Question about taking pictures

[Reefer07]

I seem to be having difficulty taking pictures on my camera of my tank. I need to take close up pictures of my zooanthids to post them and see what is wrong with them.
Anyways I have a Cannon 6.0 megapixel digi cam which I am assuming is capable of taking pretty decent pictures.
Anyways, sometimes I see people with just their actinics on taking pics and other times the regular lights on. I know drumachine has told me to turn all lights off in the room and just have the tank lights on but that wasn't working too well either. When I zoom in the pic becomes really unclear and I was wondering what is a good way to take nice, clear, close up pictures.

 

[Aadler]

Odds are you are simply too close, try staying about 18" away from the coral you want to take a picture off. use a tripod and zoom in all the way. then, when you put the pic on your cpu just crop it and you will still more than likely have to reduce the image size to upload it here. You are just not going to get an impressive macro shot with a point and shoot digicam like you would see in the photo forum.

If your problem is more with the colors, i would keep your main light on and turn the actinics off.

 

[dendro982]

Why the room lights off: I have some tank positioned so, that if room light is on, reflection makes impossible to take a shot of what is inside the tank. But if your tank have no such problem - why not?

Why unclear, when zoom on: guessing here.
- Depending on camera, you may get better shots with only optical zoom on, or with both - optical and digital zoom on.
- Each camera has working distances, at which the shot will be clear. Outside this range - unclear. Or if forgot to press macro-button My cameras don't allow sometimes to take shot at all, if too dark or our of range... Shows red brackets, and no shot.
- Too dark - and the shot may be not allowed, or the grain will be too big. But: I did decent shots under 18W PC.
- Do not relay on steady hands: sit steady, support hands by fingers on the glass. When taking a shot, take a breath, let the half of it go off, and hold breath, when pressing button. Then don't forget to start breathing again
- do not apply force, when pressing button. Lightly, slowly press - eventually it works.
- the nice close up shot can be made within 3 " from the glass, really good - within 2".
- tripod helps too, but takes time to set it.

Now my photo model shows, how I'm doing the shots:

Here - with lights through:

But if place the dollar store kneeling pad behind - much better:

Chili coral under 18W 50-50 PC, within3" from the glass:

IrfanViesw freeware program allows auto color correction and unsharp mask for making out of focus shots slightly better, and resize, of course.

Good luck!