New and seeking help

[Dennis]

Hi all,

I was introduced to this site yesterday and I am very impressed. Awesome site!

Well, I won't bore you with any goop about me although some of you may know me from APC. I am currently trying to get some good shots for the ADA contest and I wonder if you could give me your opinions about this shot. I only have a Canon A70 and am using as much lighting over the tank as I can find (~260 watts PC and T5).


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

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.


So, how is this photo wise? The only editing I did was croping. You can see the original here (http://webpages.charter.net/dennisdietz/2006%20ADA%203.31%20072.jpg). 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!

A resized photo using Gimp 2.0. Resized w/o any interpolation (what ever that is) and saved at 100% with all the smoothing and stuff turned off. The phots for this contest are supposed to be unedited....

http://webpages.charter.net/dennisdietz/Final1%20ADA.jpg

Any imput would be great!

Thanks:)

Dennis

[phishphorphun]

Welcome aboard Dennis. I can't offer any qualified opinions on your beautiful planted tank, but it is definitely impressive.

Look forward to seeing more of your shares.

[Dennis]

Bobby,

Thanks for the king words and for the welcome:)

Is there anyway I could get a clearer, everything looks a little soft to me? (or is it just my laptop screen) I was afraid the shot also looked to dark, especially toward the bottom but I don't know how to lighten it up anymore without washing out the stuff at the top? Any opinions or does it really look OK?

Thanks again for the welcome!

Dennis

[JerseyJay]

Dennis,

Welcome to APF. Glad you finally found your way here. I will see you in a week so I can explain this a bit more.

#1. "Sharper" picture - try using tripod / monopod or anything that you could use as base for the camera. Set your aperture to ~5 or so and adjust shutter accordingly. Also use ISO for more light sensitivity. Final output could be filtered through PhotoShop for final post processing.

#2. Dark bottom / Bright top is actually normal but easily curable in photoshop. Setup your camera manually and take 2 or more exposures. Expose for bottom (*top will be very bright) and then another exposure for top (*bottom will be very dark). Combine both layers in photoshop. Easy as that !

Do google search for - Photoshop layer masking. Let me know if you need further explanation.

Here is quick edit

http://greenstouch.com/various/Final1-ADA_edited.jpg

[Dennis]

Thanks for the Jay, I look forward to the NEC next weekend.

As for my photo, I did use a tripod and also a 2 second timer to avaoid any camera shake issues. I am hesitant to deal with Photoshoping for several reasons. 1)I only have Gimp, 2)No experience and 3) I am afraid anything I do may show up in print and would rather submit a lower quality image than have them say "you edited this, rules say no editing, out!". Lets face it, I am not going to win or even place all that high so....:)

Re:ISO, won't raising it make the shot grainer. Here (http://webpages.charter.net/dennisdietz/2006%20ADA%203.31%20051.jpg) is a photo(ignore the platy) with ISO 200, f6.3 1/80s and it looks noticabely grainer to me. I remember last year printing accidently printing a couple shots at either 200 or 400 and they looked like crap. Does the grainyness improve with higer mpix cameras? My A70 only has 3.2. Is my above photo(in my original post) about as good as I can expect with my camera?

Thanks again Jay! Your quick edited photo, is that the unsharpen mask edit?

Dennis

[alanhill]

I think this is a good result. Tank photos are not easy, and this shows the aquarium off well. The aperture, shutter speed and ISO seem to be quite satisfactory. In theory 200 ISO might be better, as the fish should be a little sharper and/or you might get a little more depth of field. I can't see any real noise in the 200 ISO shot, but the exposure latitude may be slightly less, so your prefered shot may be the best compromise choice - it's a matter of taste.
I would recommend a little unsharp masking (which would make the image look sharper, strangely enough) - I guess GIMP can do that for you and I don't think it would count as editing, because you aren't adding or removing anything from the image, just emphasising the edges. On the other hand I think that layer masking is breaking the spirit of the rule at least.
The fishes show up quite well in your photo and are easily identifiable. You won't be able to get really sharp photos of them without providing a lot more light. The health of your plants shows that you have plenty of light coming from your hood, and it looks to be very even in intensity, so I doubt if there is any point in adding extra temporary lighting to improve the photo (it would probably be very difficult anyway). Good luck with your entry!

Alan

[Dennis]

Thanks for the help and words of encouragment Alan. After browsing through the site I will take it as a compliment. I may play around with the unsharpen mask a bit but other than that I will probably be submitting this photo. Either that or I have to wait another week or two as the plants are a bit to overgrown now and would need a trim and grow back out before more photos are taken. Its nice to know I have something acceptable to use now though.

Any suggestions about the unsharpen mask settings? Seems there are a few different variables to mess with and I don't fully understand how it works? Maybe there is a good tutorial that could be linked too?

Thanks again for everyone's help.

Dennis

[alanhill]

I can't really help as I don't know GIMP and it probably uses different numbers from Photoshop. Some basic advice (common sense really) - make a copy of your image and practise on that (better still 2 copies in case you get carried away ;)). There will probably be 3 settings to adjust. Set the numbers quite low to start with and then gradually increase each one in turn. You can go as high as you like - but your image will look very strange. Go back and start again, you want to make a difference that is just visible without being obvious. Ideally the effect should be so subtle that you know what you've done, but no-one else can tell for sure.

Alan

[tierce]

Any suggestions about the unsharpen mask settings? Seems there are a few different variables to mess with and I don't fully understand how it works? Maybe there is a good tutorial that could be linked too?



There is a good tutorial on unsharp masking here (http://ronbigelow.com/articles/sharpen1/sharpen1.htm). It may be a bit daunting at first and probably goes much further than you want or need, but I have found it very helpful as a start.

Lovely tank!

[hir0]

great looking tank and you've photographed it well.

[Dennis]

tierce,

That is a really good link and article. Thank you for introducing that source to me.

hiRo, thanks:)