# New to aquatic photography



## mathas (Jul 18, 2008)

I purchased a new aquarium about a month ago, the first tank I've kept since the advent of digital cameras, and I have no experience taking pictures of fish. To be honest, I've very little experience with photography at all, so I don't really know what I'm doing. I mostly just play around with the aperture and shutter speed values until the image looks "good" in the digital viewfinder, and hope for the best.

*Camera:* Canon PowerShot S3 IS
*Lens:* whatever comes with the camera
*Shooting Mode:* Manual
*Aperture:* F3.5
*Shutter Speed:* 1/20 second

I intend to add pictures to this thread as I add more fish to the tank, sort of an ongoing "critique my pictures and help me become a better photographer while I show off my fish" thread, but for now, I only have the red-tail rasboras in the tank. After what seemed like hundreds of pictures, but was probably only 50-75, I finally got two where you can tell that they are fish and not just blurs!


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## Guest (Aug 3, 2008)

So far so good with the pictures...

What kind of fish is that? That's a tetra, right?


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## mathas (Jul 18, 2008)

Marduk said:


> What kind of fish is that? That's a tetra, right?


I thought it was a tetra too. In fact, I even asked the LFS employee what kind of tetra he had in the display tank when they caught my eye. After getting a puzzled look in return and me pointing at them, he said they were brilliant rasboras, though I've had better luck finding information/images on them under the common names red tail rasbora or red-tailed rasbora.

They're about the size of a rummy nose tetra, and seem to have about the same speed/activity level based on my fairly limited observation of both species.


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## mathas (Jul 18, 2008)

I started adding to the stocking list over the weekend! I added two albino bristlenose plecostomus, what I think might be one male and one female (though they're still pretty young, only around 2"), and seven corydoras sterbai.

The corys were still a little too shy last night to pose for pictures, but I did manage to snap this shot of what I think is the male bristlenose.










Hopefully tonight the corys will feel a little more camera-friendly.


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## kingpoiuy (Jun 9, 2008)

Don't worry about taking 100 pics and getting 1 good one. I think even the pro's do that. My digital camera has a 2 stage button (most do i think) i can snap a shot and if i dont release it all the way i can do another quick snap. I can snap so fast that it looks like a video if you flip through them. Most people still think that digital cameras are slow but I think they just don't realize this feature.

But sofar your pics are Great! The pleco looks a bit fuzzy maybe but it's hard to make out too so I could be wrong. It looks like your camera focused on the substrate in front of him instead. This is why manual focus is nice.

But honestly I like your pics alot.


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## mathas (Jul 18, 2008)

kingpoiuy said:


> The pleco looks a bit fuzzy maybe but it's hard to make out too so I could be wrong. It looks like your camera focused on the substrate in front of him instead. This is why manual focus is nice.


My camera has a manual focus option, but I'm still trying to figure out how to adjust it fast enough to get a good picture off before the fish move somewhere else in the tank. Most of the pics I've discarded lately have been due to focusing issues. Oh well, as they say, practice makes perfect!

Here are some of the ones I've taken lately that aren't totally awful:

*Rasboras schooling:*

















*My second (female?) bristlenose:*









*My first (male?) bristlenose snacking on a veggie wafer:*









*Corydoras trilineatus:*


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## kingpoiuy (Jun 9, 2008)

Hey, those are really good!

Keep up the good work! :thumb:


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## wmayes (Oct 22, 2007)

I particularly like the first and third pictures of the pleco. The first because of the odd quality that the sand and the rock bring out in the pleco's coloration (it makes him seem a bit more pink than in the other two pictures). The third becaus e it just looks so darned cute.

As for which picture is my favorite of the rasboras I would go with the single specimen in your first post.

A little tip: Cropping at the most commonly used dimensions makes the images themselves more appealing to the eye. Because of this I wouldn't crop anything like you did with the picture of the Cories schooling.


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## kingpoiuy (Jun 9, 2008)

Gotta say I kinda liked the cropping. But I may be wierd.


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## mathas (Jul 18, 2008)

wmayes said:


> A little tip: Cropping at the most commonly used dimensions makes the images themselves more appealing to the eye. Because of this I wouldn't crop anything like you did with the picture of the Cories schooling.


What do you mean by "the most commonly used dimensions"?

And the reason I chose the crop I did for that shot was because if I had increased the vertical pixels any, there would have been a nice long string of... uhh... pleco "waste" in the shot. I guess that's one of the hazards of shooting bottom-dwellers before doing a water change/vacuum :lol:


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## wmayes (Oct 22, 2007)

4x6, 5x7, 8x10, 11x17 etc. are some of the most common dimensions in photography. Dimensions are always listed WxH. These dimensions (which are technically ratios) are so common in society that the human brain has become accustomed to viewing them to the exclusion of all else therefore making them visually appealing. For example: if you see six photos alligned in a pattern and all are different dimensions your eye will automatically be drawn to the one with the most common ratio.


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