Just A Couple Of Pics

[hamfist]

I'm really pleased with my new lighting setup for photographing my fish. My camera has always been good, a DSLR. But recently I have bought a better lens for fish photography and a couple of cheap flashguns, which now provide all lighting from above. It really has made quite a difference. Here's a couple of example pics, which also update you guys on a couple of my fish that I rarely show on here.

First is my male Geophagus steindachneri, who is growing at a simply phenominal rate, and is a complete stunner. His blue is just insane. He still has a lot of maturing yet to do, but is already looking a top, top quality fish

Then my little Paratheraps bifasciata who, again, is growing unbelievably. She was only a tiny little 1" long fry 7 weeks ago, and now look at her ! Still too small for her adult colours to be showing yet.

Lastly, just to show I'm not cichlidist here's quite a nice one I got of the alpha male in my small shoal of bleeding heart tetras.

 

[Verminator89]

Cracking photo's! That Steiny is magnificent! Very envious, certainly makes me look across at my Brasiliensis and whimper

 

[elisew]

Cracking phots!!

Hubby bought me a canon 500D recently and I`ve been toying with the idea of buying another lens, it`s all confusing to me at the moment though until I get more used to the settings and which produces the better results

I`d love to be able to get great photos such as yours

 

[karin]

Wow. Bravo on the photography. Convinces me I'll never be submitting for the FOTM!!! Really nice and thanks for sharing the interesting fish too. For a newbie as myself that is really exciting to see such excellent photos of less common fish. Thank you.

 

[neo83]

Nice pics hamfist. Would you mind sharing what lens did you get?

 

[kaivalagi]

wow.....I'm gonna have to find some extra flash guns now! That's stunning!

I assume the lens is something like a 100mm prime macro?

What "cheap" flash guns did you get hold of and how did you trigger them?

Spill the beans on the techy details

 

[hamfist]

Thanks for all the very positive comments guys !

OK, now for the techy bits some of you have been asking for .....

The lens is a 50mm f/1.8 Nikon lens (about £100 or cheaper). I set the F at about 4.5 to get a reasonable depth of field, but still let a decent amount of light in. This is definatley an improvement to the standard kit lens that comes with Nikon DSLRs.

Both flashes I use are these super cheap ones .. http/cgi.ebay.co.uk/Digital-Slave-Flash-Speedlight-Canon-Nikon-Olympus-/200448791627?pt=UK_CamerasPhoto_CameraAccessories_CameraFlashUnits_JN&hash=item2eabadd44b

I install both flashes in home-made softboxes (using a box, silver foil, greaseproof paper and sellotape !) on top of th tank. The "primary" flash is triggered using a Hama hotshoe adapter and 5m cable from the hotshoe on the camera (all adapters and cable about £15 - from amazon). The second flash triggers as a slave, optically, from the flash of the first one. There is no light or flash from the direction of the camera at all. So all lighting is overhead, apart from the room lights, which I try to keep to a minimum.
Aperture and exposure time will obviously need to be played around with to get the right exposure for your own camera. It's definately best to do it all on "manual" mode. I end up using F/4.5 and about 1/250th second on my Nikon D50.

I'm sure I haven't quite found the very best way to use all of this, as it's only my second day at trying using the flashes this way. But I'm so pleased so far, and will hopefully improve as I tweak things.

 

[Monty-2010]

Nice photo's, beats my camera phone

 

[kaivalagi]

Thanks for that hamfist...much appreciated

I've been playing a little more in manual mode with the flash fairly recently so I now understand you can up the shutter speed, basically ignoring what the camera is telling me about possible exposure and letting the flash do it's thing...f3.2 and 1/200th gets me okay pics but I definitely need light from the top rather than the side...I may get a cheap chinese infrared trigger for my camera (canon 450d) and flash (canon 430ex) and try with the one flash from above the tank. I think my flash is quite powerful so one may be enough and if not one of those cheap slave flash units will do just the job I reckon

 

[Graphic5]

wow fab photos