Woo woo, new camera - how do I photograph the fish ?

[Alan Silver]

Hello,

Well, I finally took the plunge and ordered a digital camera (Canon
Powershot S50). I would like (obviously) to photograph my tank, but am
not the world's greatest photographer.

Any tips and tricks ? Please don't throw technical stuff at me, I'm
inexperienced at this.

TIA

--
Alan Silver

[coelacanth]

I found this helpful http://www.thekrib.com/Misc/photo.html
Of course my pictures still look like sh*t, but without
all the technical problems. I also really like Photoshop
Elements for working with pictures.

-coelacanth

"Alan Silver"
> wrote in
message ...
> Hello,
>
> Well, I finally took the plunge and ordered a digital camera (Canon
> Powershot S50). I would like (obviously) to photograph my tank, but am
> not the world's greatest photographer.
>
> Any tips and tricks ? Please don't throw technical stuff at me, I'm
> inexperienced at this.
>
> TIA
>
> --
> Alan Silver
>

[Alan Silver]

In article >, coelacanth
> writes
>I found this helpful http://www.thekrib.com/Misc/photo.html Of course
>my pictures still look like sh*t, but without all the technical
>problems. I also really like Photoshop Elements for working with
>pictures.

Thanx, I'll take a look. I'm a lousy photographer, but I can do great
things with an image editing program !!

--
Alan Silver

[Alan Silver]

In article >, coelacanth
> writes
>I found this helpful http://www.thekrib.com/Misc/photo.html Of course
>my pictures still look like sh*t, but without all the technical
>problems. I also really like Photoshop Elements for working with
>pictures.

Well, having looked at the page, I'm not really much wiser ;-(

It's all a bit technical for the photographically clueless (ie me) and
also seems to be very weighted towards "real" photography. I'm not even
sure how film speed is considered in a digital camera and I certainly
get lost with f-stops and things.

Thanx for the link, but do you have any that are less technical. I
realise that I'm not going to get shots like Amano, but I would like
some simple tips on getting reasonable pictures of the tank and fish.

Thanx again for the reply. Any further info would be greatly
appreciated.

--
Alan Silver

[McEve]

How about this one?

http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/supercenter/digitalphoto2003/0,39026969,39153027-3,00.htm

"Alan Silver"
> wrote in
message ...
> Hello,
>
> Well, I finally took the plunge and ordered a digital camera (Canon
> Powershot S50). I would like (obviously) to photograph my tank, but am
> not the world's greatest photographer.
>
> Any tips and tricks ? Please don't throw technical stuff at me, I'm
> inexperienced at this.
>
> TIA
>
> --
> Alan Silver
>

[0rion]

"Alan Silver"
> wrote in
message ...
> In article >, coelacanth
> > writes
> >I found this helpful http://www.thekrib.com/Misc/photo.html Of course
> >my pictures still look like sh*t, but without all the technical
> >problems. I also really like Photoshop Elements for working with
> >pictures.
>
> Well, having looked at the page, I'm not really much wiser ;-(
>
> It's all a bit technical for the photographically clueless (ie me) and
> also seems to be very weighted towards "real" photography. I'm not even
> sure how film speed is considered in a digital camera and I certainly
> get lost with f-stops and things.
>
> Thanx for the link, but do you have any that are less technical. I
> realise that I'm not going to get shots like Amano, but I would like
> some simple tips on getting reasonable pictures of the tank and fish.
>
> Thanx again for the reply. Any further info would be greatly
> appreciated.
>
> --
> Alan Silver
>

so you're basically saying "hey i know i dont want to spend any time
learning about my camera or about how to take real pictures of fish, however
i really want to take real pictures of fish whilst only knowing
point-and-shoot photography. someone please hold my hand and show me a site
that lets me know how to do what i want without needing to learn it"

which doesn't make sense at all. your camera is perfectly capable of taking
decent pictures of fish... have you read the manual all the way through? i
learned a lot by messing around with my olympus 3000 and ended up taking
some great pictures of my fish just by tweaking the camera.

[luminos]

For good results with a digicam, this is not a point an click thing.

See:

http://www.characin.com/photography/



"Alan Silver"
> wrote in
message ...
> Hello,
>
> Well, I finally took the plunge and ordered a digital camera (Canon
> Powershot S50). I would like (obviously) to photograph my tank, but am
> not the world's greatest photographer.
>
> Any tips and tricks ? Please don't throw technical stuff at me, I'm
> inexperienced at this.
>
> TIA
>
> --
> Alan Silver
>

[Eric Schreiber]

Alan Silver wrote:

>It's all a bit technical for the photographically clueless (ie me) and
>also seems to be very weighted towards "real" photography. I'm not even
>sure how film speed is considered in a digital camera and I certainly
>get lost with f-stops and things.

On the plus side, with a digital you can see immediately what works
and what doesn't, and the failures don't cost anything. I've burned
through a tremendous amount of film getting the few mediocre fish
photos on my web site. One of these days I'll manage to scrape
together enough money for a digital SLR. I hope.


--
www.ericschreiber.com

[Dick]

Maybe you bought too much camera for your purposes.

I bought my digital camera about 5 years ago. Not many things to
adjust: flash on or off and lens adapter to change focal length.
I have taken a lot of pictures of my tanks, mostly with the flash on.
I tried it with the flash off, but my tanks have low light levels,
under 2 wpg and those shots had too much contrast and didn't respond
to adjustment. The flash is not perfect, but good enough to share my
treasures via email.



On Mon, 12 Jan 2004 16:04:44 +0000, Alan Silver
>
wrote:

>Hello,
>
>Well, I finally took the plunge and ordered a digital camera (Canon
>Powershot S50). I would like (obviously) to photograph my tank, but am
>not the world's greatest photographer.
>
>Any tips and tricks ? Please don't throw technical stuff at me, I'm
>inexperienced at this.
>
>TIA

[Alan Silver]

In article >, 0rion
> writes
>so you're basically saying "hey i know i dont want to spend any time
>learning about my camera or about how to take real pictures of fish,
>however i really want to take real pictures of fish whilst only knowing
>point-and-shoot photography. someone please hold my hand and show me a
>site that lets me know how to do what i want without needing to learn it"

Please explain to me where I said that.

I said that I was not a good/experienced photographer. Does that mean
I'm lazy ? No, it means that I don't have much experience and I'm not
very good. I am quite willing to learn, but I need some simple
instructions to begin with as the technical stuff loses me.

Sorry if that offends you, but that's how it is. I never asked anyone to
hold my hand, nor did I say I was expecting brilliant results. In fact,
if you bothered reading my post instead of criticising, you would have
seen that I wrote ...

>>I
>> realise that I'm not going to get shots like Amano, but I would like
>> some simple tips on getting reasonable pictures of the tank and fish.

>which doesn't make sense at all.

No, it make perfect sense. What didn't make sense was your unpleasant
response.

> your camera is perfectly capable of taking decent pictures of fish...
>have you read the manual all the way through? i learned a lot by
>messing around with my olympus 3000 and ended up taking some great
>pictures of my fish just by tweaking the camera.

As mentioned in my original post, I had only ordered - not received -
the camera when I first posted. I was looking for some material to read
in advance.

The camera arrived today and I have started reading the manual. I have
also started messing with the camera. I am intelligent enough to realise
that the only way to learn is to experiment, but I was looking for some
simple tips to help me on my way.

Luckily for me other people in this ng have more sense than you.

--
Alan Silver

[Alan Silver]

>>It's all a bit technical for the photographically clueless (ie me) and
>>also seems to be very weighted towards "real" photography. I'm not even
>>sure how film speed is considered in a digital camera and I certainly
>>get lost with f-stops and things.
>
>On the plus side, with a digital you can see immediately what works
>and what doesn't, and the failures don't cost anything. I've burned
>through a tremendous amount of film getting the few mediocre fish
>photos on my web site. One of these days I'll manage to scrape
>together enough money for a digital SLR. I hope.

Good point. Now is a good time as plenty places are having sales. I got
mine for a pretty good price. I was also fed up of the film approach.
Takes ages to get the results, costs loads and you don't get good
feedback.

I'm going to wait until tonight, when the room is properly dark, and try
photographing the whole tank with just the tank lights. I got a 256Mb
memory, so I can just shoot and shoot and see what happens.

Not that I have fathomed out the camera yet of course !!

Ta ra

--
Alan Silver

[Alan Silver]

In article >, McEve
> writes
>How about this one?
>
>http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/supercenter/digitalphoto2003/0,39026969,391
>53027-3,00.htm

Thanx, that's very helpful. I did a search on Google last night and
found a few others like this. They give some good tips to get started.
Hopefully after some experimenting, I'll get the hang of what works.

Thanx agin

--
Alan Silver

[Eric Schreiber]

Alan Silver wrote:

>>One of these days I'll manage to scrape
>>together enough money for a digital SLR. I hope.

>Now is a good time as plenty places are having sales. I got
>mine for a pretty good price.

Well, the one I have my eye on is in the $800 range, so it'll have to
wait awhile yet.


--
www.ericschreiber.com

[John >]

It's digital, take a million pictures and see what works. Mostly try it
with the room lights off and the tank lights on. Get as close as your
camera will focus.

JL


"Alan Silver"
> wrote in
message ...
> Hello,
>
> Well, I finally took the plunge and ordered a digital camera (Canon
> Powershot S50). I would like (obviously) to photograph my tank, but am
> not the world's greatest photographer.
>
> Any tips and tricks ? Please don't throw technical stuff at me, I'm
> inexperienced at this.
>
> TIA
>
> --
> Alan Silver
>

[hank barta]

"John ><\(\(\(\\\">" > wrote:
> It's digital, take a million pictures and see what works. Mostly try it
> with the room lights off and the tank lights on. Get as close as your
> camera will focus.

I'm glad somebody said that. Two great advantages of digital are
that you get instant results and you can try a lot of different
things to see what works. Just delete the images that you do not like.

Canon makes great digital cameras and I'm sure the S50 has a lot
of capabilities (and likely a bewildering set of controls.) Keep
it simple at first (point 'n shoot mode) and work within those
capabilities. Spend some times lurking in the photography news
groups and web sites so you can learn more about the technical
issues. Learn how to control your camera's various features a little
at a time and expand your technological knowledge. But never forget,
the photographer takes the picture, not the camera. Mastery of the
technical issues will help, but you need to think about what you
want to see and what you want your pictures to look like before you
get results that you and others will like.

[0rion]

"Alan Silver"
> wrote in
message ...
> Luckily for me other people in this ng have more sense than you.
>
> --
> Alan Silver
>

i come from a long list of newsgroups that deal harshly with people who dont
research things on their own, and whose active users rarely field questions
that havent been exhaustingly researched by the person asking. this is
probably the nicest and most on-topic unmoderated group i've ever taken part
in, and the problem is that it tends to foster crap like "hey i know you
just took your time to help me but that one is too hard, gimme an easy one."

so in the future i'll look for the least technical advice that i can
possibly give you, since thats what you seem to want...

[Alan Silver]

In article >, 0rion
> writes
>so in the future i'll look for the least technical advice that i can
>possibly give you, since thats what you seem to want...

OK, so let me apologise first. I was a bit taken aback by your response
and perhaps overreacted. I'm not stupid, nor am I shy of technical
details (I'm a computer programmer, I'm used to technical details), I
was just looking for some good simple starting points. Once I've worked
out what I'm doing, I can try something more complex.

Anyway, messed around in front of the tank last night. Got a huge array
of blurred and out of focus pictures !! I did get one fairly decent one
of two of my tiger barbs and a few decent ones of a synodontis eupterus,
but the rest of the pictures were predictably awful !!

Ta ra

--
Alan Silver

[Alan Silver]

In article >, "John
><(((\\\">" > writes
>It's digital, take a million pictures and see what works. Mostly try
>it with the room lights off and the tank lights on. Get as close as
>your camera will focus.

Ha ha, tried that last night. Any fish that moved was blurred. Only the
sedentary ones allowed themselves to be photographed. I reckon I need to
look into a separate flash to get more light.

Either that or drop a sleeping pill in the tank before I photograph !!

Ta ra

--
Alan Silver

[Alan Silver]

>> It's digital, take a million pictures and see what works. Mostly try it
>> with the room lights off and the tank lights on. Get as close as your
>> camera will focus.
>
> I'm glad somebody said that. Two great advantages of digital are
> that you get instant results and you can try a lot of different
> things to see what works. Just delete the images that you do not like.

Oh I did plenty of that last night !! It's great fun, click, click,
click and off to the computer to see how awful they look. Delete them
and go back to the tank.

Hours of fun ;-)

> Canon makes great digital cameras and I'm sure the S50 has a lot
> of capabilities

Judging by the size of the manual, yup.

> (and likely a bewildering set of controls.)

Double yup

> Keep
> it simple at first (point 'n shoot mode) and work within those
> capabilities.

I took advice from an MSN article on digital photography and kept
everything at the default setting (except for the shutter noise which I
changed to a bird tweet 'cos it was cute !!) and snapped loads. During
the process, I discovered a) how to turn off the flash (useful for fish)
and b) how to put the camera in macro mode (also useful).

I still got lousy pictures, but they had a certain superiority in their
lousiness due to the fact that they were taken on a digital camera with
non-default settings !!

> Spend some times lurking in the photography news
> groups and web sites so you can learn more about the technical
> issues. Learn how to control your camera's various features a little
> at a time and expand your technological knowledge. But never forget,
> the photographer takes the picture, not the camera. Mastery of the
> technical issues will help, but you need to think about what you
> want to see and what you want your pictures to look like before you
> get results that you and others will like.

Thanx for the advice. I'm trying to understand what I need about
photography, without going into the technical stuff too much. I just
don't have the time to become an expert in photography. I'm looking to
acquire just the knowledge I need to photograph the fish. This seems to
be a special area. I can photo the kids without problems !!

Thanx again

--
Alan Silver

[Bob Alston]

"Alan Silver"
> wrote in
message ...
> In article >, 0rion
> > writes
> >so in the future i'll look for the least technical advice that i can
> >possibly give you, since thats what you seem to want...
>
> OK, so let me apologise first. I was a bit taken aback by your response
> and perhaps overreacted. I'm not stupid, nor am I shy of technical
> details (I'm a computer programmer, I'm used to technical details), I
> was just looking for some good simple starting points. Once I've worked
> out what I'm doing, I can try something more complex.
>
> Anyway, messed around in front of the tank last night. Got a huge array
> of blurred and out of focus pictures !! I did get one fairly decent one
> of two of my tiger barbs and a few decent ones of a synodontis eupterus,
> but the rest of the pictures were predictably awful !!
>
> Ta ra
>
> --
> Alan Silver
>
http://groups.google.com/groups?dq=&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&threadm=20020816190504.17091.00001069%40mb-mu.aol.com&prev=/groups%3Fq%3Drec.aquaria.freshwater.plants%26ie%3D UTF-8%26oe%3DUTF-8%26hl%3Den

http://hometown.aol.com/yamatoaquariums/photography.html

http://hem.bredband.net/maxstr/photo.htm

http://showcase.aquatic-gardeners.org/?&op=showpage&name=resources-photo

http://www.bluemoon.net/~tammy/profiles/photography.html

http://www.thekrib.com/Misc/photo.html

http://hem.bredband.net/maxstr/aquarium_photo.htm

http://www.geocities.com/NapaValley/5491/photography.html

http://www.vectrapoint.com/main/photo/foto.html

http://www.sfbaaps.com/reference/stailey_01.shtml

--
Bob Alston

bobalston9 AT aol DOT com

[Alan Silver]

Zowee, what a lot of bedtime reading !!

Thanx

--
Alan Silver

[Trina]

Hi Alan,

I had success w/ the flash on, room lights off and tank light on. My
camera (Fujifilm FinePix 3800) takes lousy pics without the flash on
unless it's on a tripod. (blurry/shakey pics)

Try taking the pics at a slight angle to the tank so the flash bouces
off to the side and not directly back at you. Also take them fairly
close up.. do you have zoom? I found this helped..zoomed right in..
nice and close up means no flash in the pic.

When my husband sends me the pics off his laptop (he's out of town and
didn't U/L to the server before leaving) I'll throw together a quick
lil site and post them there, they turned out great!

Cheers,
Trina

Alan Silver > wrote in message >...
> In article >, "John
> ><(((\\\">" > writes
> >It's digital, take a million pictures and see what works. Mostly try
> >it with the room lights off and the tank lights on. Get as close as
> >your camera will focus.
>
> Ha ha, tried that last night. Any fish that moved was blurred. Only the
> sedentary ones allowed themselves to be photographed. I reckon I need to
> look into a separate flash to get more light.
>
> Either that or drop a sleeping pill in the tank before I photograph !!
>
> Ta ra

[Alan Silver]

In article >, Trina
> writes
>When my husband sends me the pics off his laptop (he's out of town and
>didn't U/L to the server before leaving) I'll throw together a quick
>lil site and post them there, they turned out great!

Ta, wouldn't mind seeing those. I'm just doing the same myself.

--
Alan Silver