Willy Wombat Posted May 31, 2004 Share Posted May 31, 2004 Ok i thought it might be a good idea to start a thread to demostrate some of the common problems experienced by people trying to take photos of aquariums and fish. Please share one of your bad shots and stuff ups, and then try to offer some kind of explanation for why the problem has occured and perhaps an idea on how to solve the problem ----------------------------------------------------- I will go first Ok - would have been a good shot, except the autofocus feature on my camera has locked onto the background, and not the subject. The result is a lovely crisp shot of the rock and a blury fishy. Solution - use manual focus (if available) and if not - take lots of shots - you are bound to lock onto something good eventually. One other thing to try is to lock your focuss on one area of the tank, and only shoot when a fish enters the general area that you have in focuss. A lot of patience is required if you attemp this method. I look forward to seeing some of your less than perfect shots Cheers WW Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Gutty Posted May 31, 2004 Share Posted May 31, 2004 Ok, this shot did turn out alright, though there is one glaring fault with it. Flash bounce back. Not only does it show a horrid white dot but also highlights the smeering on the glass.........yuck ! and possibly you...... Simple solutions are to either turn the flash off and if the camera is capable adjust the shutter/apature settings. The other solution is to shoot from an angle so the flash bounces off into space and not your face. This is my attempt at a fix without flash As can be seen they both came out completely different, the only adjustment made was to turn the flash off. Obviously i'm not the best person to give advice about this as both shots came out screwed up. Not even sure how to get a perfect shot from that angle, but it shows the differences atleast. Not a whole lot of help.......but i did ask for this forum.......gotta have some input. lata Matt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mianos Posted May 31, 2004 Share Posted May 31, 2004 Here is an example of bad and better colour balance: This shot was done with auto colour balance. You can see the camera made a bad guess: This shot was done with 4.7K which closer matches the colour temperature of the available light. Not a great shot but you get the idea: Often you can adjust this stuff in photoshop once you have done the shots but I find it's better to start with good material before I mess with it. Another thing to keep in mind, if you don't want the tank to look bowed you need to get a little distance from it and use some zoom. This only works if you have enough available light or fast film. The following shot was tank from too close amd above the tank so it does not look square: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Gutty Posted June 28, 2004 Share Posted June 28, 2004 Learnt a new little tip last week. For those of us with general/auto type cameras, when using flash to shoot fish, rather than dealing with the bounce back talked about above, simply get a small piece of that white filter wool and put it over/on or infront of your flash. Basicly works like a difuser. You may have to play with it a bit to get it right depending on flash size/power and what type of filter foam being used. An example of this method here Photo by DarthV(Cichlid forum.com /Aquamojo.com) Hope that helps some one...... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Willy Wombat Posted June 28, 2004 Author Share Posted June 28, 2004 Thanks for that tips gutty - you would need to play around with it a bit, but worth trying!. Cheers WW Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Gutty Posted June 28, 2004 Share Posted June 28, 2004 I'm gonna have a play tonight. It's been a while since i've shot any of my fish anyway. I'll post some examples up tomorrow....................if i don't forget... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Gutty Posted June 28, 2004 Share Posted June 28, 2004 Well you were quite right Willy, it is gonna take some playing around to get it right. The shot below was taken in full auto mode with one layer of wadding type foam over the flash. As can be seen the bounce back is atrocious, and there is genarally not enough light in the photo. Next time i'll try setting the shutter/apature etc and 2 layers of foam. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
catcher Posted June 28, 2004 Share Posted June 28, 2004 G'day Matt, It looks like your taking the pic from inside the tank out of the darkness. A little Abyss ish ! glenn Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mianos Posted June 28, 2004 Share Posted June 28, 2004 Most of the frame is under exposed because the camera has metered the scene based on the the largest brigthtest object, the flash. You need to shoot the fish at more of an angle. The key is to make sure that you can't see the reflection of the flash in the window in the vewfinder. Once you do that the whole scene will be metered at a lower light level and the fish will be exposed properly (hopefully ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Gutty Posted June 28, 2004 Share Posted June 28, 2004 Now there's an idea........ Gutty starts searching for a waterproof housing for his camera....... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Gutty Posted June 28, 2004 Share Posted June 28, 2004 Most of the frame is under exposed because the camera has metered the scene based on the the largest brigthtest object, the flash. You need to shoot the fish at more of an angle. The key is to make sure that you can't see the reflection of the flash in the window in the vewfinder. Once you do that the whole scene will be metered at a lower light level and the fish will be exposed properly (hopefully ) have you read the whole thread ?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mianos Posted June 29, 2004 Share Posted June 29, 2004 have you read the whole thread ?? As several of the posts further up in the whole of the post are mine I'd say that's a safe bet. I'm just adding, as specified at the top. why this shot did not work out. People still try and point the flash, softened or not, where it can be seen in the reflection. No amount of softening will help a directly reflected flare. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Gutty Posted June 29, 2004 Share Posted June 29, 2004 any idea how this was done then ? He claims to have simply used some filter foam over his flash and shot perpedicular to the glass. Big flash and lots of diffusing possibly ?? or bullcrap ?? Lata Matt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mianos Posted June 29, 2004 Share Posted June 29, 2004 That's superb shot you are pointing out there gutty. I stand by what I said, if the flash is visible in the glass reflection in the viewfinder you will see it in the shot, but, depending on the location of the flash it's possible to keep the flash out of the reflection. For example, if the camera has a macro mode and the front of the lense is very close you won't see the flash. The other possibility is having the lense of the camera so close to the glass of the aquarium that it's not possible to see the flash in the reflection. That's what I suspect the case is here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Gutty Posted June 29, 2004 Share Posted June 29, 2004 Hhmmm, guess i have some more playing around to do. Cheers Mianos !! Matt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
a_devis Posted June 29, 2004 Share Posted June 29, 2004 I use a piece of plastic cut of a milk bottle. Works very vell. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.