Found a Good Article on Aquarium Macro Photography

[NanoKat]

And it's right here on Reef Central in their Reefkeeping magazine articles...

Closeup Aquarium Photography Article

Definitely some good information!

 

[clockwurk]

interesting article.
thanks!

 

[Ding2daDong]

good little article. I am still trying to figure out how to take pictures of my tank while representing the real colors I see. Every picture I take is completely blue.

Thanks

-Matthew

 

[NanoKat]

There should be a menu item somewhere in your camera's settings for "White Balance"...I usually set it to "Cloudy" or "Shade" and come up with some good color representation. Bring your camera to the next meeting and I'll find it and show you how to do it.

 

[loyalrogue]

Also. instead of using a preset for white balance you could place a piece of white plastic, like a butter container lid, inside your tank and set the white balance by focusing on that.

 

[pedromatic]

Thanks, Kat, good article. Now if I can just get this focal length, aperture, f-stop stuff in my head I'll be OK. Computer stuff I can handle, camera settings still throw me for a loop.

One thing I want to do is capture stop motion shots of my quicker fish, like wrasses. Most of the time they're blurred. I can't seem to get the shutter speed fast enough with the light level in the tank.

 

[slyfoxface]

verry cool article

 

[NanoKat]

I found that with fast moving fish, flash is definitely best. Just make sure you're not directly perpendicular to the glass. I just keep shooting til I get something good. That's the nice thing about digital...don't have to think about all the film I'm wasting!

Also, some cameras have the white balance manual setting, some do not...the presets are a good start.

 

[ReefWreak]

Good article. Thanks

Pedro, like kat said, it's all about just taking a crapton of shots. That's what I've had to do. I usually don't have the patience for it though.

What I've been thinking about is getting the nikon f1 lens. My friend has it for shooting indoors, and it would be great, but the problem is that there is no zoom, it's stuck at 50mm, which is good for fish, but not great for anything else.

 

[ReefWreak]

Also, can you just adujst the white balance in a seperate program (picasa) if you take the pics into a raw format?

 

[NanoKat]

Actually, you can correct the color temperature in a computer program, but the best results are always attained when set properly in the camera. I shot some pics a while back with what I knew to be the wrong white balance, but figured I could fix it later. Well, I tried to fix them, but was not totally happy with them afterwards...it's definitely easier said than done.

 

[ReefWreak]

Did you shoot them raw or jpeg/etc though? I've been told that raw is raw, no white balance, no color change, no nothing. Just raw data of what the CCD picks up. Then you have to do it all yourself.

 

[Husky_1]

I will have to read through this, I just bought a Nikon D40. I figured for $400 (factory refurb with warranty) it was worth it, even without an internal AF motor.