Eric

Very nice photos.

Jim

Eric Schreiber wrote in message
...
"RedForeman ©®" wrote:

Here are some tips to help you take better pictures of your tank and it's
creatures
(please add your own)
Take pics at night, with no other room lights on
Use extra light if possible from top only

I've seen the suggestion to put the flash in a plastic bag and
actually submerse it the water several times, though I've never tried
it myself. It would certainly get rid of the problem where much of the
light bounces off the water surface and never reaches the fish.

Turning on flash, but covering it can speed up shutter and get crisper
pics

To take this a bit further, if your camera has a manual mode, you can
simply set a fast shutter speed. The problem is that not as much light
will then reach the film or CCD, so your picture may come out
under-exposed.

To compensate, you need to use a larger aperture - the hole size that
the light comes through. Aperture is measured in f stops, and a
smaller number means a larger aperture.

Setting the smallest number/largest aperture you can will reduce your
depth of field - things in front of and behind your focus area will be
fuzzy. This is not a bad thing, and in aquarium photography will have
an especially nice effect - your subject (fish, plant, whatever) will
be in good focus while the background will be indistinct. The downside
is that with such a shallow focus area, it's even harder to get the
subject in proper focus.

An example of this effect is on my site:
www.ericschreiber.com/aquarium/fish-sae.html


Hold camera at an angle so there's no glare, even with no flash, JIC

If you want to further eliminate glare and don't mind a bit of
fussing, you can work under a dark drape. Have it cover you, the
camera, and the part of the tank you're shooting through. If you're
using a flash and can put it on a cord, set it up *outside* the draped
area.

Using these basics can get you some decent pics, but nothing special...
hopefully others can add some...

Taking photos of fish, who don't have the good sense to sit still when
you want them to, requires a little luck and a lot of patience.

Also, there's a reef group who has some photo experts running around in
it... you can ask them since we're all a bit fishy anyway.

Reef tank photos are a bit easier, since most of the subjects sit nice
and still, and the lighting is very bright. One of the first tank
pictures I ever took was of a friends reef tank, and I got a decent
shot of it: http://www.ericschreiber.com/photogr...toolcoral.html



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