Tips and Tricks wanted

SurfnFish

New member
So I just read a TON of info on taking pictures. I can never get a FTS that I want. The pics always come out way too blue. I have a sweet camera, but not quite sure what I'm doing I guess. I have a Sony DSC-H50. I tried taking pics with manual adjustments tonight. I played with the white balance and aperature. I took pics around f8 at around 1200iso. Also played with the setting around f4 with a lower iso. Hopefully I'm using these terms right. Anyways, just looking for some basic tips on focus. You guys can tell me what you think based off these terrible pics (pics have not been adjusted using photo editing software):



 
I'm not familiar with that particular camera, but can you shoot in RAW format or manually set the white balance? If you can shoot in RAW, then all you need is a raw editor, and you can adjust the color so it looks correct. A shortcut is to put something white in the tank, angle it about 45 degrees up towards the light and take a picture (I liked to use a lid to a 5g bucket or my white cutting board, but anything like that will work). You can use this to either manually set the white balance, or if you're changing the white balance in post processing, there's usually an eye dropper tool where you can just click on the white object, and it will set it for you automatically. Some editors have a batch feature where you can apply this correction to all your photos. Otherwise, just take note of the color temperature and hue and manually apply it to your photos. Unfortunately, most cameras don't have preset white balance settings that handle the very cool color temperatures of our tanks very well.

As for focus, I can't help much with that particular camera, unless it has a manual focus, which is generally what I use for my full tank shots. Depending on how close you are to the tank, your aperture may be too wide, though. Again, aperture is kind of tricky on those point and shoot cameras. The really short focal length for those lenses always throws me off. The good news is, it gives you a much greater depth of field than those of us with SLRs would get at the same f-stop. There may be some depth of field calculators out there that can help you out with that camera in particular.
 
Thanks Island. No other suggestions from anyone? I know someone out there can guide me with cleaning up the focus.
 
By lookinh at the pics it looks like your camera is set to focus on the closest object. you need to turn that off if it is on and then focus your camera on something 1/4 to 1/2 distance from the front of the tank. I would start with an f-stop of 8 and then go up from there. Good luck and keep trying!
 
The color problem is definately related to white balance, unfortunately your camera doesn't support RAW and as another poster already noted, the WB presets available may not be useful. I doubt it's possible, but check if you can set the white balance by setting the temperature directly, if you can then play around until you find a setting that works.

In the meantime you'll have to fix it in post. I did this by manually selecting a spot on the clowns head as the white point in the photo, and it still feels too blue, though the color contrast certainly went up.

803830784_ihQYY-XL.jpg
 
Well I downloaded Picasa free photo editing software. I took some more shots tonight, worked them through picasa and ended up with these:


 
I really hate to break it to you...Your camera can't shoot RAW, and with limited white balance presets the camera is holding you back on the blue pictures.

Your tank is bowed in the front and the glass distortion will...well...distort a camera's view into the tank. This effect on the camera is compounded compared to what you see with your eyes. The tank is holding you back on focusing your pictures. Sorry :/ If you take the pictures form the side of your tank the power head is on, you may get better results. You want the glass in front of your camera to be flat.
 
That makes sense about the bow front part. I know that I've seen some great pics come from regular point and shoot cameras though. What about the lighting in the room? On or off?
 
If you turn it on you will probably get gnarly reflections, so I would turn it off. Turn your actinic lights off, try to get it as yellow as possible.
 
Room lights OFF

It seems to me I make better pictures also in the evening when there is no daylight coming through the windows
 
It seems to me I make better pictures also in the evening when there is no daylight coming through the windows

Spot on there. Even with the blinds/curtains drawn, you can't always eliminate all the light. Also, beware of stray light coming from adjacent rooms, the TV, etc. Our eyes are very good at looking past a lot of the reflections on the glass, so you tend not to notice many of them on a day to day basis.
 
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