Fish Pictures

[BrookeLea]

I keep seeing really nice pictures that people post on here of thier fish. What are you guys doing to get them to come out so well? My fish really won't stay very still long enough for me to snap their pictures, and when I do manage to get them, they're not very clear at all. I've taken the pictures with and without the flash on, but either way they still don't turn out very well. Any suggestions?

 

[Tanks4myfish]

I don't know how others do it, but I use a digital camera - nothing fancy, but one with a relatively good resolution. Mine is 3.2 mega pixels. I don't use flash. I've had some luck with natural aquarium lighting with and w/o room lighting. Flash is too intense for a close up. A real cool effect is shooting in a totally darkened room with just the tank light.

I switch my camera to a close-up mode. I aiming the lens to a large object like a rock in the aquarium to pre-focus and lock that focus to a certain distance where I anticipate the fish will be. Then I frame my scene for a nice background and wait for my fish to swim by. I have to be very patient and be ready at the trigger because, as you say, the fish are always in motion. If I don't care about the background, I follow the fish. I found that background makes a difference and try to stay with a contrasting smooth color to make the fish stand out. The important thing to remember, always, is to maintain the distance you pre-focused to the fish, and try to synchronize your camera movement with the fish motion to "steady" the shot.

The beauty of the digital camera is, that I don't waist film by snapping away many frames. However, I don't have a fancy digital camera, so after I get a good shot, I have to do some editing to adjust color and crop it for the correct framing.

Hope that helps.

 

[Polardbear]

I go along with what Tanks4myfish said but I also have found that a tripod helps a lot as well.

 

[pseud]

Yeah, I also use a tripod, it really helps.

I also fiddle with the settings on my digital camera, it's only 3.2Mp, and two of the settings I adjust are:

1) WB - Adjust it from "Auto" to either "Fluorescent Light" or "Bright Sunny Day"

2) Shutter speed. The flash is off, but there should also be an option to alter the shutter speed somewhat. On my camera it's a rectangle with a + and a - sign in it. I change it to -1.5 and this seems to work out great.

The rest is just luck with being in the right place at the right time!