Ok, So a couple of questions...

[Cichlid Lover]

Hi, I have been reading a lot here, and there are a couple of things that confuse me...

1. Noise - Less at a lower ISO right?
2. If you have like a 5 Megapizle cam, are you always shooting at 5 MP?
3. You use a higher shutter speed for a fast action thing right?
4. What is White Balance?


Thanks in advance!

[ccplim]

Well, I might not be good in explaining but will try my best.

1) Noise
You are right to say that. In general, lower ISO produced sharper and less grainy pictures than high ISO, because the way to make a film faster is to make the light sensitive grains in the emulsion larger. However, I do not really understand how they do this in digital? Maybe they make the CCD more sensitive to light at higher ISO value?

2) IMHO, you will be shooting at the highest resolution of the camera if you are shooting under RAW. The resolution might be slightly ower if you shoot in JPG format. But, well, I might be wrong too.

3) Well, I can't really explain this well [smilie=oops2.gif] Maybe some other bros can have a better explaination than me?

4) White balance
White balance relates to the concept of color temperature. Color temperature is a way of measuring the quality of a light. It is based on the ratio of the amount of blue light to the amount of red light, and the green light is ignored. The unit for measuring this ratio is in degree Kelvin (K). A light with higher color temperature (i.e., larger Kelvin value) has "more" blue lights than a light with lower color temperature (i.e., smaller Kelvin value). Thus, a cooler (resp., warmer) light has a higher (resp., lower) color temperature. (credit of Michigan Tech)

Hope this helps [smilie=mf_prop.gif]

[CDM]

1. yes, less noise at lower ISO.
2. yes, I do use 5MP for 2 reasons, 1st is in case there's a need to enlarge it to be post size, 2nd, have chance to crop out the unwanted area.
3. yes, higher shutter speed for a fast action thing.
4. the digital camera use ccd or cmos as the photo detector, the photo detector got different efficiency for different wavelengths. The manufacturers therefore calibrate the ccd or cmos under normal lighting condition to bring out the most true color. However, if the lighting is not the normal environment, such as fluorescent light, PL light or even greenish environment as in some tanks. The as calibrated ccd can't bring out the true color. Therefore, the company add the white balance option for you to do the manual calibrate of the color tone. Of course there are some pre-calibrated white balance options for you to choose. You can try those pre-calibrated optioins, if all fail, then you have do it manually.

[Cichlid Lover]

Ok, Also, it is good to have a UV filter on at all times to protect the lense right?

Is a telepohoto lense a good investment?

So, for a fish, an ISO of like 100 - 200 is good?

ALSO, lol, I just remembered..

What is an F-Stop? Is that the Aperature range? If so, what is that also? LOL...

Also, I have NO special lighting, just the standard bulbs that come with the hoods of the tank...