PlanetCatfish.com

hi,
i am having a lot of trouble taking decent photos of my fish with my digi camera, most of them come out blurred. ive tried all of the different modes on my camera and nothing seems to work, i see such clear photos on this site, how do you guys do it?
cheers,
jordan
id love to post up a couple of my photos:)

http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5512

http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8176

Both of the threads that Silurus points to are good.

However, neither answers the immediate question as to "Why are your pictures blurred?"

There are three things that make a picture blurred:
1. Out of focus.
Make sure your camera can focus as closesly as you are trying to make it focus. It's sometimes better to move away a little bit, and just crop out the middle bit of the picture. Most modern digital cameras can take pictures that are way more resolution than you need for posting on the web, so if you have to cut off some of the outer bit of the picture, that would be fine.

Another problem might be that the camera focuses on the glass rather than the fish behind the glass, in which case the fish will be blurred. Not sure how you work around that other than trying to keep the glass spotless and free of reflections (because the camera will need something to focus on, and if there's no spots/reflections/etc, it won't be able to focus on the glass).

Some cameras also have a macro mode, that's usually a symbol of a flower, which makes the camera focus at things closer to the camera than the camera does when in "normal" mode.

2. Movement during the shot (either the camera or the subjcet).

The camera will adjust the time it takes for the photo to be exposed depending on the amount of light and use of flash. If your camera is taking a picture that takes a long time (we're still talking about fractions of a second, like 1/30th of a second) to expose (because there isn't that much light) it will be blurred if you're trying to hold the camera by hand. Using a tripod can help this on.

Alternatively, if the fish are moving about, they will need a shorter time (i.e. more light) to get a sharp shot.

You can use flash, but it's best to use an external flash that can be positions off-line from the camera, so you don't get the flash reflection in the picture.

3. Depth of field.

This is the more "obscure" part. As with all optical devices, including our eyes, not everything is in focus at the same time. If you focus on something that is, say, 1m away, with your eyes, and at the same time try to see something far across the room, the far-across the room will be out of focus.

Same with cameras. With the camera, it depends on the aperture (which is like our pupil). The bigger the aperture, the closer the depth of field.

Most small digital cameras don't have manual settings, so depth of field may not be changeable, but getting more lighting may help.

To try this out, put a sheet of paper with text on it on a table, and aim the camera at 45 degrees to the table, focusing on the middle of the page. You'll see that the text you focused on is sharp, but as you go away from the focus point, the text starts being blurred.

It may help a lot to make sure that the fish is in parallel to the camera, so that you don't get the head and/or tail blurred because either end of the fish is not at the focus distance.

--
Mats

A good macro setting and a tripod has made a world of difference for me. I'm no Ansel Adams, but I'm a lot further along than I used to be. Nikon CoolPix series of cameras has a red hand that comes up to tell you if your hand is shaking in the least bit. It even takes pictures in the dark.