little help

[danimal1211]

A friend needs the money so I'm buying her Canon T2i off her. So I'm diving straight into a new hobby. I've been trying to read as much as I can, but my heads spinning a little bit. Any pointers on what I could do better with this photo would help. The lens is the standard (18 to 55mm i think) f8 ISO 100 don't recall shutter speed. I have a tripod. I'm gonna save up for a macro lens but for now I'm gonna pic up a magnifying glass.

 

[jroovers]

Looks pretty good to me! In terms of constructive criticism the zoas look a tiny bit out of focus (i.e. could be a touch sharper) and the area directly to the right that is overexposed is a bit distracting - maybe a tigher crop on the zoas to elimiate that portion would help? Also, looks like some polyps were closed - if you waited until all open, might have made for a better photo? Colour and WB of the zoas themself look pretty good, but hard to say for certain without seeing it in real life.

 

[Recty]

Also, since the entire picture is slightly out of focus, it looks to me like you're dealing with diffraction which is caused by not shooting exactly perpendicular to the glass. Make sure when you take your photo you have the lens perfectly perpendicular to the glass you're shooting through.

The best lenses in the world and perfect focus still wont help if you're not perpendicular.

 

[danimal1211]

First off, Thank you both for your input, very helpful. I believe I was angling down a little, I'll try to shoot straight on from now on. I wasn't sure if the slight blurriness was due to using the wrong aperture or not. These were a new colony put in the tank the day before, that's why they weren't all open. I just wanted to start taking photos.
Right now I'm using iphoto '09 for editing. I can't upgrade to the newer Snow Leopard, and PhotoShop won't work with my current OS. So until I get a new 'puter this is what I'm stuck with.
Per your advise I cropped the image a bit more and Sharpened by 50% it looks a bit better, but still enough out of focus to make me feel a little drunk when I'm looking at the pic

 

[tektite]

One little thing that makes a huge difference with aquarium photography is controlling the white balance on your camera. Camera 'auto' settings are programmed for situations like sunlight and some indoor lighting. The lights on our tanks are very blue compared to that. You get the best result by setting the white balance on the camera manually. Its usually a 2-step process. First set the white balance the camera will use to the K (kelvin) setting. Then go into your camera's menus, and set the Kelvin value to 10,000K. That'll help the camera compensate for some of the blue in aquarium images.

 

[danimal1211]

Thanks tektite I'll give that a try

 

[danimal1211]

The custom white balance on my camera requires me to take a photo of the white source instead of selecting a K temp. Should I place something white in my aquarium and take a photo of that?

 

[danimal1211]

Took some more pics yesterday this was about the best one I took. I couldn't get the colors right to save my life, but I'll try to WB the camera from now on as soon as I figure out the best way to do that. Anyways in the backround all the outlines of the rock have this blue hue around them almost looks like something out of Tron, is there a good way to either remove or avoid these, I've seen it in several pics.




Edit: I guess the hue doesn't show up so well in these smaller attached images