PlanetCatfish.com

Have some stunning fish that I would like to photograph and post online. Was wondering if anybody had recently purchased a digital camera and what they thought of it. I'm hoping for something not too expensive but that you can still get some good shots with, I have also picked up a book on digital photography in the hopes of producing some nice shots.

in fact, any digital camera would suffice

The nice thing abvout digital pictures is, you see what you've got. If you're not happy, just take a few more pictures.

An annouying thing about my camera - Canon Powershot G3, got it 9 years back, is that it takes a long time to calculate before any pricture is taken - thus the fish might be somewhere else completely.

When I buy another camera, I will certainly put much emphasis on that. Secondly the optics - that is the whole of lenses. Another thing might be that some cameras make white close to black more or less grey, others would do so much better. Whether the camera is 6 MP or 7 is much less important

I have a Canon SD700IS that I got about 4 years ago, and it takes good pics. It is small and compact, and it travels everywhere with me. It has a macro setting, as well as many others. Good luck. Coupla shots:

What sort of budget do you have in mind ?

It all depends.. I know about photography and would go for a DSLR and a macro lens. If you don't then get a decent compact. My dad just bought himself a panasonic FZ150 and I'm quite impressed, he even gets decent shots of my adolescent shrimp with that.

I have a budget of $500, though something in the $300 range would be much easier to stomach. I'll probably get a used one off of Ebay to make my money go twice as far. I would prefer something I could take macro shots with as I too have some tiny fish I would like to take detailed pictures of.

I recently purchased a Nikon D3200 and love it so far. It is my first DSLR and real easy to use. I have been playing with it for a month now and have gotten some pretty good shots. Now I just need to save up for a macro lens, it costs more than the camera!

Try to get a DSLR if possible.

Once you have a DSLR, you will need to invest in remote flashes and lens to further improve the image quality.

I stopped using remote flashes. I often end up with a picture that looks very staged. Anyway, with today's cameras even iso3200 is perfectly useable so there's less need for those.

wijnands wrote:I stopped using remote flashes. I often end up with a picture that looks very staged. Anyway, with today's cameras even iso3200 is perfectly useable so there's less need for those.

What you say is true but remote flashes do help. Especially when taking photos of very small and fast fish. One or two placed above and one or more from the front at 45* relative to the line of sight.
With your budget you will probably have to compromise for awhile until you can afford a macro and you will need the extra light because you need to use small F-stops for best depth of field possible with that lens stopped down.

I'm certainly no expert, far from it in fact, but my fish photography (and photography in general) greatly improved when going from a mid-range point&shoot to a Canon 550D even though I was initially using it in idiot-mode as a big clumsy point&shoot! I'm beginning to learn about the different modes and features now and enjoying it too, well worth the investment IMO..

It's been a couple of years since this post. Any newer cameras that can take great photos on a limited budget?

Well, the good news is that any camera you considered getting back in 2013 will be cheaper now. I think it's far too easy to delay a purchase because you try to find the perfect the camera that fits all your needs, when you don't really know what you need yet. I know I did this before I eventually got my current camera, a Canon 60D.

A DSLR or equivalent mirrorless will give you more versatility and control, but that comes at the cost of size/weight (less so for mirrorless). More recent ones will have incremental boosts to iso performance, focus speed, frames per second etc. One thing (aside from side/weight) that is a bonus for compacts is that they can usually have a smaller minimum focus distance (MFD). My Fuji X10 (a higher end compact at the time) has a MFD of about 4cm, so you can put the lens on the front glass and can focus on pretty much anything and eliminate reflections. To achieve this with a DSLR you'll need extra equipment.

I've attached a couple of similar images (DSLR & compact), they're not exactly comparable (very different settings), but the compact image is still good and usable.