How to take a good digital photo

[austinsdad]

I'm thinking that the camera's stability has a lot to do with the quality of the shot too. I think someone told me here recently that they use the ironing board. Can't seem to hold a camera still enuf with your hands it seems. I'll have to check out my digital camera more too. Macro settings. Hmm. Hope I got one of those on it.

I used to be so good with those manual settings for apertures, shutter speeds, and film speeds. Still not crazy about these new fangled, auto everything cameras yet.

[reefrunner69]

Some has to do with the color profile you are using in your camera as compared to what is produced for the web. Photo shop shows you a CMYK profile while your editn the pic, but saves as RGB when compressing to jpg. My digi cam has 6.3 million photo sensors, half are green, 1/4 Red and 1/4 Blue, other manufacturers have similar ratios, although possibly slightly different, the ratia causes the color shift. Blue has always been a difficult color for digicams and in response to that, I think it has swung the other way.

[sdveirs]

Originally Posted by reefrunner69

I use a Nikon CoolPix 995.

I have a Coolpix 950, great camera however I have since upgraded to a Nikon D70 which I am in love with.

Anyone interested in a 950? Its great for pictures to post online!

[GIMojo]

I am! i pm you

I figured out how to take pictures of fish now. really really really fast iso lol.

[Lonewolfblue]

I'm using the HP Photosmart 935 and still trying to find the settings for tank shots. I'm getting closer. Here's a couple pics for ya...

[Dragonmommy]

I am using an HP Photosmart 433 and haveing no luck at all. Anyone else used this type of camera?

[Zagz]

Nice pics lonewolf! Dragonmommy I can't take pics for the life of me. I take 50 and use 5! I have a kodak digital never tried the HP. It takes a lot of practice and I like the ironing board suggestion, I'm going to try that!

[Dragonmommy]

Haa! I took 143 photos tonight and for 17 i can use, none I am really HAPPY with

[Lonewolfblue]

I found that when I took the pictures without the viewfinder and shutter speed on 400, I get better results. Not sure why I don't get the same results with the viewfinder on. And I have the lights in the house off, and tank light on, at night. Even with macro, I'm not using a tripod. Ever since starting to take pics without the viewfinder, pics are coming out wonderful. the viewfinder must slow camera processing down, causing blurriness with any movement.

[push350z]

Originally Posted by reefrunner69

When taking pics of moving objects, there is no way around it, you gotta be using a faster shutter speed, this means you either use the lash, or you fiddle with the exposure. For the pics of the clown I took (in the new aquisitions forum), I had the exposure bumped up to +2.0 EV, I had the camera stopped down to an aperture of about 3.6-4.0 (lose some depth of field, but it allows more light in) and an ISO equivelant of 200 and a shutter speed of 1/60sec. It's about capturing the light, slower shutter speeds allow you to have a larger aperture, which increases your DOF, but it makes it pretty hard to prevent motion blur.

I think you got a little confused here. Increasing aperture size (smaller number) will REDUCE your depth of field, but allow you to take in more light at a given exposure time. Decreasing the aperture size will increase depth of field, but require longer exposure times to take the same photo. For example to take a perfectly exposed picture of a cactus in the desert you could take the shot at f/2 and a shutter speed of 1/10000 of a second or get the same shot with f/16 and 1/1000 of a second. The difference will be in the first one the background will appear blurry while the cactus is in focus, and in the later both the cactus and the background will be sharply in focus.

Aperture size is calculated by f/N, f being the focal length of the camera. N is the number that you choose on the camera to determine aperture size. In low-light situations where you have movement that you want to freeze you are going to want to choose the smallest f-number you can on your camera. This will allow you to take in as much light as you can for the chosen exposure time. The side effect will be an out of focus background, just how out of focus depends on the f-number chosen and the distance of the background from the subject.

If you are in high light situations or you have adequate light and want to maintain a greater DOF then you can decrease the aperture size by choosing a larger f-number. Remember not as much light will get in per unit time with a smaller aperture but in well lit aquariums you can get away with this smaller aperture size.

The key to picking an f-number is remembering whatever you choose the aperture size will be it's reciprocal. IE f-number 2 is actually f/2 so that is a larger aperture size than f-number 16 = f/16

As mentioned by reefrunner69 you can further enhance your picture taking skills by toying with the EV value on your camera. This is the exposure value like it's name suggests is a way of changing the way your camera exposes images. First I will talk about the case where a light source causes your subject to be UNDEREXPOSED (subject is too dark). In this case you will want to choose a + EV value to compensate and make the subject brighter. In the case where your subject is OVEREXPOSED (subject is too bright) you will want to choose a - EV value to compensate. This wont necessarily help with there not being adequate light in the aquarium but it can help when reflection of light off the sand causes a ground dwelling fish to be underexposed.

If you have increased your aperture as big as you can get it (small f-number) and toyed with the EVs and haven't been able to capture that shot of an active fish you have another option. Digital cameras have another way of adjusting in low-light conditions. It's been brought up a little here and that's called the ISO setting. Generally you want to keep your camera on the LOWEST ISO setting you have, because this allows you to take the best quality pictures. When you bump up the ISO number, you are in effect making the millions of optical sensors in your camera more sensitive. The more sensitive these sensors become the more noise will be evident in your images.

This is where the recommendation of taking LOTS of pictures comes into play. Different cameras respond to the same ISO settings differently. For example, ISO 200 on my camera may introduce the same amount of noise into an image as ISO 800 on a different brand camera. By taking pictures and toying with the ISO settings you can see how high you can set your ISO to before it introduces too much noise for your liking. If you have to go with a high ISO don't be discouraged, there is software that can help reduce noise in images, and techniques that can be done in Photoshop to reduce noise as well. (Besides using the reduce noise filter)

Now to put all this together to take those perfect shots of your fish. If you have some highly active fish like a danio you are going to want to have a fast shutter speed to effectively 'freeze' them in the picture. Play with varying combinations of aperture size, ISO settings, exposure values, and shutter speeds to take a picture you like. I can't tell you what exact settings will work best for your aqarium shots because as I said earlier all cameras are different, and your lighting will more than likely be different than mine. However if you want I can help steer you in the right direction so you can start taking those breath taking shots. I may be a newbie to FW aquariums, but I know my fair share about digital photography and would love to help fellow members out since I will undoubtedly be requiring assitance from you.

Let me know if any of this is hard to understand or needs better explanation I wrote this a little tired with little proof reading. If there is enough interest I can probably have a thread where I can answer more photography based questions, or setup a time where I can host a chat on instant messenger and answer questions in realtime. This just covered some of the basics of photography.

-Push