Please give me tips on taking tank pics.

[dc_909]

I am having troubles with taking pictures of my tank and having them llok good. When I had PC bulbs only, the pics came out great, but now that I have halides the pics seem either too dark or too bright depending on the ripples of light. How can I take good pics that actually show off my true color of the tank?

I am using a Kodak Z740 digital camera.

 

[rustybucket145]

Get a tripod. And learn how to use the manual operations of your camera instead of the Auto Setting.

 

[20 20]

http://www.melevsreef.com/take_great_pictures.html

 

[Saltcity]

These are all taken with a Canon G5.
The Biggest tip I learned was to keep the camera lens pressed up against the glass when taking pics.......This keeps you shooting straight on and you get no distortion from shooting through the glass like you do when you shoot at an angle.
I use the Macro mode most of the time. To take pics of moving things like fish.....I Pre focus on something in the tank and then make sure the fish is the same distance awy from the camera as the thing I pre focused on, and then wait for him to stop swimming!

 

[Markk96]

[moved]

 

[thor32766]

great pic of the clown by the way!

 

[astrogazer]

Did some quick research on your Z740 camera...
You have to play to the strengths of YOUR system.

First of all you should set your ISO to the lowest setting. Your sensor (just about all KODAK sensors) seem to get hotter, faster than most, the by product of that being noise (random and very annoying multicolored pixel groups). The down side to a low ISO is the lack of 'speed' you'll get out of your hardware. IMO your going to have to learn how to 'master the flash', it'll give you the speed you're going to need/want, but you'll get a bonus of having your white balance balanced to daylight. This isn't ALWAYS preferred, but when first starting out it will surely help you to get pretty pictures sooner. With a flash you wont want to shoot straight on but at a SLIGHT angle, less is more here. You don't want to add refraction to the equation. You have a 10x optical zoom, use it to get 'close', you'll be pleasantly surprised of what kind of psuedo macro shots you'll be able to get with that lens. You're going to want your subject to fill as much of the frame as possible as close, post imaging cropping will leave a little to be desired. Try NOT to use the digital zoom functions of the camera, as you'll do just as well with some post processing help with a good image editor. You do have one of those, don't you. There are some freebies out there if you don't, and the industry standard revolves around Adobe PhotoShop, kinda pricey, but has a little brother PS Elements for ~ $100. the biggest single improvement to anyone's digital photography is a good image editing program and a little comfort using it.

Hope this helps...
Good luck ... and show us some pix so we can see how you're doing.

 

[dc_909]

Thanks for the help. I finally got some decent pics that aren't all super washed out.

 

[astrogazer]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7514015#post7514015 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by dc_909
Thanks for the help. I finally got some decent pics that aren't all super washed out.

Great! Now you'll have to share some with us!