back by popular demand ! purples and stuff
- Thread starter dropzone newbee
- Start date
i must confess i pegged you as being too old to breed and that the electronic age was born after your eye sight failed and thus you couldnt read any manualssorry ! bad pics guys !! took them in a hurry and exposures all belly up
try get better ones next week when i got time and 5 week old son behaves
i must confess i pegged you as being too old to breed and that the electronic age was born after your eye sight failed and thus you couldnt read any manuals
hahahahahaah 38 years young dude
!! still a breeding machione and thsi was taken on my small point and shoot ! not the 450
but i know what i did wrong !! i think hehehehe
And your pictures are really not as bad as you think, they much better than mine!(and some unnamed other members)
thanks dude !!! but i think i took better pics with my cell other day
think the natural sunlight adds more value !!
but , well keep trying
deadmeat2016
Wouter
Dude, nice fish! 
I send this in pm but its too long and its easier to read through it all at once so I will post it here instead.. its written to try be simple, i hope it helps
Ok fella lets see if we can get you a little friendlier with the shutter of that camera and see if we can help a little with taking pics. Its almost impossible to explain what I do and why from across the world but one guy that is great to chat to and is close to you is Ross. You may even be able to invite him to see your tank with the trade off of him showing you the basics of that camera, but pm him and see. I am going to break this down to simple and easy, see if I can help you understand the principles behind what your camera is doing.
Right the cannon 450d is an excellent entry level digital camera with some good glass in its lenses and if you apply the basics you will have some great pics. Especially of that little unn, which you need to take pics of to send to his uncle in UK (that will get you points with the missus) and for his grand parentsJ 450d is an excellent camera to have on the fire place or window sill (above that jack russels reach and chew range please!) and always accessible to just grabbing and shooting. I do that and so often a moment happens with a dog, or a child (not mine I am not into breeding but love kids so often get to baby sit others!) or the tank and having the camera easily accessible will make your photography much better. The more you shoot the better you get. If in doubt just bang it into the ‘green zone’ all fully auto and let the camera think for you. You’ll get passable shots, good enough for any general purpose you want. But we aren’t really after mediocrity are we???
Ive got the 400d, so I may be lacking some of the features you have but I recon the layout of the cameras is similarJ
Now your tank has some challenges and some advantages (says the man sitting across the world who has never seen it!). Firstly always remember photography is about light. Its ALL about light! Enough light, not enough light, angled light, back light, under exposed, over exposed, reflection, refraction….its all just light!
The different modes in the camera are good. As in portrait mode, macro mode, sports mode etc, but frankly we are going to move away from those for now J
Ok turn the dial anti clockwise so that you are on either TV or AV. TV is shutter speed, AV is aperture.
Shutter speed is the speed the shutter closes. Sounds simple yeah?? Well its not that simple. I think of shutter speed as being ‘stopping power’. Take a drop of water falling. If you want to take a pic of that water at the precise moment its in the frame and stop it at the finite position you have to have a massive amount of stopping power or a very fast shutter speed. Same with a tang swimming across the tank. Distance from the subject plays a role here and to illustrate that think if a car driving in a desert 15km away. It moves, but really slowly. That same car moving when you are 1 m away is MUCH faster. Same with tanks. If you are close to the tank, wanting to photograph a specific fish which is moving then you need a fast shutter speed. Further away taking a FTS for example your shutter can be far slower, if you want. As a general rule, shutters are always set too slow when people take pics of tanks, so there is blur and movement in the frame. That’s exasperated when you have particle matter as they are so small and move so fast and you are so close to them, that they almost always blur. That’s not an issue with the fish you are taking a pic of, but it ruins ones backgrounds and that’s a VERY important part of composition. A rule of thumb I have is that I don’t shoot slower than 1/60 sec if I am hand holding a camera. Camera shake is the movement of a person holding a camera, and even the simple pushing of the shutter release causes noticeable movement in the photo…hence some people using tri pods. For now don’t go under 1/60th of a second.
AV or aperture. You’ve heard this all before but aperture is the opening of the diaphragm that allows light to enter the camera. The bigger the number the smaller the hole. The smaller the number the bigger the hole. Big holes let in big light, small holes let in small light. Its really as easy as that! What that does to the frame and the blurring of a background and a focusing of the light onto a specific subject starts making it more confusing, but for now don’t worry about that ok. Simply put if you have a darkish room you need a big hole to allow lots of light in and thus an aperture setting of f2.8. if you have lots of light you can roll that forward to an f5.6 for example. That narrows the diaphragm which means you get less light in and thus the camera will compensate and make the shutter speed it chooses to be slower. That means the camera adjust for the less light coming in by allowing the camera to stay open longer and getting exposed to more light. Easy stuffJ
Now if you manually choose a setting the camera will work out what the best possible other setting will be. You can choose both Av and TV as you want, but we will skip that for now. Sometimes though you choose a setting and the corresponding value from the camera cant work. For example you are taking a pic of that naso tang close up under artificial light and want a high shutter speed. So you choose 1/500th of a second on TV. But the aperture cant open wide enough for the camera to get in enough light in that very short 1/500th of a second and thus it tells you it cant. You don’t listen (we know that don’t we!) and the shot will be black and devoid of light, underexposed if you will. How did the camera tell you?
Turn the camera onto tv, select 1/500sec. (do that by rolling the wheel next to the trigger finger to the right until its on 1/500.) now HALF push the shutter release button and look through the lens. You will see at the bottom of the view finder a stack of numbers. One is 1/500 and the other is f2.8 which is flashing. That’s the camera saying that I have opened to 2.8 (the widest I can) but I still don’t have enough light. So you have to slow the shutter speed slightly until the camera gets enough light for the aperture of 2.8. Roll the wheel left until the f2.8 stops flashing. Easy peasy.
Shutter release button.
Clever thing that, learn to use it properly and have a gentle finger. If you press it slowly half way down the camera does all sorts of things for you. One it to work out the corresponding shutter/aperture setting you have set, the other is to auto focus for you etc etc etc. So often, especially on new cameras where people are scared of them (that’s you!) people push the shutter release all the way down once off. It’s a TWO stage operation and learn to do it slowly, it allows you time to read your camera, focus properly and compose your shot.
There is lots more to go through but you’ve already gotten bored, so I am going to skip it all and go onto the basics of taking pics on your tank, both a FTS and specific fish or corals.
FTS
Your tank is bigish, so for the FTS to fit it all in you need to set the camera zoom on its widest (you can do that right?) and stand around 4-5m away. Have all the lights on the tank on (especially those MH) and set the camera on around 1/90 sec. then look through the finder and see what of the tank is in view. If its all the tank and a little over, step forward a little, if its just part of the tank step back. The object of the FTS is to show the overall impression of the tank. On my tank that’s its best view. I set the tank up to be visible from around 9-10m away at the dinning room table. People have left dinner simply to go look at the tank as its set up to invite people closer. The scaping, fish etc are geared to do that. So try get a shot where you have the length of the tank (right to left) in view and nothing else. You may need to be more than 5m away. Now hold that button half way down and watch the tank through the view finder. I know it’s a small view but you will see the fish swimming and wait until you have a number of fish visible in the view, take the shot. Often people don’t wait to have some fish viable and the tank looks lifeless and stillness, or frankly dead.
If however you cant get the whole tank in view with the fish being big enough to be recognized then go forward and break the FTS into left side, centre and right side with some obvious overlap so that people can follow the scaping and figure what is going on. I often do a LHS, C, RHS and then back off to do a FTS. But I can get 1.8m tank FTS with a 35mm lens at around 3m distance and still zoom in to get the right composition and the fish are easily recognizable, so you should be fine at that 4-5m distance.
Fish shots
For close up of fish, go around 0.5m-1m from the glass, stand square on and set the TV to 1/125 or 1/250 or so. Use the zoom on the lens to compose the shot and check that the aperture setting is NOT flashing. If it is then you don’t have enough light and need to slowly the shutter speed a little.
Your tank seems to have a lot of natural light in the room. That’s good and bad. If its late afternoon you will have low angled light that will reflect off the glass. In that case you need to be square to the tank (mind you, you always need to be square to the tank) and a little closer to the glass, looking at the frame before you take the pic to avoided reflections. I have been known to use the reflection shot for some more unusual photos but I’ll skip those for now. But if you can use some of the additional natural light it will allow you to use a much faster shutter speed and you will get clearer pics without motion blur.
Else wait till nightfall, or dusk when you have all your tank lights on. Those 400w MH will give you good light to shoot with, but maybe not enough. Your pics are blue and that’s a case of setting the white balance, but that’s too advanced to worry about for now. Under those 400w plus some T5’s you should be able to get shots with shutter speeds of 1/250th or so. Maybe a little less.
Start with that and I will help u a little more later, I have a horse to train nowJ
Ok fella lets see if we can get you a little friendlier with the shutter of that camera and see if we can help a little with taking pics. Its almost impossible to explain what I do and why from across the world but one guy that is great to chat to and is close to you is Ross. You may even be able to invite him to see your tank with the trade off of him showing you the basics of that camera, but pm him and see. I am going to break this down to simple and easy, see if I can help you understand the principles behind what your camera is doing.
Right the cannon 450d is an excellent entry level digital camera with some good glass in its lenses and if you apply the basics you will have some great pics. Especially of that little unn, which you need to take pics of to send to his uncle in UK (that will get you points with the missus) and for his grand parentsJ 450d is an excellent camera to have on the fire place or window sill (above that jack russels reach and chew range please!) and always accessible to just grabbing and shooting. I do that and so often a moment happens with a dog, or a child (not mine I am not into breeding but love kids so often get to baby sit others!) or the tank and having the camera easily accessible will make your photography much better. The more you shoot the better you get. If in doubt just bang it into the ‘green zone’ all fully auto and let the camera think for you. You’ll get passable shots, good enough for any general purpose you want. But we aren’t really after mediocrity are we???
Ive got the 400d, so I may be lacking some of the features you have but I recon the layout of the cameras is similarJ
Now your tank has some challenges and some advantages (says the man sitting across the world who has never seen it!). Firstly always remember photography is about light. Its ALL about light! Enough light, not enough light, angled light, back light, under exposed, over exposed, reflection, refraction….its all just light!
The different modes in the camera are good. As in portrait mode, macro mode, sports mode etc, but frankly we are going to move away from those for now J
Ok turn the dial anti clockwise so that you are on either TV or AV. TV is shutter speed, AV is aperture.
Shutter speed is the speed the shutter closes. Sounds simple yeah?? Well its not that simple. I think of shutter speed as being ‘stopping power’. Take a drop of water falling. If you want to take a pic of that water at the precise moment its in the frame and stop it at the finite position you have to have a massive amount of stopping power or a very fast shutter speed. Same with a tang swimming across the tank. Distance from the subject plays a role here and to illustrate that think if a car driving in a desert 15km away. It moves, but really slowly. That same car moving when you are 1 m away is MUCH faster. Same with tanks. If you are close to the tank, wanting to photograph a specific fish which is moving then you need a fast shutter speed. Further away taking a FTS for example your shutter can be far slower, if you want. As a general rule, shutters are always set too slow when people take pics of tanks, so there is blur and movement in the frame. That’s exasperated when you have particle matter as they are so small and move so fast and you are so close to them, that they almost always blur. That’s not an issue with the fish you are taking a pic of, but it ruins ones backgrounds and that’s a VERY important part of composition. A rule of thumb I have is that I don’t shoot slower than 1/60 sec if I am hand holding a camera. Camera shake is the movement of a person holding a camera, and even the simple pushing of the shutter release causes noticeable movement in the photo…hence some people using tri pods. For now don’t go under 1/60th of a second.
AV or aperture. You’ve heard this all before but aperture is the opening of the diaphragm that allows light to enter the camera. The bigger the number the smaller the hole. The smaller the number the bigger the hole. Big holes let in big light, small holes let in small light. Its really as easy as that! What that does to the frame and the blurring of a background and a focusing of the light onto a specific subject starts making it more confusing, but for now don’t worry about that ok. Simply put if you have a darkish room you need a big hole to allow lots of light in and thus an aperture setting of f2.8. if you have lots of light you can roll that forward to an f5.6 for example. That narrows the diaphragm which means you get less light in and thus the camera will compensate and make the shutter speed it chooses to be slower. That means the camera adjust for the less light coming in by allowing the camera to stay open longer and getting exposed to more light. Easy stuffJ
Now if you manually choose a setting the camera will work out what the best possible other setting will be. You can choose both Av and TV as you want, but we will skip that for now. Sometimes though you choose a setting and the corresponding value from the camera cant work. For example you are taking a pic of that naso tang close up under artificial light and want a high shutter speed. So you choose 1/500th of a second on TV. But the aperture cant open wide enough for the camera to get in enough light in that very short 1/500th of a second and thus it tells you it cant. You don’t listen (we know that don’t we!) and the shot will be black and devoid of light, underexposed if you will. How did the camera tell you?
Turn the camera onto tv, select 1/500sec. (do that by rolling the wheel next to the trigger finger to the right until its on 1/500.) now HALF push the shutter release button and look through the lens. You will see at the bottom of the view finder a stack of numbers. One is 1/500 and the other is f2.8 which is flashing. That’s the camera saying that I have opened to 2.8 (the widest I can) but I still don’t have enough light. So you have to slow the shutter speed slightly until the camera gets enough light for the aperture of 2.8. Roll the wheel left until the f2.8 stops flashing. Easy peasy.
Shutter release button.
Clever thing that, learn to use it properly and have a gentle finger. If you press it slowly half way down the camera does all sorts of things for you. One it to work out the corresponding shutter/aperture setting you have set, the other is to auto focus for you etc etc etc. So often, especially on new cameras where people are scared of them (that’s you!) people push the shutter release all the way down once off. It’s a TWO stage operation and learn to do it slowly, it allows you time to read your camera, focus properly and compose your shot.
There is lots more to go through but you’ve already gotten bored, so I am going to skip it all and go onto the basics of taking pics on your tank, both a FTS and specific fish or corals.
FTS
Your tank is bigish, so for the FTS to fit it all in you need to set the camera zoom on its widest (you can do that right?) and stand around 4-5m away. Have all the lights on the tank on (especially those MH) and set the camera on around 1/90 sec. then look through the finder and see what of the tank is in view. If its all the tank and a little over, step forward a little, if its just part of the tank step back. The object of the FTS is to show the overall impression of the tank. On my tank that’s its best view. I set the tank up to be visible from around 9-10m away at the dinning room table. People have left dinner simply to go look at the tank as its set up to invite people closer. The scaping, fish etc are geared to do that. So try get a shot where you have the length of the tank (right to left) in view and nothing else. You may need to be more than 5m away. Now hold that button half way down and watch the tank through the view finder. I know it’s a small view but you will see the fish swimming and wait until you have a number of fish visible in the view, take the shot. Often people don’t wait to have some fish viable and the tank looks lifeless and stillness, or frankly dead.
If however you cant get the whole tank in view with the fish being big enough to be recognized then go forward and break the FTS into left side, centre and right side with some obvious overlap so that people can follow the scaping and figure what is going on. I often do a LHS, C, RHS and then back off to do a FTS. But I can get 1.8m tank FTS with a 35mm lens at around 3m distance and still zoom in to get the right composition and the fish are easily recognizable, so you should be fine at that 4-5m distance.
Fish shots
For close up of fish, go around 0.5m-1m from the glass, stand square on and set the TV to 1/125 or 1/250 or so. Use the zoom on the lens to compose the shot and check that the aperture setting is NOT flashing. If it is then you don’t have enough light and need to slowly the shutter speed a little.
Your tank seems to have a lot of natural light in the room. That’s good and bad. If its late afternoon you will have low angled light that will reflect off the glass. In that case you need to be square to the tank (mind you, you always need to be square to the tank) and a little closer to the glass, looking at the frame before you take the pic to avoided reflections. I have been known to use the reflection shot for some more unusual photos but I’ll skip those for now. But if you can use some of the additional natural light it will allow you to use a much faster shutter speed and you will get clearer pics without motion blur.
Else wait till nightfall, or dusk when you have all your tank lights on. Those 400w MH will give you good light to shoot with, but maybe not enough. Your pics are blue and that’s a case of setting the white balance, but that’s too advanced to worry about for now. Under those 400w plus some T5’s you should be able to get shots with shutter speeds of 1/250th or so. Maybe a little less.
Start with that and I will help u a little more later, I have a horse to train nowJ
massive respect Crispin for your time !
i have printed this and will try it asap
kudos to you
oh and school boy....yes thats you DZ, i expect homework handed in on time and promptly, ie i want a DECENT FTS by tomorrow morning!
ps, my pleasure.
ps, my pleasure.
k guys !! so , bear with me on this photo taking thingy !! ill post 3-4 left hand and right hand pics of my tank and this w/end i will try master them better and we see if crispin is the "good" teacher
to follow
to follow
left side
right hand side
hahahahahaah 38 years young dude
and thsi was taken on my small point and shoot ! not the 450
but i know what i did wrong !! i think hehehehe
How sure are you about that Phatty??
oh hell I just seen you from sandton, please forgive the deep east comments....although i am half sure you still make the drive
man thats a beautiful clam
when you are shooting try stay square onto the glass all the time. i guess you have 10-12mm glass there and thats a different medium for the light to travel through. thus you get refraction (bending of light) as it goes through the water, glass and then to the camera. if you arent square to a tank it makes the shot distorted although yours arent that badly distorted.
but the pics straight onto the tank are better.
one of your biggest difficulties with these pics is the White ballance and the exposure (read apeture settings.) get those manuals and read what cannon says about those two topics as its tough to explain from here.
man thats a beautiful clam
when you are shooting try stay square onto the glass all the time. i guess you have 10-12mm glass there and thats a different medium for the light to travel through. thus you get refraction (bending of light) as it goes through the water, glass and then to the camera. if you arent square to a tank it makes the shot distorted although yours arent that badly distorted.
but the pics straight onto the tank are better.
one of your biggest difficulties with these pics is the White ballance and the exposure (read apeture settings.) get those manuals and read what cannon says about those two topics as its tough to explain from here.