my favorite fish

[cilyjr]

here is my yellowheaded (pearly) jawfish. he has a girlfriend not seen here. these fish are the coolest little guys with so much personality! this photo was taken with a powershot a85 by canon. this camera has a fully manual setting. i am really still learning how to work with it. thanks for looking!

 

[melev]

That's a great shot. The image itself looks a little pixelated, like you shot it at a higher ISO. The higher it is, the grainier the image.

 

[kryppy]

I love them fish!!

 

[cilyjr]

it doesn't look that way before use save for web with photoshop. this was shot at 400 iso

 

[melev]

Okay, when you save for web, this is what I do:

Resize your image to 640 x 480, or 800 x 600. Next Save For Web, and set it to 52 and jpeg. It should look nice and clean. What setting do you have it set for currently? 30? 60 and up will look pretty darn good. 52 was the level I read here in this forum a long time ago, and so I use that to this day.

 

[Lpabsolute]

Very cool fish...

 

[cilyjr]

melev, looking back on the shots from that session, that one is more pixelated than some others. IMO 400 speeds shouldn't be that hard to get a clean picture. i am using a large apature so i'm not getting much DOF. even using my hand held light meter i'm just not getting enough light. hmmm. this is with 256 watts. guess i am going to have to find a bulb for my old Sungun photo lights.

 

[cilyjr]

here is another shot from the same session same ISO faster shutter and smaller aperature. big difference used biult in flash at 1/3 strengh.

 

[melev]

Yes, that looks better already.

 

[thor32766]

yeah great pic!

 

[cilyjr]

thanks all. but like i said this was with a flash. i had to edit a flash reflection out of this pic...i have taken many photo classes and have a b&w enlarger (with no room to setup)...and all i really remember from the classes (aside from the very basics) is out of every 100 shots you end up with 1 or 2 good ones!!! anyways it's fun for me, a side hobby off reefkeeping!!!

 

[melev]

cilyjr, did you read any of gho's tutorials yet? Gregr has a few great articles in reefkeeping.com and this forum has a few more helpful links in the stickied threads. I could copy n paste my article into a post here if none of that helped you.

 

[cilyjr]

i have read your photo stuff on melev's reef. actually i have been checking the mail waiting for my new free top down box. you are itching to send me! J/K of course!
and i have been fliping through some of the posts, but mostly i have been looking at all these old notes i have from school (5 years ago)for stuff that pretains. i think most of my issues are a lack of understanding of this camera. before i devorced i had a nikon d70 (guess who has it now), and the current camera is more of a point and shoot, although it has a fully manual setting it doesn't really work like an SLR. also it claims to have a macro i don't feel i am getting true macro. and the manual focus feature is giving me trouble! i downloaded the manual in pdf (which i am now sure is short for japanese) and it is vague in its descriptions of features. i do figure out something new every other day or so! hey while i got your ear, y'all should do a podcast on photography tips

 

[melev]

I used to use a HP 215 point and shoot camera several years ago, and also didn't have anything to use to edit my pictures beyond Paint Shop Pro. It was a 1.3 megapixel camera with a 4 meg video card. I was able to capture some decent pictures with it, based on the response I got from others.

I would hold the camera very steady, using a couple of fingers to brace my camera steady against the glass, and set the camera to macro mode. If necessary, I'd switch it to "2x" mode which was the macro zoom option. And let's not forget I took pictures of stuff in a 29g, which is only 12" front to back.

Later I had Travis Staut come over here and teach me how to use my camera. That helped immensely. What I typed up on my site is pretty much what he taught me, and later I added that Photoshop page as well, as it can clean up some bad shots as well.

I'm sure it would be frustrating having to go from a D70 to a point and shoot. Divorces are the worst.

 

[cilyjr]

i remember reading about your HP, my other obsticle in shooting my tank is i have a bowfront. i am getting some wierd distortions. as far as holding the camera steady is important for focus (autofocua esp.) but over 125 iso does it make much difference?

 

[cilyjr]

i have a tripod but i broke the camera mount...

 

[melev]

Bowfronts are tough. I don't believe I've taken too many pictures through one, unless it was a LFS display. Focus is always important, and avoiding camera shake is as well.