FishProfiles.com Message Forums

I used Photofilter,Noiseware and Fotofinish programs.
Is it to much color,to much noise..etc any coments appreciated.
What do you think?.

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I know human beings and fish can co-exist peacefully.

They are very nice shots! I don't know if its just my eyes that haven't woken up yet or my monitor, but they don't seem "crisp". Its like they are a tad out of focus. Since I have no idea what those programs you are using do, maybe that is what you were looking for.

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I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.
~ Mae West

Thanks
Thats the coments i wanted.
Crisp pics..do you mean the whole picture it self or only the subject?
These pics are mostly zoomed on teh subject like the shrimps so therefor it might not be crisp around the subject.

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I know human beings and fish can co-exist peacefully.

To my untrained eye, I think they look pretty nice. I'm not familiar enough with photography techniques as to be much of a critic though.

Jim

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Water, taken in moderation, cannot hurt anybody. -- Mark Twain

Its the subject, especially the apistos that seem a little fuzzy.

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I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.
~ Mae West

The first pic?

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I know human beings and fish can co-exist peacefully.

Yes, like I said tough, it could just be me.

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I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.
~ Mae West

It look crisp to me..though the dorsal and the tail fin are a bit fuzzy
Thanks for the coments...any other things?..keep em coming guys

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I know human beings and fish can co-exist peacefully.

I agree with Doe

they look good but not 100% in focus. Imagine if you were trying to focus on the side (end) of a ruler, to me your pictures look like you are focus on the 2 mm mark rather then the true end (side). Close and will get a "clear" picture, but not 100% focused.

Also, you are using a Macro setting and/or lens with these shots right?

No lens only macro setting
I never said that my pics are 100% perfect!..i posted these here to get some ideas on what else i can do to get these pics a little better..thats all.

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I know human beings and fish can co-exist peacefully.

To me, it looks not like the camera was out of focus, but rather the camera was moved a bit while the picture was taken. Putting it on a stand or a hard, stable surface should largely eliminate the problem.

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

Looks like you doctored the pictures too much trying to compensate for something. It looks like the pictures were sharpened to the point where the lines in the fish don't look natrual anymore.

Nice pics, but too doctored for me.

I agree with the sharpening..though i did not sharpen the pics to much..but i do apreciate the answers
I do also belive i have to much color on the vampire shrimps.

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I know human beings and fish can co-exist peacefully.

I am far from a photographer but I think the pics look great Rob! Especially the second one of the apisto.

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Before you criticize someone walk a mile in their shoes. That way you're a mile away and you have their shoes.

Fallout is right, I edit pictures sometimes and if you get a blurry pic and sharpen it to much you get those lines that kind of make it look unrealistic, the sharpening features on photshops are useful but you have to use it in moderation. However you did do good with bringing the colors out better as if they would be naturally in full light.

-Vincent

Here is a pic to compare.
Original pic

Edited pic

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I know human beings and fish can co-exist peacefully.

Thre is a little trick in photoshop you can use to increase the sharpness of slightly out of focus pics.You can do it for specimen shots where the background is relatively unimportant.


Visually assess the picture, and look to where the background begins to blur in the midground. Usually this are will intersect with the body of the subject , so use a selection tool and select that area and carefully draw around the body of the animal. Take the selection tool up and around the upper edge of the photo edge and complete the selection shape. The choose gaussian blur at about 25% intensity to drop the background right back. Use a blur tool to blend the edges of the gaissian blurred area to reduce the contrast as sometimes youll get a discernable line. Now use the sharpen and sharpen edges tool to bring the fish forward, and the gaussian blur area will remain looking blurred.

Set the contrast a little higher than norm and apply it, . Then select the saturation tool, and desaturate the colour slightly to match the real colouration and avoid the loss of detail that the high contrast tends to cause as it hikes up the saturation incidentally.

For posting small images on the internet the effect is immediate. Its not so convincing on the higher resolutions unless you really spend time on precise editing, but it will make a lot of pictures appear clearer and more useable than they were

Before adding my critique, first question - got an ID for that fanfoot shrimp? Only one VERY much like it has turned up at my LFS and I'd like to know what it is and what its maintenance requirements are!

Now, the photos. I liked them - the first shot of the Apisto being my favourite of the two Apisto shots. Without being told that they'd been edited, I'd probably not have suspected because it's possible to achieve similar results without editing.

As for critical focus, here's some tips:

[1] Closing down the aperture to a high f-stop increases depth of field, therefore increases the likelihood of your subject being in critical focus even if you're a couple of millimetres out;

[2] Closing the aperture reduces the incoming ight, and causes the camera to require a lower shutter speed. So, to eliminate camera shake, you need flash so you can use at least 1/60 second shutter speed, and preferably 1/125 or above if the result isn't underexposed (the beauty of a digital camera being that you can experiment and discard the duff pics);

[3] Macro settings make use of increased depth of field via narrow apertures particularly important because macro settings have shallow depth of field intrinsically - it's a consequence of the physics of the optical system - and so you should be looking at around f8 or f11 (if your camera goes to higher settings such as f16 or f22, so much the better);

[4] if your camera can take an external flash on an angle bracket so that you can aim the flash to avoid the 'bomb flare' effect, then this should be done also (doesn't have to be a top notch flash gun, just so long as you can put some distance between the flash gun and the lens) - then use different settings of the angle bracket to allow illumination of the subject without the bomb flare effect ruining the shot;

[5] If you can fit a polarising filter on the front of the lens, better still - this will increase contrast once you've eliminated glare with the correct setting.

Oh, and for all those like myself who are unfortunate Fuji users with cameras equipped with the so-called "Super CCD" chip, be advised that the low light response of those chips is abysmal, speckles appear in your shots unless you carpet bomb the subject with a powerful external flashgun (the built in flash on my camera isn't up to the job) and the chip also has extremely poor response to the blue end of the spectrum unless ambient light levels are high. Result being that pictures look more yellowish than they should. Usually if the effect isn't too bad I leave it, but sometimes I am forced to fire up PhotoShop and eliminate the yellow cast using "Variations".

Anyone with Canon or Nikon equipment should find that their cameras perform proper white balancing to cope with low light levels.

When it comes to using sharpening tools, it's too easy to overdo this, and make the nend result look as though you montaged the subject into the background. Some degree of edge softness is natural, unless of course there is high contrast between such features as fish fins and the background. Likewise, it's easy to overdo the blur tools on the background, and apply one blur setting to the whole background, whilst a more natural result is obtained by grading the blur so that more distant features are subject to greater blur than nearby features. Means more work for you, but the result is more natural.


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Thanks a lot for that info..apreciate it a lot

The shrimps i have are these.
The blue one is the Atya gabonensis(Vampire shrimp)
the second is Wood shrimp,bamboo shrimp also called gian filter shrimp.

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I know human beings and fish can co-exist peacefully.

to keep on this - sometimes with aquatic photography blurriness can be caused by not having the lens perpendicular with the glass. Having it at an angle to the glass can cause blurriness.