Article: A Quick Guide To Reef Tank Photography

[Jessy]

You can view the page at http://www.reefaddicts.com/content.p...nk-Photography

[Davo]

Awesome, thanks for sharing tips!
I've been into photography for many years, but I have to admit, getting those stellar shots of my reef are by far the most challenging.

[melev]

Very nice write up. The idea of a black cloth taped to the top edge of the tank was a great idea to kill those annoying reflections.

[Tumbleweed]

Very informative. Thanks.

[San Juan]

Awesome pictures and tips!
Now, only if I had a better camera with a micro lens

[ReefMatt]

Thanks I'll check back here now and then, in case anyone has any questions, but feel free to send me a private message if your question has gone unanswered for a while, since that will give me an email notification.

- Matthew

[kudora]

thank you for the article, i have bookmarked it and will reread it many times i am sure

[Mits]

Any tips for those of us with basic point and shoot cameras?

[ReefMatt]

@Mits:

Actually, a lot of the "General Tips" are the same: you can set your white balance on most point-and-shoots these days, and some of them even have RAW. Some point and shoots (I'm thinking of some of the Canon models) have excellent sensors... basically the same sensor as the DSLRs but in a smaller body, so with a higher ISO setting (with the understanding that you'll get some digital noise), you can sometimes get away with the "High Speed" equipment method that I described.

The problem with trying to give advice for point and shoots is that there's soooo much variation. The Canon Powershot G10, for example, has a hot shoe for using external flash equipment, and full manual control, so you can use big, high powered flashes with it if you know what you're doing. Some point and shoots are worthless pieces of junk and aren't going to give you good pictures no matter what you do.

So, when in doubt:

1. Do whatever you can to increase the amount of light that won't increase glare off the glass. If you have halogen work lights in the garage, fire them up and point them down from the top (unless it will be bad for your tank... I don't know).
2. Use a tripod and cable release or self-timer. That way, if your picture isn't sharp, you know that it's because your subject was moving, not your camera.

Good luck!

- Matthew

[Alaska_Phil]

Mitts
I used a lot of the tips above with my Nikon 220S pocket camera and got some pretty decent results, nothing compared to Matthew's of course, but very acceptable for the equipment.

The paper on the glass trick to set the white ballance worked great! Before, trying to set the white ballance to "daylight" produced blan colorless photos and trying to manually set it against the white sand produced fluorescent artificial looking color. Now I'm getting photo's that actually look like what's in the tank.

I also got my best results using an ISO setting of 400 without too much noise. I didn't have a tripod, but braced my hands against the glass for support and managed to get decent macro shots without blurring.

I'll try and post some of the photos later tonight.

I doubt a shop light would have much effect compared to the high intensity lights we typically have over our reefs.