FishProfiles.com Message Forums

Here's a great article i've found...The author doesnot use digital cameras but overall the article is quite informative.

http://www.hagblomfoto.com/article_photography.htm

Mughal

That certainly is an interesting article. Thank you for the contribution.

Have a look in [link=My Profile] http://www.fishprofiles.com/forums/member.aspx?id=1935[/link] for my tank info

Look here for my
Betta 11Gal Desktop & Placidity 5ft Community Tank Photos

Keith

Near enough is not good enough, therefore good enough is not near enough, and only your best will do.
I VOTE DO YOU if not WHY NOT?
VOTE NOW VOTE NOW

Thanks keithgh

What I do:

At night, all lights off in the apartment. I keep FLASH "ON" but I use my carrying case to cover the flash.
Having flash on will give you a faster shutter speed, meaning the pictures won't blurr your fish when they are moving.

Sometimes I have to turn all the lights on in the apartment. My camera is weird. My resolution is on S. Fine.

Digital is the way to go. Take lots of pictures and play with the camera's settings as you go. Be creative and have fun with your pictures.

thanx guys for all your help,ive since taken some great photos,and i have gotten better using the fuctions,however,and ive had this problem for ever,when i go to put my photos into my pc,its telling me that the file is empty,and when i search my pc,they are nowhere to be foundive had a few people give me some ideas,but they didnt help,and it has to be my pc,because i have no trouble putting my photos from the same camera onto my pspsomedays i drive my self to depair,mucking around trying to upload my photos.

does your camera need a driver to work correctly with your computer?

---

"That's the trouble with political jokes in this country... they get elected!" -- Dave Lippman

as far as i know,no it dosent

Ok lets see, there are some really good sugestions on here

As far as my picture takeing goes, i use a cheap Polaroid i733, it has a fairly fast shuter speed, and for its price it takes outstanding pictures.

I use the flash becasue i dont have a tripod, and even if i had a tripod i would probly not change a thing in how i take pictures of my fish, i angle the camera as to not get the flash in the picture, and i find that adjusting the camera distance based on light in the tank will help take better pictures.

i swith from macro mode to regular depending on how close i am to the tank, and where the item i am takeing a picture of is in the tank.

photo are very nice...

Many things are dependent on the likes and dislikes of the photographer. And with so many different ways and types of pics you can take, this is also extremely variable.

As for me, I like the new and the best. I have a Nikon D80. And I love it. The one great thing about it, is that instead of having to take a macro picture, I can take a zoom in picture, set on macro, and have the camera several feet away from the tank on a tripod. And with the commander flash, the flash lays on the top of the glass of the tank. When I go to examine my pics, they are over 10 mega pixels in size, so I can do extreme zooms on them and just crop the shot I am looking for.

By having the camera several feet away from the tank, the fish are not skittish at all. So they are out swimming naturally. By having the flash on the top of the tank, there is no glare whatso ever, and the entire tank is nicely lit up buy it. And, by having the massive mega pixels, I can get the shot I am wanting almost all the time, as well, sometimes I get 2 or 3 other cropped shots out of the original shot.

Another thing you might want to look into if using the built in flash on your cameras, is an anti-glare lense cover. These work extremely great, and you have less of a crop area to cut out from the flash glare. As well, they help protect your lense from scratches. It is cheaper to replace the lense cover than to replace the lense.



_____________________________________________________________

There is always a bigger fish...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdedqsParsM

Not sure if this is interesting to people, but I blew a day mucking around with the fishies and I got quite a lot of pictures and footage that isn't really useful for anything but recording the moment.

How I do my photos:
I have 2 photo tanks. Normally I use a small flat-sided vase, but this time I used a double betta display tank as the females tend not to flare well to mirrors. Another male gets them going though These are set up with aged water (fresh tap water is no good because of the tiny air bubbles that stick to the glass and fish). The bloue backgrounds are strips of aquarium backing that have been dampened and squeegeed on to the rear glass. I heat the tanks with wheat packs as there is no room for heaters and cold fish don't flare

Set yourself up with natural light if you can. If you do it outdoors, try for an overcast day as it stops the harsh shadows. Normally a table near a window is plenty good enough. If you can't do natural light, use a small aquarium light, desk light with a fluro or halogen bulb. Avoid standard light globes, they make everything yellow and it is tricky to colour-correct without affecting the natural colour of the fish.

Plonk the fish in and leave them to settle in for 5 minutes before you start photographing them. They always take a little while to explore, and within 5 minutes they'll be flaring at their neighbour. Let them get the initial jiggles out as those first few flares can be a bit... enthusiastic If you only have one fish or are using something where you can't butt another jar up close by, grab your handy make-up mirror and get the fish interested. I often put the mirror on the front of the vase/tank and then move it to the side as I want to photograph.

I use a Canon G2 camera. It is a brick. It is 4MP so certainly nothing flash, but it does have good macro and a shorter focal distance than most point-and-shoot cameras. I have a newer camera, but in oder to use macro you need to be 100cm away from the subject and zoom in, which is useless. Zoom makes small movements more obvious, so the fish end up soft focus - not what you want. Ideally I'd have a tabletop tripod (about $10) or a small beanbag/wheat pack to stabilise it (you'll notice it wobbles in the videos) but *cough* I was using them to heat the tanks and I've misplaced my itty bitty tripod.

The camera is on auto. While I could sit there and fuss about with F-stops and ISO etc, I rarely find it necessary with this camera. Macro (tulip setting) and auto, use the optical zoom to get the focus right, easy as pie. There is enough to worry about with composition and dealing with the silly fish to worry about the perfect photo, so I tend to take a lot and cull cull cull.

Don't try and crop the photo with the camera. It is heartbreaking to take a picture and find you've lost an anal fin or you've only got a caudal because the fish darted out of frame to the left. Leave yourself some wiggle room and crop it down later. You can always take parts off, you can't add them back on (well you can, but it is well beyond my photoshopping skills and I'm sure it'd make the IBC people angry ).

Right, snapping time Use the viewscreen on the camera. Yeah it chews batteries, but it is much easier than manouvring your head close to the table. You can also rest your arms on something so you reduce movement caused by breathing. Angle the camera so that the light from the flash will bounce up. No head-on pics or you'll end up with a big light blow-out. Yes, I use flash I just like the way it looks and again, it is easier for me than figuring out the manual settings to avoid it.

When you think you have the perfect shot, take a few more. Try and focus on the face/eyes if you have to choose between the head and the tail. Blurry tails in the distance look fine, but blurry heads look kinda distracting.

When you are done, edit in your favourite photo editing program. For freebies, I really like paint.NET (not the MSpaint that comes with your Windows) but GIMP is also pretty snazzy if you can get your head around all the buttons .

Done!


This is my old setup:

The female (Twinkletoes) is in the cup to the side, and the issue of TFH was current at the time and was to help other people judge the colour of the orange betta (Brutus) because it was a new colour at the time and all monitors would display colour differently. The fluro light was just balanced over the vase ($12 from a homewares shop).

Where I was working recently:

In order to keep track of the fish, I photograph their ID number on the jar directly before I photograph the fish, so two siblings that look the same can easily be told apart

For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks. - Terry Pratchett

Hey Keithgh
I am not able to access the link. Can you tell me what could be the problem.

gavinol

What link are you refering to?

Keith

Near enough is not good enough, therefore good enough is not near enough, and only your best will do.
I VOTE DO YOU if not WHY NOT?
VOTE NOW VOTE NOW

i always like to read some good and informative
blogs and this blog is also so good and helpful.
thanks for taking time to discus this topic..

your gear to shoot is power full , you need practice to get nice angle and steady