Practice

[shari2]

As in I need lots of it, so please bear with me...





Windex. Gotta remember the windex...

[Martin Thoene]

OMG! It's the Wild Bunch

Love the lamp-eyes. Harold had these very unusual Puffers in the other day that had eyes that looked like the most richly-coloured Opals you ever saw........... Totally surreal looking.

Bearing with you we are. These are getting encouraging.....despite what you might think.

Martin.

[shari2]

Still can't seem to get that crispy focus ...

[angelfish83]

OMG! It's the Wild Bunch

Love the lamp-eyes. Harold had these very unusual Puffers in the other day that had eyes that looked like the most richly-coloured Opals you ever saw........... Totally surreal looking.

Bearing with you we are. These are getting encouraging.....despite what you might think.

Martin.

Apparently someone who is a puffer addict made him promise over the phone not to sell any and he picked up the batch on Monday hehe.

Still can't seem to get that crispy focus ...

What kind of camera are you using, on what setting, how thick is the glass and is it tempered? (the aquarium)

also get 'lens tissue' and very thoroughly clean your lense. it makes a massive difference. Also thoroughly clean the aquarium glass inside and out for a better focus. It isn't expensive, and is a super super fine tissue paper. paper towels and even most cloths can apparently scratch lenses...


If your tanks are not well lit, you will need to light them up a little when you take your pictures. Often Flash is not the best way to do this unless you have a seperate flash you can put atop the tank, and even still, I prefer a good light source.

Make sure the aquarium is slightly brighter than the room is, and that you have no light sources behind you. These will both degrade detail and dynamic color and lighting ranges...


For example this cute little horseface dude looks like he was photographed with flash, which produced an unwanted flashy sheen on him and degraded the overal detail in the picture. And, if you look closely, you can see the most focused point in the picture is up and to the left, behind the loach, not the loach itself.

Also the picture was either taken from too close in (zoom wise) or too far away, and then cropped. I say this because of the grainy effect on the fish.

I like to take my pictures from right up against the glass then I tilt my camera away about 20 degrees on one end and let the other side of the lens touch the glass. I use the close up/macro setting for these shots. When I take a picture of the whole tank, I do that with the 'normal' setting on my camera and still use a 20 degree angle, but sit about 3 feet back.

I always make sure there are no external reflections on the glass etc and that I have no lightsources behind or beside me, and I never use flash. I used to but found it made for poor pictures.

The picture of the clown loaches was definitely taken with the wrong setting at the wrong distance. It almost looks like the camera focused more on the water stain on your glass than the fish? You've definitely got the framing and everything, but you're using the wrong setting and you aren't focusing properly. A lot of the time certain cameras will benefit from changing the ISO (amount of time the lens stays open per exposure).

Again if you tell me what you're using, whether its manual or auto focus, etc I can try to help a bit more. I took a fair bit of camera/video stuff in high school, and I was lucid a good 50% of the time

[shari2]

thanks for the tips angelfish83! I have a nikon coolpix 3700. Went looking around in the 'setting's today and got nowhere. Currently any decent pics are strictly accidental.

Whatever other advice you have is quite gratefully appreciated.

[angelfish83]

Well I looked at your camera on the website. On the mode dial one of the settings is 'manual', its a camera with an M beside it. Use that mode.



on top of that there's like an enter key circular button that can be moved in four directions. If you move it down, it moves toward a picture of a flower, see?

That has something to do with setting the lens to macro mode, which you need to take decent pictures of fish. Also the size of the lens is right for the kinds of pictures I'm talking about setting up. I found the instructions as PDF @ Nikons site you should download them if you dont have them.

Also set your ISO (shutter speed) to about 100-200 depending on how bright your lighting is and play around with it to get the pictures you want.

So basically, figure out how to get the camera into macro mode. MIght be as simple as putting it in manual like I mentioned then clicking the enter keymagiggy down...

Always frame your shots with the screen too. The viewfinder is a vestigial relic of film days and wont do you good in this case. You can sort of see how your picture will look focus wise in the viewing screen too, even though its only like 3"...

Also once you're in macro mode, adjust your zoom to about half way (it will indicate with a bar that moves across the screen on the cam) and then adjust your distance from your subject to frame your shot. You may not be right up against the glass some times. And always make sure you click the lens half way to focus, and only all the way once you have your focus. You may have to click half way a dozen times to get the focus you want. Always watch the screen.

Read the instructions, sectionally, and screw around with each group of settings to figure everything out.

Although this

is a bad picture, it illustrates how a camera 'sees'. I first focused under the log where the corys were then I moved the camera down to the level of the gravel. You can see the gravel gets less blurry closer to the log. Although the naked eye could see the corys well lit enough to make out their details, the camera can't because it doesn't quite see the same way people do.

http://s110.photobucket.com/albums/n88/ ... #imgAnch52
Here's an example of the grainy effect produced by simply not setting the lens correctly. The lens isn't in macro mode here, and the focus is set to the wrong distance. The camera doesn't know what the heck's going on and nothing is in focus.


The lack of focus here was caused by dirty glass and backlight.

If you look in the middle of the fish it looks like he has a waterstain on him. That's on the glass and affected my focus. Also, the room was brighter than the aquarium, and that totally washed out the contrast. There is not enough black and not enough white. It IS in focus, but its still a bad picture.


Here's one that came out exactly how I wanted it to.
This particular fish loves the camera and swims up to investigate, so it was 1" from the glass, staying perfectly still, and I was 1" from the glass, zoomed right out in Macro mode (usually a fully zoomed out macro picture will only look good within a couple of inches. YMMV but I'd gamble it won't much with that lense size). and I had like 15 seconds to mess around with the focus and angle, watching my screen, until I got something I liked.
The glass was clean, the room was dark, and everything lined up to make a good shot.

[shari2]

Thanks Cleaned the lens.



still not totally crispy. this was taken with the tank light off and flash. then he ran.

I'll mess around some more tomorrow. Thanks again.

[angelfish83]

Thanks Cleaned the lens.



still not totally crispy. this was taken with the tank light off and flash. then he ran.

I'll mess around some more tomorrow. Thanks again.

Waaay better. I still wouldn't take shots like that though because you're focusing in low light then taking a high light picture. Its asking for trouble. Turn the light on and move it over the fish, then focus forever till you get what you want. you may want to additionally light the tank (lamps etc) for pictures.
'
Flash photography is generally bad cuzz it scares fish, especially if you take a flash in a dark situation which is probably why he ran

Aaaalways focus in the exact same conditions you plan to expose at, otherwise you'll get untrue color and all kinds of junk.

Another important thing about lenses, you can really see this in my ram closeup, is that they focus on a distance more than a point. Your eye will focus on THIS word. the word THIS appears sharp, but the words around it are blurry, and the further away they are, while you look directly at the word THIS, they are harder to see. A camera would focus on the entire line of writing THIS is in, so where you see

'THIS'

with clarity the camera very clearly sees

focus on THIS word. the word THIS appears sharp, but the words around'

as a plane, not a point. Important thing for multiple side by side subjects etc

[Martin Thoene]

You know what angelfish83? You should make more highly informative and educational posts like that. They're really good mate.

You can probably take your signature down to around a 28.5% now I should think

Martin.

[shari2]

another attempt. not too bad if whatever that white line is was not there

[Martin Thoene]

White mark?



That's a nice picture. Cute that it's investigating the breakfast possibilities of the MTS.

Martin.

[shari2]

Thank you! Looks much better without that line...

[Martin Thoene]

No date either

Martin.

[angelfish83]

Heeooje improvements in picture taking!!!

I think you've got it!! Just mess with different angles to the glass. You've got yer fish in focus now

I was considering raising pond snails in a little container, then feeding them to the loaches inside the bottom of a plastic bottle in the tank, so they can leave empty shells in there for later retreavel, lest they calcify my water...

[The Kapenta Kid]

Not to toot the horn, but I wrote an article for Fish Geeks early last year describing how to take fish pics with compact digicams. You may find it helpful. It's had over 10K reads in the time it's been up so some folks must like it.
Unfortunately the present version has no illustrations. When I was banned from Fish Geeks the owner spitefully and unwisely deleted all my pics from the member gallery where they were hosted. I believe it is called shooting yourself in the foot
I keep meaning to write an update and post it somewhere else, but have never got round to it. Here's the imageless original.
http://www.aquaria.info/index.php?name= ... le&sid=338