Too dark in photos

[Andrew52984]

Hey guys, using a Kodak Easyshare Z710. 7.1 megapixel and 10x zoom. Takes really awesome pictures but when we try and take zoomed in photos on the macro they come out blurry and dark, if we take them on the sports setting they catch the fish with no blur due to the highspeed snapshot of the photo, yet they still don't have enough light. Lights are off in the room along with blinds closed, tank has a standard 40w fluerescent bulb, yes I need a new light setup lol. Thanks for any pointers.

http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/a...4/100_0739.jpg
http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/a...4/100_0766.jpg
http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/a...4/100_0653.jpg

these are some photos on those to settings.

[Fly Guy]

Have you played with the white balance settings??

you also might try try putting it in a more manual mode and lower the aperture number. you might have to play with the shutter speed and aperture together to get the slowest speed you can use without blur and the highest aperture while still being able to see the pic.

Another option is to get a good post processing programn like adobe lightroom. This program is incredible and I dont know how i lived without it before. its like a phtoshop for photographers. you dont need to take a class to use it nor be a computer programmer. photoshop always discouraged me because it was so difficult to use. Lightroom is a breeze and gives you all the options you could ever want and then some.

you can download a fully functional trial program for 30 days before you need to buy it. its not cheap but liek i siad...its awesome

GL

[Fly Guy]

here i spent ten seconds in lightroom upping the exposure a touch. it did add a little noise but I seriously only played with it for ten seconds

[Loverotties]

There you go!

[chiapet]

Aperture is another great product for image processing (if you have a Mac). Personally I have both Aperture and Lightroom. Another setting you would want to play with is the highlights and shadows. Photoshop is yet another great program to help clean up images.

Note:
-Upping the exposure too much will make the image very grainy.
-Upping the brightness too much will wash out the image.
-Be careful when adjusting an image that you do not accidentally create a color shift that detracts from the original intent of the image. Colors can become "fake" looking (too bright or distorted).

I also noticed that you may wish to increase your shutter speed which will help you better capture the moving fish. In darker situations make sure that if you have to increase the shutter speed that you also decrease the aperture (allow more light in).

Here are a couple of samples of your last image reworked (very quickly).

Notice:
The rocks maintain their natural look.
The false percs maintain their natural orange"ish" color.
The Photoshop image preserved the background black better (not to say that Aperture can not do just as good of a job).

Sample Reworked in Aperture



Sample reworked in Photoshop (only adjusting the highlights and shadows)

[wharyat]

Drop your f-stop as lows as possible and up your ISO just below the point where it becomes too grainy.

After you max out what you can do with the camera, then adjust with software.