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Canon 450d tips please.

swackett

Member
Joined
29 May 2008
Messages
449
Location
Surrey
Hi,

I've got a Canon 450d with the standard 18-55mm IS lens and was wondering if anyone could give me some tips on the settings I should use whilst taking photos of my tanks?

Cheers
 
What do you know about photography? I'll assume not much, so apologise if this sounds patronising... :)

To start with try using Aperture Priority (Av on your dial) and set the ISO setting to Auto. Also set the White Balance to Auto (AWB). Shooting in fine JPEG is a good start too with minimal need for Post Processing,

This way you control the Depth of Field (how much remains in focus from the foreground to the background).

The camera will automatically control shutter speed, ISO and white balance for you, leaving you to concentrate on composition and focusing. Experiment with your auto focus and manual focus.

If the shots are over or underexposed (too bright or dark) then dial in some Exposure Compensation. I'm not sure how this is done on the xxxD range, sorry.

If your fish shots are blurred then you'll need to use a faster shutter speed. Try using Shutter Priority (Tv) and manually select a fast shutter speed i.e. 1/100th or faster.

That's some very basics to get you started.

I recommend reading up on basic photography and the relationship between aperture, shutter speed and ISO. Once you've grasped that concept you're free to concentrate composition and what consitutes a good photo.

Here's one of many tutorials, but I like this forum -

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/sho ... p?t=414088

When you're confident with your camera and its settings you may wish to shoot in Manual where you control everything.

Have fun! Aquarium photography is regarded as one of the toughest styles, even by the pros, so don't give up and practice, practice, practice!! :D
 
Thanks George.

I was trying to keep the ISo setting to about 200, as the higher up you go the more "Noise" creeps into the picture. However at ISO200 I found I needed to keep the shutter open for 1/3 sec which meant the fish were blurred :(

If I increase the shutter speed then not as much light will get into the shot and so I will need to use a higher ISO, say 800. I think I have that right.

What sort of setting do you shot with?

Thanks
 
That's when you should look at adjusting yor exposure value, it's + and -, normally in increments of 0.3.

Have a play around, take quite big jumps at first then fine tune.

That's the best thing about digital photography, no film :) doesn't matter how many shots you take while your finding the settings that work for you.

Make sure, if you are using the aperture mode that your at the lowest value available (the lower the number the more light it will allow in but at the same time the narrowerthe depth of focus).

I'm not familiar with the canon lenses but most standard zooms will have a lower f value at the wider (lower mm) range.

Have fun and play with your camera you can always delete the blurred ones :)

Tom
 
swackett said:
What sort of setting do you shot with?
Depends on what I'm shooting. I use Av and auto ISO for most actually. Works very well for my needs. Noise is acceptable up to ISO 1600 most of the time but I rarely need to go above 800.

Shoot as wide as you can, like mentioned (lowest f/number). Your lens is quite limiting here.

Getting as much light as possible above the tank helps enormously. Consider a cheap off-camera flash set up i.e. ebay wireless trigger and cheap flashgun. Or a faster lens (wider aperature)...
 
The lens I have is f3.5 at 18mm, so I'll try and keep apeture to 3.5 and have a play :)

Thanks for the advice.
 
This is not always the best idea. Lenses typically have their best optical performance at or around f8. Their worst optical performance is usually at their widest aperture, such as f3.5. Of course if the image is blurry due to slow shutter speeds, then the optical performance at f8 isn't of much help, but in general, it's a good idea to try and keep this aperture value by varying the ISO to give you f5.6 or f8 with a decent shutter speed. The solution to this problem is usually to try and add more light via flash over the tank.

The other problem with wide apertures such as f3.5 is that your depth of field is at it's shallowest, so you wind up getting a lot of out of focus objects unless they happen to fall near or within the same plane as the subject. This is especially true when shooting closeups. At f8 or f11 more things are in sharper focus.

If your forced to use slower shutter speeds then mount the camera on a tripod or table instead of hand-holding. Then, turn off the filters to minimize blurring due to movement of the leaves.

Cheers,
 
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