Fish/ Coral photography settings?

[jrod11]

for any fish and photo experts out there:

what is the best shutter speed and aperture settings for my Digital Rebel camera for me to photography my corals and fish?

 

[pong]

tagging along

 

[sminker]

i use a Rebel Xti.

i wouldnt do any shutter speed under 60. they will be blurry if you do.

it takes a lot of shots, practice and patience.

 

[sminker]

dont worry about aperature. just set your shutter speed to 60 and higher. you can also adjust the exposure setting. take a few test shots then adjust your exposure, normally you have to lower it. your exposure will change on your position. i try to find the right spot and set my exposure and my shutter speed and just wait for the fish to come.

heres a few shots i took when i had freshwater.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bigfly/

 

[pong]

for me... the problem im getting is the lack of detail on the corals...

they sometimes turn out super white... due to the lights... how would you take pics like the "tank of the month" shots

-- sorry for the semi-hijack

 

[Anton M]

Check out my photo thread, i just posted a few tips on how i take my pictures, although i would hardly call myself an expert.

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1463156

 

[pong]

so ur using just the 50mm 1.8?

its not the macro lens?

 

[IslandCrow]

I'm not sure I agree with no shutter speeds below 60. . .probably a good rule of thumb for fish, but not necessarily for corals. For my corals, I usually don't go above 30. I recently did a couple actinic lighting only shots at 1-2 second shutter speeds, and they turned out great. Just use a tripod and either a remote shutter switch or put the camera in timer mode so you don't get any shake when you take the picture. In general, I use narrow aperture/slow shutter speed on corals and wide aperture/faster shutter speeds for fish. It really takes some playing around, though, because it depends on your tank, the fish, the orientation and type of corals, etc.

One little hint I can give you is if you use Firefox for your web browser, there's a plug-in you can get to allow you to read the exif data from the pictures people post. It doesn't work for all pictures, but whenever I see one I like, I pull up that info to see what settings they used. I can't remember the name of the plug-in, but it shouldn't be too hard to find on the Mozilla homepage.

 

[crvz]

I actually play with the aperture and don't really bother with shutter speed. I normally take pictures at various f-stops, then just play with them on the computer. the more important thing for corals is pumps off and a tripod.

 

[Aadler]

If you have intense light (read: anything other than your basic normal output light strip) you will want to under expose the picture as much as two full stops. Do this by shooting in aperature priority, setting the ap, allow the camera to set the shutterspeed then turn the little wheel near the shutter button (button you use to take a pic) counter clockwise, you should see the exposure being adjusted in 1/3 stop increments. I cannot say these things for sure as i have a 30d and the xti's are different, but should be pretty similar. you will notice a much more true to life coloration by turnign the exposure down.

Add to that the white balance coffee filter (take a pure white coffe filter, cover your lens, point camera at tank, take picture [NOTE you may need to be in manual mode to do all this, focus included], then go into otions and set your white balance to that image, then repeat the above steps.)

mike