Cardinal Tetra photos

A

andyjh

AC Members
Feb 18, 2009
574
3
18
Massachusetts
Just thought I'd see if I could get a couple of them sit still for a a second. (1/50 of a second actually!) I just added 5 more cardinals to my existing 3, bringing the school up to 8. I could easily see going for 12 or 16 in my community 55. Great looking fish.
Andy

cards1.jpg cards2.jpg
 
How do you take their pic? No matter what I do I just get a blur because they are so reflective. :(
 
These were shot by (pretty dim) tank light. One 40Watt fluorescent tube over the 55 gal. tank. (That's why I'm in the process of upgrading my lighting). In order to obtain enough light for the photograph, I've set the camera's light sensitivity (ISO) to 1250. This allowed for a barely adequate 1/50th of a second shutter speed with my lens at wide open aperture (F2.8 in the case of the lens I used). I allowed the camera to autofocus on the fish. Autofocus tends to work best via areas of contrast, such as the fish against the plain water and background. You still have to wait them out for a period of little motion...then fire away. You really have to have the advantage of a DSLR to make these camera adjustments along with virutually no "shutter lag". This wouldn't be easy to do with most point and shoot cameras. Hope this helps.
Andy
 
Wow, really beautiful photos!!!
 
andyjh said:
These were shot by (pretty dim) tank light. One 40Watt fluorescent tube over the 55 gal. tank. (That's why I'm in the process of upgrading my lighting). In order to obtain enough light for the photograph, I've set the camera's light sensitivity (ISO) to 1250. This allowed for a barely adequate 1/50th of a second shutter speed with my lens at wide open aperture (F2.8 in the case of the lens I used). I allowed the camera to autofocus on the fish. Autofocus tends to work best via areas of contrast, such as the fish against the plain water and background. You still have to wait them out for a period of little motion...then fire away. You really have to have the advantage of a DSLR to make these camera adjustments along with virutually no "shutter lag". This wouldn't be easy to do with most point and shoot cameras. Hope this helps.
Andy
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's never worked out too well for me with a point and shoot, even the one I had with manual settings definitely lagged a lot.

Very healthy looking cardinals, and great pics! Keep up the good work. :)
 
No Flash on at all. Just the tank's overhead light. I don't think you'd be able to shoot directly into the tank with an on-camera flash without getting severe reflection off the glass. I'm going to be replacing my plastic hood cover with glass versa tops, and when that gets done I'm going to do some experimentation firing remote strobes into the tank from the top. As in any photograph, good lighting is the key to success.
Andy
 
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