Female Jewel

[Saulosi]

http://aquatic-photography.com/gallery/files/1320-jewelfish1.jpg

This is the female in my mated pair of jewel cichlids.

Your thoughts?

[chubasco]

Hi,
First off, beautiful fish! I see a lack of detail and sharpness in this pic. Are you shooting at
the largest file size or is this severely cropped? Your camera has very good macro capability,
much better than the Canon G1 I like to shoot with (getting a used Canon DSLR very soon).

Best thing is to keep shooting and experiment with different flash setups. Let's see some
more of your fish!

BTW, I'll take this pic down tomorrow so it's not in your thread. (Done)

[chubasco]

Also, one more thing, your background is too similar in color to the fish which isn't helping, just like in mine
the plants are taking away from the fish (too busy a background). Photo-processing is still a big learning curve
for me.:confused:

[Saulosi]

PLease, put it back on. I didnt get a chance to see it, because the pictures havent been working for me since this morning.

The reason it is like that is because, yes, I cropped it a lot. I can show you the origional picture later.

[chubasco]

PLease, put it back on. I didnt get a chance to see it, because the pictures havent been working for me since this morning.

The reason it is like that is because, yes, I cropped it a lot. I can show you the origional picture later.

OK, here it is again. I used two flashes with the Canon G1 and a #4 close-up filter because it lacks the excellent
macro abilities of your camera.

http://aquatic-photography.com/gallery/files/1635-cau2.jpg

Your nikon should be able to bring your subject in much closer so cropping can be kept to a bare minimum.

[Saulosi]

Actually im not using the nikon anymore, im using a kodak easyshare z760. The nikon was my dads old camera, it broke. This camera is actually mine.

[chubasco]

Well, you have 2.9" minimum focusing distance and a 3 power zoom. Should be able to do something with
that, especially at 6.1MP. I would try to keep ISO at 100 to reduce noise. You are going to want a flash over
the tank sometime, which your onboard flash could trigger. You will need an optical wireless slave flash trigger
to do this. Placing a tissue paper diffuser over the camera's flash should help, too. You will have to experiment
with what f-stop works best. Using flash, shutter speed set to 1/125 should be good, but you can experiment
to see what works best. Also check your white balance settings, your pic looks to have a yellowish cast to it.

HTH.

[Andreas Werth]

Hi,
unfortunately the original bluish scales are blown out by the on board flash. I guess, this is the most important part to improve.