:

[Fatman]

Perpetual how do you get your camera to focus that close?! Do you use a tri-pod? I can not get shots that close by hand for some reason, even putting the focus at .5m

[Sweetpea]

Many thanks for the tips guys!

Eric, master of the camera, I salute you! Your pictures are absolutely amazing! I aspire to one day be as great a photographer as you!!!

[dsfdbutterfly]

Eric,

I gotta know what camera you are using. Those pics are awsome. I can never get mine to do that even when I use the tips. Which I appreciate by the way Dakar.

Angie

[perpetual98]

Well, it probably doesn't hurt that I spent about $2300 in camera equipment around Christmas time.

I've got a Canon 20D dSLR and most of those pictures were taken with the Canon 100mm macro lens that I got. I've also got a 50mm prime lens that I don't use much, and a 28-135mm "walkaround" lens.

I use a tripod maybe 50% of the time, the rest of the time I just put the lens against the glass.

One trick with large resolution digital photos is that you can crop in close without losing any detail, especially if you're cropping for the web in an 800x600 size pic. I use Photoshop CS2 for all of my post processing. If I remember correctly on most of those pictures, the original was a lot larger with a lot more stuff on it, but I cropped it down so that only what I wanted on the picture was actually showing. Then I usually tweak the brightness/contrast a bit so that it more closely resembles what my eye sees.

Here's another one with the 20D



And this is a picture that I took with my Canon G3



Oh what the heck, here's some more...



My green cap under actinics only...

[Fatman]

Ive been using my girlfriends SD500, 7.1 MP, The thing shoots AWSOME pictures, but I cant seem to get those close pics better. Will a lens help with this?

[perpetual98]

Use the macro mode would be my first suggestion. All cameras are different with how close they will focus, it depends on the lens. You may be able to get some lens adapters for that camera, but I'm not sure, I'm not familiar with it.

Like I mentioned before, cropping the pictures will really help. Let me try to come up with a picture to explain it better....