# Camera setting advice



## dennis (Mar 1, 2004)

There are some really good photographers on this board so hopefully you can help. Using my little Canon A70 and trying to get ready for the ADA, I find my photos look descent on the camera/computer but really washed out when printed(psuedoprofessional at Ritz camera) Upon closer inspection I can see the over exposed and washed out looking areas. For all the photos I printed I was using a 1/100 or 1/125 shutter speed and f2.8 and ISO setting at 100. Camera was on manual and I set the white balance before I started using a plain white post card covered with clear packing tape. The colors look reasonable but the tops of the plants are washed out, white looking.

I assume I should up the fstop to something closer to 4 or 5 but I am affraid my fish will get real blury at a shutter speed low enough to get good lighting. External or slave flashes are not an option and I have something like 260 watts PC/T5 in my hood. What shutter speed would be to low for fish? (tetras and rasporas)

Any suggestions?


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## rohape (Feb 7, 2005)

dont know if you know of this site, but they have a lot of great photographers there too.
http://aquatic-photography.com/forum/index.php?referrerid=228


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## dennis (Mar 1, 2004)

Thanks for the link to that awesome site. Man, I need a better camera.

Seems like I really need to crank up f-stop but my camera only goes up to ~6 IIRC. However, my current ugly photos were at 2.8 and 3.2, so increasing would probably help but that means a slower shutter speed and fish bluriness. Say I use f 5.6, what would be a good shutter speed to start with? 

Also, how big of an impact would a higher ISO, comparing 50, 100 and 200, have on ADA quality photos?

Thanks again!


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## Bert H (Mar 2, 2004)

> Also, how big of an impact would a higher ISO, comparing 50, 100 and 200, have on ADA quality photos?


 The best way to determine this is to do a test yourself. Take some shots at each ISO and compare them. Shooting at a higher f-stop (smaller aperture) will yield better depth of field, but will also cause increased fish blurriness if you don't up your ISO. Remember that if you double your ISO, you can half your aperture (double the f-stop) and still get the same shutter speed.

Example: If you shoot at f2.8 and correct exposure is 1/125sec at an ISO of 50. If you change your ISO to 100 you can change your f-stop to 4.0 and will still have the same shutter speed of 1/125sec. Or you could keep the f-stop at 2.8 and your shutter speed would decrease to 1/250sec. Make sense? F-stop values aren't 'linear' per se: 2.8, 4.0, 5.6, 8.0 are each a doubling of the prior value.

HTH.


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## dennis (Mar 1, 2004)

Cool. Thanks Bert.

Doesn't raising the ISO greatly increase grainyness or the photo? I seem to remember reading somewhere not to go over ISO 100 or 200. Is that true, I know it does not apply as much to computer viewed photos but printed ones seem to have a bigger impact from ISO?


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## dennis (Mar 1, 2004)

How is this photo wise? The only editing I did was croping. You can see the original here. The top of the Rotala green is a bit overexposed but things are so hard to see on a laptop screen. I will get a few printed tomorrow so I can see them for real. As before, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Man I want a new camera!


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## dennis (Mar 1, 2004)

Also, that is about a light as I can get a photo with outsuper streaky fish. A higher f-stop gets to dark, lower and it gets washed out. I took several photos at each setting from f8.0 shutter-1/8 through f3.2-shutter 125 in both 100 and 200 ISO. The shots with the below settings looked the best all around. ISO 200 looked real grainy in the screen though I do not know how it would look in print. Remember these shots are for the ADA and the printed form is supposed to be 5x7.

Here is the important part of the EXIF data:
Shutter speed: 1/30 sec
Aperture: 6.3
Exposure mode: Manual
Flash: Off
Metering mode: Evaluative
Drive mode: Single frame shooting
Self-timer: 2 secs
ISO: 100
Lens: 5.4 to 16.2mm
Focal length: 5.4mm
Subject distance: 1.30 m
AF mode: Single AF
Image size: 2048 x 1536
Rotation: none
Image quality: Super fine
White balance: Custom
Picture Effect: Normal


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## AlexTal (Mar 23, 2006)

Dennis, in terms of ISO, you can generally get up to around 400 and even up to 800 before you can really have any noticable grain effects. Anything above 800 is likely to give you a grain size you're not going to want to deal with.

Try a tripold, a low shutter time, a high aperature, and pray your fish sit still. You can also get a light meter and try to determine the light levels actually within the tank with all the other lights off in the room. It's been a while since I've really been into photography.


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## Bert H (Mar 2, 2004)

Hey Dennis,

I like the crop version much more than the original, nice job. Regarding ISO and grain/noise...with film, you increase grain at higher ISO's. With modern film, you can easily shoot fuji400 and not have it be an issue, film is much better now than it used to be. With digital, higher ISO settings introduce noise into the picture, which will manifest itself as you describe on the screen. The newer D-SLR's (Canons are all I keep up with) can handle higher ISO's without any problem, (the D20's and models above), easily going to 400 and above. I don't know what camera you're using here. As Alex said, a tripod is a must in these shots.

Another suggestion, is to focus in on individual areas of the tank where you don't have as much disparity between the brigher areas and the darker ones. That should yield a better overall balance and a better pic.


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## HeyPK (Jan 23, 2004)

Dennis, 

I don't think a newer, more expensive camera would help with your problems. These problems are due to the lighting intensity covering too wide a range. If you expose so that the most brightly lit plants near the water surface are not washed out, then the shadowy areas at the bottom get too dark. Image processing software, such as Photoshop, can help somewhat. Photoshop has a feature that can brighten up the dark areas and cut back on the highlights to give a more even lighting effect. However, if the highlights are overexposed and bleached out, Photoshop can't do much with them. If you have your camera on a tripod and take several exposures, ranging from where the highlights are OK, but the shadows too dark, to where the shadows are OK, but the highlights are burned out, Photoshop can merge all the exposures into one photo where highlights and shadows are OK. Unfortunately, this feature works with still life pictures and isn't going to work well with the fish in different positions in the series of exposures. 

The problem gets worse if you have a lot of shading of lower parts of the tank by plants. That is not a problem with your tank. The problem also gets worse if you have the lights near the surface of the tank, especially if it is intense lighting as from compact fluorescents. Raising the lighting helps give a more even exposure. Tannins, etc. in the water that absorb light make the problem worse. I doubt that is a factor in your case. 

Your cropped photo is quite well exposed. I don' t think much improvement is possible in the area of exposure. With Photoshop, or a similar program, you could sharpen the picture somewhat, but you want to be careful not to overdo sharpening or you get a very artificial look. You can also play around with color saturation, color balance, etc., but you don't want to get too far away from what the tank really looks like. 

It might be useful to look at Oliver Knott's pictures on pbase.com (link in Aquapaloosa). I think he avoids overexposure at the top of the tank mainly by arranging his lighting carefully. 

In experimenting, get the ISO setting as high as you can, the f-stop as high as you can, and the shutter speed as high as you can and see what you get. The limitation should be when the picture gets too grainy. Also, it may be possible to sharpen the picture more with your camera menu settings.


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## paradise (Jan 13, 2006)

Dennis, as Jay already pointed out to you on APF, it's easy to fix lighting difference top to bottom in PS with Layer Masking. If you have any question, follow up in that thread and someone will explain to you.


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