RE: [GSAS-Member] 3 7 inch tinfoil barbs up for adoption

["Hess, Clay A" <clay.a.hess@boeing.com>]

Matt,

This is great info on taking pics of fish.  Have you ever thought of
writing an article for the Newsletter?

Clay 

-----Original Message-----
From: Matt Staroscik [mailto:matt@wrongcrowd.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, January 18, 2006 11:05 AM
To: Greater Seattle Aquarium Society member chat
Subject: Re: [GSAS-Member] 3 7 inch tinfoil barbs up for adoption

On Wed, Jan 18, 2006 at 07:57:38AM -0800, John ?Ruhland wrote:
> How did you take those beautiful photographs?
> John

Lots of light, a very high shutter speed, and patience. When I take
aquarium photos I get a 1-2% keeper rate. 

More specifically, I have several studio strobes that I am into the tank
from various angles. Usually 2 strobes is enough: 1 firing straight down
into the water, and another at about 45 deg to the side of the camera.

I turn the camera's internal flash off and trigger the strobes with a
sync cable. Shutter speed is at least 1/500. Aperture is as small as
possible to maximize depth of field. I usually lock the focus because
the AF on my camera is too slow to shoot fast-moving fish.

My strobes are "dumb" so I have to run the camera in full manual mode
which means I need to take a few test shots to make sure I have the
exposure right. Once all that is done, I just blaze away and sort
through the pics on the computer looking for keepers.

It's hard to minimize reflections off the glass, sometimes I need to use
black felt around the camera. Keeping the lens close to the tank helps
too.

I can't overstate how important adding light is. The on-camera flash
won't cut it. You'll get lucky sometimes, but a powerful off-camera
flash is the way to go.

Of course, if your camera can do very high ISO you may not need all that
extra light, but my camera falls apart (gets noisy) above ISO 100. If I
had a clean ISO 1600 I wouldn't have to flash as much, though they would
still be useful. 

Hope that helps!
--
Matt Staroscik
matt@wrongcrowd.com | http://wrongcrowd.com
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