Aquarium Photography Handout

macclellan

macclellan

New member
Here is the handout I threw together this afternoon which I was supposed to have brought to the meeting... further details for those present and something for those who couldn't make it. It's pretty basic at only two pages, but I hope you find it more informative than many "Aquarium Photography Tips" pages out there. Speak up if there are any questions. I'm sure that I or others here can help.

Oh, and while I'm on the soapbox, shameless self-promotion! See my non-aquarium-related artsy-fartsy photography here.
 
Thanks Joel! I really enjoyede your topic it was very helpful and informative. I just got my Digital SLR and don't really know alot about it or photography for that matter but I am trying to learn and your talk taught me alot . Thanks again.
By the way the photos are awesome you really are talented.
 
Thanks Joel

I was everybody would have listened. :(

I wish I had a good camera so listening would have done me more good!!:)
 
Well, I decided to try "putting my camera where my mouth is" and try taking some shots with a Digicam, my wife's Canon Powershot A530.
None are really excellent, but they're not exactly terrible photos...

Florescent-Fungia.jpg


Green-Fungia.jpg


Red-Disco.jpg


Neglecta.jpg


GSP.jpg


Haitian-Rics-1.jpg


Collage.jpg


Orange-Rics.jpg
 
Last edited:
@GPhi - You're too kind.
@ct_vol - Yeah, that Fungia is sweet! How it eats is awesome, passing mysis from tentacle to tentacle, sorta like crowd surfing. Abby said it was Russell's, I'd seen @CR for a few weeks and was surprised nobody snagged it.
@goreefer - I used the following settings, not sure that all Powershots have all of these or not...:
Color setting: Vivid.
Quality: L
White Balance: Cloudy.

Exposure: M (manual).
Aperture: Most shots were f/11 or f/13.
Shutter speed: varied widely, mostly 1/8" - 1/30"
Flash: Off.
Photoshop (in chronological order): Crop and/or Rotate, Levels and/or Curves (minute exposure corrections & setting black point), Color Correction (white balance tweaking), Saturation +10, Resize to 800x600, Sharpen (unsharp mask, 110% @ 0.5 pixels).
 
Define cheating. :)

I always strive to make photographs represent reality - portray things the way they really look. Digitally captured images are usually 'cold' in color compared to film and to the way they really look. +10 saturation corrects that. Higher settings (anything over 20-25 from my experience), are cheating because the photograph doesn't accurately represent reality.
 
It depends on the camera. Saturation is one "knob" that has a big effect on the way corals appear in pictures. Here's an extreme example of what messing with saturation can produce:
setosajoke.jpg

That's a montipora setosa in extreme mode. It's on the complete opposite side of the color wheel. Obviously, the human eye is the best judge and computer monitors, etc., can affect the image as well as the camera.
 
Do ya think I could charge premium $$ if I could get it to look like that in "true life"?
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15433047#post15433047 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by cee
It depends on the camera.
Click to expand...
Yea, many digital cameras have saturation controls, and those can be abused just like photoshop, as your "extreme" setting shows. But that's a world away from +10 saturation on Canon or Nikon's "normal" or "vivid" settings.
 
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