PlanetCatfish.com

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Mats

Nice! I like the way you've done the crockery on the left. Are all the catfish pictured in your photo gallery in this tank? What kind of wood is in that, and is the Panaque in there, too?

Deborah

Yup, the catfish are almost all in that tank. I've got a few bristlenoses in other tanks (in fact, there's a couple of bristlenoses in every tank I've got, some have more than a couple... )

The wood is a mixture of:
Mopani (most of the visible bits are on the right-hand side at the back and leaning against the filter [with Anubia tied to it])
Cherry wood (just barely visible dark brown at the back and sticking out under the crockery at the left-hand side)
Unknown twisty bits that I got from the neighbours wood-pile. (the most visible bits).

Panaque maccus x 3 are in there - I see one or another of them once in a while, but they tend to hide a lot...

You can see the eating on the courgette at the front of the tank... And bristlenose babies at the top in the breeding-net.

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Mats

Looking good Mats. Got any close ups of the eartheaters?

Maybe we can turn this thread into a "recent pic of everyone's tank"?

I'll try and take one of mine a bit later.

Got a recent S. leucsticta pic in my photo album (link below).

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Mats

Looks fabulous, Mats! So many territories/hiding places. Nicely done.
Amanda

bronzefry wrote:Looks fabulous, Mats! So many territories/hiding places. Nicely done.
Amanda

That's the idea... I'm sure it will look different again in a few months when I move it (AGAIN!). I'm considering changing the gravel to part gravel, part sand, but I'm not sure if I will go through with that - I think all sand will be a bit too much...

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Mats

Nice tanks, MatsP... Congratulations. Love to see fully-aquascaped tanks. NO bare-bottom tanks. Congratulations.

Best regards.

Daniel.

Mats,

I looked at your aquarium pictures some time ago and was really impressed. How do you take such good pictures?

With me, I have to turn the flash off as this makes the aquarium incredibly ugly (as if there is no water in the tank). Turning the flash off makes any movement really blurry and I have to take about 10 pictures before I can get one without a blur...Fish are always moving! When I do finally make a still pick, the colours of the fish and the tank always look bad and the water often looks yellow. Any close up pics will be out of focus no matter what I do..

very nice tanks.

Kevin

arc200uk wrote:Mats,

I looked at your aquarium pictures some time ago and was really impressed. How do you take such good pictures?

I did take about 5 picture of the tank to get this one - although the one I finally chosee was actually the first attempt!

Camera: EOS 10D
Lens: EF 20-35/2.8L (@20mm)
No flash.

ISO: 1600
Shutter: 1/50
Aperture: 3.5

I don't know if I used tripod for this shot - I know I did for some of the later ones in the series - when I used lower ISO values.

The later attempts were at less sensitive ISO values (400 and 100), and they were seriously slow shutter speeds, and as you say, the fish mustn't be moving then...

Of course, for "tank shot", it doesn't matter too much if each individual fish isn't super sharp - as long as they aren't hiding what the actual tank looks like. Something like 1/30 or 1/20 would certainly work with the fish I've got. 1/3, like the ISO 100 ones, the fish are somewhat streaky across the glass, but not badly so.

Yellow colour is probably because the colour balance gets upset. You should be able to fix that in Photoshop (or other Photo Editor software) by setting the white-balance to somewhat bluer shade to compensate.

Out of focus close-ups is perhaps a limitation of the close-up range of the camera - for close-ups I use a 100mm Macro lens, which has a close-up limit of 30cm/1ft from the film/sensor-plane. It gets to 1:1, so one cm of subject is one cm on the film/sensor, and that's more than enough for anything but the tiniest of fish. Try taking a series of photos closer and closer to something, making a not of how close you can get and still have a sharp image. Of course, another problem with close-ups is that the depth of field [how far around the focus distance is still sharp] is abysmally small even at small apertures - so you need extra light and high ISO values here. Sometimes I use flash for the close-ups. Not for the bigger fish, but smaller ones, it works best to use flash... As long as the flash isn't too close to the lens, it's fine to flash into the tank - but clsoe to the lens and it'll reflect back off the glass, rather than off the fish...

Aquarium photo is NOT easy... There's lots of things that can go wrong...

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Mats

Looks good Mats, I like the pile of terracotta pots along the back, I imagine it gives the fish plenty of hiding places without being an overbearing feature of the tank. I am also extremely jealous of your group of S. leucsticta!

I sure know what you mean about tank photography being difficult, I find I get about 1 in 10 shots that are any good - thank heavens for digital cameras! I'm considering getting a Fuji FinePix S5600 as I've heard they are particularly good at low light levels, which should help when taking pics of the tank without the flash. I also want to get a tripod as I suspect that will make a huge difference.