taking pictures

[ollie51]

can anyone tell me why i cant get a decent pic of my tank i see a lot of pix on here that are great but i cant seem to get it ,i use a sony digital 7.2 i tryed flash no flash adjusted brightness theres no light on when i take them could it be the halides ? actinics, i tryed turning all pumps off ,from above ect i have one half way decent side shot posted today .any ideas or suggestions?thanx

[bawest]

I asked this last week, they told me to adjust my settings on the camera for white balance. It helped some.

[Otty]

If you don't have white balance on your camera turn off your actinics then take a pic. The blue is messing with the picture.

[amcarrig]

What kind of problem are you having with your photos? Too blue? Too dark? Too blurry?

[TinFury]

Yes the 1st question is what problem are you having.....

If it's focus... then try to manualy focus the camera.... The focus on digital cameras is diffrent from SLR's it's best to measure the distance and then set the camera to the measured distance than to try and focus on things visually.

If it's with colors. Like corals not coming out good.... then try saving things in RAW format and adjusting the colors in photoshop to get a realistic representation. The digital camera will NEVER do the actinic thing properly.

If it's with depth of field...... go take a photo course.... lol

[Jason McKenzie]

I find there is 3 problems common when taking pictures of your tank.
1) White balance. If you have the ability to do custom white balance try to perform that. It can be tricky to do but find something white in your tank and perform white balance
2) metering. many cameras have 3 different metering types they look like this [] [.] and [:] or variations of that. Try shooting with [.] or spot metering
3) minimum focus distance. Each camera will have a minimum focus. If you subject is closer than your cameras minimum focus it will always be out of focus

Also if you are not achieving a shutter speed greater than 1/125 you should use a tripod

J

[ollie51]

i was able to post one photo on site take a look and let me know if you can tell what iam doing wrong ,thanx

[omard]

Originally Posted by ollie51

can anyone tell me why i cant get a decent pic of my tank i see a lot of pix on here that are great but i cant seem to get it ,i use a sony digital 7.2 i tryed flash no flash adjusted brightness theres no light on when i take them could it be the halides ? actinics, i tryed turning all pumps off ,from above ect i have one half way decent side shot posted today .any ideas or suggestions?thanx

Experiment, experiment, experiment...

Every camera a bit different.

Use different wb settings with different ISO's. (and different camera environment settings, if it has them.)

Tripod is a must.

Underwater camera housing is the ultimate way to get best pics...!!!

Keep trying.

Looking forward to seeing results.


Scott

[jas3600]

Yeah... I see what you mean the picture you posted looks as if the actinics only are on.

I have tried with lights on and light off. finally found that my camera has a setting for flowers, which is good for color.

Not, much help sorry... Looks like a really nice tank though.

[ollie51]

thanks jas .would i be better of using a older 35 mm style camera instead of the digital or just keep trying different stuff w/the digital