Loaches Online Forum

Gastromyzon stellatus



Vanmanenia hainanensis





Extreme nose closeup. Should have cleaned the algae spots!



Gastromyzon ocellatus





Martin.

Great work as usual... Very nice tail in the last photo...maybe it is the ocellatus time for me....

the colors in those photos are so crisp! Great photos Martin.

Technical details. I had the AWB setting on......it doesn't play Average White Band music unfortunately.....and I diffused the flash with some tissue paper.

Martin.

What a great tip to diffuse the flash with tissue paper! Excellent photos, so clean and crisp. Nice job!

Amazing pic's. I have a Canon PowerShot a95. I really have no clue on how to use it properly though. My fish usually freak out and leave when the yellow thing on the flash blinks on.

Keith, I checked the specs on your camera and it basically falls between my A70 and the A640 I'm now using. There is no reason you could not get pictures like mine.

I can give you some tips on settings if you like and then it's a case of practice, practice. The more you do the better you'll get and the fish will get more used to the light.

Martin.

Martin's pictures are so bright ......... I gotta wear shades!

Superb!

Martin,

your pics are stellar - as always!
Would you perhaps tell us what kind of camera/lighting/general camera settings you are using to achieve quality macro shots like those?

Generally I find it quite hard to get a proper focus on fast-moving fish like loaches. For the 10 or so pictures I posted yesterday I shot about 150 photos alltogether .. but I guess that's normal.

Green with envy,

Connor

Great pictures as always. I love the intense colour you always get.

Fantastic!!!

some tips would be great.

Yes tips pleez.....Spectacular photo's, so much better large for my tired eye's....

Right.....tutorial time.

The first thing you have to realize is that good pictures just don't appear out of the camera as if by magic. Photographing fish can be highly frustrating due to their fast movements. Hillstream loaches are somewhat easier in that department but seldom stay still for long. Therefore I usually use flash when taking most photos because it allows faster shutter speeds to stop movement.

Here's an example straight out of the camera without flash.



The fish was conveniently stationary but as you can see at the top of the picture during the time the shutter was open air bubbles travelled in the fast current and appear as light squiggles. It's an interesting affect if you can get the fish near the bubbles but in this case it's a little fish in a big picture and not particularly visually interesting.

We're interested in the fish so lets crop that part of the picture and enlarge.



Now when we get this close it is possible to see that the focus of the fish is not perfect and that's probably because it did in actual fact move a fraction of an inch during the time the shutter was open.
There are two marks visible in the background in the V-shaped gap between the rocks. Using a cloning tool I recreate parts of the surrounding background and cover them over. This reduces visual clutter that draws the eye from the subject.



In my photo editing program there's a sharpening tool so I used it at 33% to get this.



The sharpening results in "noise" in the background. Note the kind of granular look. In another program called Neat Image I can filter out that noise to soften the background.



I usually use that program last if required....it works on some pics but not others. Normally before that I might adjust colour. The natural aquarium lights give a somewhat bluish hue to the picture so I just adjusted the colour saturation a little to give this reasonable result.



This is by no means particularly great but a great improvement on the original image.

I'll continue this showing a similar picture with the use of flash.

Martin.

Part 2.

The best advice I can give is read your camera's manual closely and experiment with its controls.

I almost always use only the 100 ASA setting in 'P' mode. This allows me to set certain parameters but the camera has control over shutter speed and aperture. I seldom use the manual settings for these.

Flash is on, not on automatic.

Macro is set on.

Metering is on point.

The exposure compensation is set around minus 1 & 1/3rd usually. A test shot will tell me if it needs more.

Lighting either on bright flourescent or AWB.

I have the camera set in Vivid colour mode. This A640's colour rendition is far deeper than the A70 ever was.

These are my ball-park settings that seem to work with most Canons.

Right, what differences do we get with flash? Here's our original picture:



Same fish, almost the same pose with the settings as above:



Note how immedeately vibrant all the colours are and the fact that the camera now stopped the bubbles in the current. That's how much potential movement has been taken care of by the faster shutter speed when the flash is utilized.

Zoom in on subject again.



This time in the V inbetween the rocks there's a small white dot imperfection and I don't like the green blurry dot near the top of the picture, so clone them out.



Teensy bit of sharpening (11%) Neat Image filter to smooth background and darken the whole picture slightly.



This looks quite nice as is but a choice can be made to reduce overall colour saturation as an option.



I'm not saying that every picture needs this much work, but invariably the framing of the fish and removal of extraneous things that detract from the viewer's concentration are what makes people enthuse over the photo.
You can considerably reduce the amount of remedial work required by having clean glass inside and out and good clear water.
If you try photographing just after feeding small bits of residual food may pick up the flash and detract from the view.

It doesn't matter how good you get with an editing program, you can't make a bad photo good. They have to be reasonably focussed and vastly under or over-exposed pictures are vary difficult to do much with.
Digital does allow you some leeway that prints never did. The best thing about it is that results are immedeate and you get to know after a while while reviewing pictures in the camera what is a good possibility for making good with editing and what just needs junking straight away.

Martin.