Photo Tips...

[Shayne]

I have a canon PowerShot A75 it takes great pictures without tripod can hardly wait to
try the pod
shayne&sheri

[Viv]

Can pictures be taken with disposal cameras?

[Loverotties]

Yes ,very nice!

[fish.freak]

I have the a-70 there almost the same, but whats the diff besides screne size?
Any tricks you have learned with it for fish?
My avitar was taken with this camera with out too much prep in macro mode.

[Booboo33062]

I've got a hp powersmart 320. We got it and just started using it. I am finally downloading a users manual. I think we have lost the one that came with it. This has been pretty interesting I just have to figure my camera out.

[boodwah]

I tried using a tripod and leaving the flash off my camera. I used the self timer. What I got was OK, I hope I can get this aquarium photo thing down.

[DebsSisterFlo]

I've been blessed with a loving hubby who understands what a shutterbug I am... in January he gave me his blessing to purchase a Canon digital Rebel XT, slr. I am still absolutely in love with this camera half a year later.
My tricks are very similar to the above, but what works for me:
~tripod! Especially while using my 100mm macro lense and no flash. I also have a remote shutter switch so I don't touch the camera at all.
~with the macro lense a hood is a wonderful thing to have. I don't have one yet, but I did get to play with a friends... to get the best pics place the hood flat against the glass. Macro lenses do not photograph well if they're held at an angle to the glass, you get ripples and it's just not good.
~full tank shots, stand at a bit of an angle if you're using flash, it makes the flash bounce away instead of right back into your lense.
~PLAY PLAY PLAY! You'll learn your own tips and tricks just by trial and error.

If you'd like to see my photography just click on the link in my sig!

[afbengochea]

Two things Im confused about. Im supposed to crank up the iso speed to 400 or 800. Is that the same as shutter speed? And what is the point of long time exposure?

[Sambo]

ISO is the film speed - in the olden days of film, the emulsion used to create the film could be made so that it would respond to lower or higher light levels. The higher the number, the less light you need to correctly expose the film - BUT - the more grainy the picture (think black-and-white grainy photos of Paris a la cartier-bresson). Shutter speed controls the amount of light that hits the film - slower shutter speed (eg 1/8 sec) gives you lots of light hitting the film, faster speed (eg 1/500 of a sec or more) gives you less light. Thus, you might need (eg) an exposure time of 1/8 of a second to correctly expose a 100 ISO film, but with an 800 ISO film, the same shot might need a (faster) shutter speed of 1/125 sec for correct exposure.

However, all of this applies particularly to those (like me) old-fashioned enough to use film in preference to digital (and I second the person who said film still beats digital images - I have not yet found a digital shot that I think to be better than film - something about the colour balance or saturation or over-sharpness or something). What I don't understand is what happens when you change the ISO setting on a digital camera? Just make larger pixels?

sam

[Teamskene's]

For those of you with photoshop (i think it has to be at least CS 2) that want to get a larger/more detailed full tank shot try taking 4+ consecutive shots of your tank (the idea is to have your camera positioned so you can only photograph say 1/4 of the tank per picture)that overlap a bit. You can then go to FILE->AUTOMATE->PHOTOMERGE and and have photoshop automatically merge the photos into a panorama. This allows for higher detail if you are wanting to make a large print.

[zryder]

Originally Posted by Sambo

What I don't understand is what happens when you change the ISO setting on a digital camera? Just make larger pixels?

sam

basically.. the actual photo sensor chip in the camera is an analog device. the circuit overdrives the chip, to make it more sensitive. this, like film, has the added disadvantage of making the picture very grainy.

[FishDaddy]

Originally Posted by afbengochea

Two things Im confused about. Im supposed to crank up the iso speed to 400 or 800. Is that the same as shutter speed? And what is the point of long time exposure?

As Sambo pointed out, the ISO is your 'film' speed, designating the camera's sensitivity to light.

A good friend of mine put this together to show the interrelationship between aperture, shutter, and ISO settings:

http://www.pbase.com/otfchallenge/the_basics

For a great book on exposure, I highly recommend Bryan Peterson's Understanding Exposure.

Hope this helps,

Dick

[Tucker]

Anyone wanting to get really serious about aquarium photography should look into someone named Takashi Amano. He sets up and photographys mostly freshwater planted aquariums but his photos are very impressive. The link below is a sample of his work.

http://www.geocities.com/heartland/h.../amanopix.html

[jlawsonusmc]

Something that has been missed on this thread so far is white balance. White balance applies to digital cameras, and tells the camera what color temperature correspondes to what color, because the camera isn't smart enough to figure it out on its own, like our eyes do. If your pictures are coming out with the colors incorrectly replicated (i.e. everything is blue) then you need to adjust your white balance. Most digital cameras have auto, flourecent, sunlight, etc. as modes. Because everyone's lighting on their tanks is different, you might have to play around with the settings on your camera to get the colors to come out right. If you have a really expensive camera, you might be able to manually white balance it by following the instructions in your owners manual and placing a piece of white plastic INSIDE your tank to white balance off of (or black balance with, depending on the camera...)

[dobejazz]

Originally Posted by FishDaddy

As Sambo pointed out, the ISO is your 'film' speed, designating the camera's sensitivity to light.

A good friend of mine put this together to show the interrelationship between aperture, shutter, and ISO settings:

http://www.pbase.com/otfchallenge/the_basics

For a great book on exposure, I highly recommend Bryan Peterson's Understanding Exposure.

Hope this helps,

Dick

Great Article Dick thanks for the link