Best Manual settings for Aquarium Photography ?

[pammy]

Hey All. What manual settings on your Non-SLR digital cameras do you find best to take photos of your tank? Also, best with flash or no flash? Do you manually set white balance?

Thanks!
Pam

 

[BlueCorn]

Whichever one properly exposes the scene under your unique conditions.


You'll never get good results by trying to copy other peoples settings. Go get Bryan Peterson's book Understanding Exposure and read it. Learning to understand what your camera is telling you will make a dramatic result in your success rate.

Cheers

 

[TitusvileSurfer]

Agreed. The whole point of manual control revolves around your vastly superior human brain controlling the camera as opposed to a micro chip. With the automatic modes, the camera makes its best guess of what it thinks you might be taking a picture of. Sometimes it nails it...most times other settings would have been given a better result. Of course you can't possibly boss the camera around without first knowing the basics of how the camera works and what the settings actually do.

 

[IPT]

I agree with above.....however, you may want to try and focus one some bright white sand in your tank, set the Exp to +2 stops (over exposed) and see what you get . That should be a pretty decent starting point at least.

 

[pammy]

Thank you all. I was getting pretty good pictures with an "Undwerwater" Scene mode on my Canon A95 (pics below). I bought a much better Canon this week - SX200. The "underwater" mode was replaced with an "Aguarium" mode. I figured the new mode, was just basically the same with a new name. Definitely isn't. The pictures are all coming out with a blue overcast....like you get when diving. I turned the flash on and they came out better, but still not as good. (my older canon took better pics with the flash off). I did notice the Aquarium mode set the ISO to 500, which is probably too high....or so I'm guessing. I figured I might have to go the manual route, and thought some other reefers might have played a ton, and always come back to the same settings that work the best for taking pics of our tanks.
Here's a few pics I took with my old canon. Pam

 

[Jeff]

Looks like you are on the right track. I found that taking hundreds of pictures with different settings helped me figure out what works for me.

 

[TitusvileSurfer]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14763606#post14763606 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by pammy
I figured I might have to go the manual route, and thought some other reefers might have played a ton, and always come back to the same settings that work the best for taking pics of our tanks.

I bet we all do come to roughly the same settings for various parts of our tanks...but those settings are unique the the thank and what section of the tank being shot.

We don't all have an "Elos Planet 150w MH / 4 24w T5 Combo Light". We don't have your rock structure, the glass of our tank is different, the corals are a different distance from the glass, ect. ect. ect.

Naming off settings used in our tank with our lights is like letting you cheat off of a test...but we have different versions of the test.

IPT had a pretty good suggestion. Meter off of the white sand and bump up your EC +2. If you have a grey rock you might be able to meter of of that.

Basically try all kinds of settings until the "brightness" looks good. Then change everything in equal increments (stops or 1/3 stops) until the settings are what you need.

 

[pammy]

Hey All. Tried some of your suggestions. I tried playing with manual settings last night. I set the F stop at different settings from the lowest (f3.4) to the highest (f8.0). Anything at the upper end seems like it's unusable unless I used a tripod. I find it easier to rest the lens against the glass than to pull out a tripod. I used AV mode and I manually set the ISO to 200, turned the flash to the lowest setting, and I set the white balance, by aiming it at the sand. Below are a couple pictures with my old camera using automatic settings with "Underwater" Scene Mode. The pictures with the new camera below, were manual settings. Please let me know, based on the pictures below, if you think different settings would have turned out better. Would I be better off using PVC to set the white balance to, or is the sand in the tank fine? Thanks ! Pam

Dendrop - Old Camera Canon A95 5MP - Used "Underwater" mode. No manual
settings / no flash

Dendro - New Camera Canon SX200 12MP - f3.4 / ISO 200 Flash - Lowest Level

Splendid Shrimp Goby - Old Camera Canon A95 5MP - Used "Underwater" mode. No manual settings used / no flash

Splendid Shrimp Goby - New Camera Canon SX200 12MP - f4.5 / ISO 200 - Flash Lowest Level

 

[TitusvileSurfer]

You used 1/60 on every one of these shots. This is what is introducing your blur. You just can't hit 1/60 on this camera without a tripod. You need more ISO or more aperture, in to top picture you were using f/2.8 which is pretty quick. A tripod would really be the only reasonable option for that one.

 

[pammy]

Thanks for the info TitusvileSurfer. I used AV mode, so I thought I understood that AV mode sets the shutter speed automatically to an appropriate speed for the aperature you set, but I'm really just trying to understand this. The first picture, was taken in auto mode, with an underwater scene on my old Canon A95. I didn't select f2.8, it was what Auto chose. Now on this new camera (Canon SX200, f3.4 is the lowest. Would you suggest increasing the ISO or aperature and to about what level ? I figured AV mode would be an easier manual mode to start with since I wouldn't have to play with shutter speed, but would I be better starting with TV mode or Manual? Figured I'd learn one thing at a time by starting with AV. I took this picture below, before I read your email tonight. Think it came out a little crisper than the picture I took above. The only thing I really changed was I lowered the ISO from 200 to 100, but you're saying I should have increased it instead of decreasing it ? I also changed the AF Frame size from normal to small.

]

Thanks. Pam

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14773348#post14773348 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by TitusvileSurfer
You used 1/60 on every one of these shots. This is what is introducing your blur. You just can't hit 1/60 on this camera without a tripod. You need more ISO or more aperture, in to top picture you were using f/2.8 which is pretty quick. A tripod would really be the only reasonable option for that one. [/QUOTE

 

[TitusvileSurfer]

In this image you still pulled a 1/60 shutter speed. The only reason this image is crisper than the shots above is that you held the camera steadier. If you used a tripod, this shot would be even more crisp, and all of the others would have followed suit.

The minimum shutter speed required varies from setting to setting (mm especially), camera to camera with that setting, and photographer to photographer with the given camera and setting. It is a very gray area.

If you are going to handhold your camera, you need to hold your camera completely still while the picture is being taken or get your shutter speed up. In this latest example hand holding seemed to work out just fine, but compared to the first shots you can see that the results while hand holding are very inconsistent.

The last shot was great by the way. If you can keep your hands as steady every time with a 1/60 shutter speed as you did in this example, all of your images will look as clear as that image does. If you move just a liiiitle bit, your images will exponentially blur more.

 

[pammy]

Thanks again TutusvileSurfer. Yes, I didn't touch the shutter speed on that last picture, because I hadn't read your comment yet. Where would be a good starting point to adjust my shutter speed with the f3.4 setting and ISO of 100 or 200? Thanks. Pam

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14774024#post14774024 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by TitusvileSurfer
In this image you still pulled a 1/60 shutter speed. The only reason this image is crisper than the shots above is that you held the camera steadier. If you used a tripod, this shot would be even more crisp, and all of the others would have followed suit.

The minimum shutter speed required varies from setting to setting (mm especially), camera to camera with that setting, and photographer to photographer with the given camera and setting. It is a very gray area.

If you are going to handhold your camera, you need to hold your camera completely still while the picture is being taken or get your shutter speed up. In this latest example hand holding seemed to work out just fine, but compared to the first shots you can see that the results while hand holding are very inconsistent.

The last shot was great by the way. If you can keep your hands as steady every time with a 1/60 shutter speed as you did in this example, all of your images will look as clear as that image does. If you move just a liiiitle bit, your images will exponentially blur more.

 

[TitusvileSurfer]

You adjust your shutter speed by changing the f/3.4 or ISO 100 settings.

If you got to f/2.8, the shutter speed can go up. If you go to ISO 300, the shutter speed can go up. All three of them are connected.

 

[pammy]

Gotcha. Thanks!

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14777984#post14777984 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by TitusvileSurfer
You adjust your shutter speed by changing the f/3.4 or ISO 100 settings.

If you got to f/2.8, the shutter speed can go up. If you go to ISO 300, the shutter speed can go up. All three of them are connected.

 

[TitusvileSurfer]

If you are getting blurry pictures you need a faster shutter speed.
1/60? You've gotten 1 really good one
1/80? Maybe
1/100 I bet a lot of those images up top would have been a crisp as the last one if the shutter speed was 1/100...or 1/125!