Photography experts needed

[Discusgeo]

Well for the last 6 six months I been watching everyone post pics of there Discus. Well I got lucky last weekend and my brother dropped off his Ricoh 5300 digital camera for me to use over the next couple of months. It has 2.3 mega pixels and a 3x zoom lens. He brought me all the cables but forgot the user manual. So I am asking everyone how do you take sure mice pictures. I have 2 breeding pairs in a room that I need to take a photo of. One pair is of my Golden Sunrise which have wigglers 2 day's old. The other pair is my Blue Diamonds that came from Asia thru Ray Kosaka at Discus Hawaii and they are watching there eggs due to hatch Thursday. Now my question is lighting, what is everyone using above there tanks as mine have none, just natural lighting from the window. I tried using the flash but it comes back into the picture and ruins it. Any help would be appreciated. Like I said I have a few months to figure this out. I also noticed that there is no way to focus the kens, is this standard on digital cameras? I also have Photoshop 6 to use as an editing program. Thaks
George

[Wahter]

I posted some tips before, but here are three key ones:

1.) when using a flash that's mounted on the camera, take the photo from an angle, or the light will bounce right back at you. Even a slight angle is better than none to minimize glare/ reflection.

2.) clean off the glass.

3.) focus. focus. focus. Sometimes you can just focus on a section of the tank that the fish is headed toward and then shoot the photo when the fish swims into view - else it can sometimes be tricky to focus while you are panning/ zooming/ following the fish around in the tank while remembering to take the photo from an angle and making sure you don't bump into something or trip over something on the floor.

Hope these help.

Walter

[Discusgeo]

Thanks Wahter I will give it a try.
George

[April]

Heres
aprils handy dandy tip. get your computer chair with wheels...and sit on it in front of the tank. and roll .....so you can move about to where you need to. LOL works well.
and yes..and angle. i also have lighted hoods on the tanks. and flash.and yes the glass needs to be very clean. and i also heard they take way better pics when their up higher in hte tank. dont aim down on them or they look like scrunched footballs.
i cant wait to see them. you will need to shrink them to post them on here. the software should come with it. or maybe your photoshop program.

Terrific news Discusgeo!!!!! Your photos will always be clearer if you do not take them too close. Always stay at least 4 feet away from your tank when doing zoom shots and try very hard to be still when you shoot your picture. Shooting a picture at an angle will eliminate the flash from reflecting off the glass. Practice makes perfect..... so snap away!!!! Do not worry if you do not have a photo editing program, most newer pc's will automatically detect your camera when you plug in the cable and turn it on. A wizard window will pop up and just follow the prompts. ACDSee is a photo program, that most computers have, if your picures open in ACDSee, then just go to edit, and crop and resize your photos here, then resave and rename, so you still maintain the original! (In case you want to make desktop pictures) All photos in Simply must be under 72k, so when you edit, resize your picture to 50% to achieve this. Feel free to IM me if you need additional help!!!!!
Weezy