Please describe your photo taking techniques.

[Doug]

Hi Everyone,

After seeing some of the incredible images posted in this new forum and in the other forums on ReefCentral I thought it would be interesting if some of you could describe how you take such awesome pictures.

Some simple questions that I can come up with are:

Do you use a tripod?
Do you use a special lens (i.e. macro) when taking your pictures?
Do you use a flash.
If you use a flash is it on camera or off.
Do you add supplemental lighting?
Do you edit your images in an image editing software before posting them?
Are you using auto focus or manual?
Are you using other special camera settings like manual exposure or manual aperture?
Do you use specific white balance settings?
Do you have any suggestions for the best settings on the specific camera that you are using?
Are you using special metering modes?

I am sure that some of you can come with some more questions that I might have missed that will help everyone take some awesome pictures.

Doug

[Clyde]

heres a tip or two (some tips say 950, etc some will still apply to 990 995 775 880 885- check your manual for references on these items)

most info are from digital secrets e-book.

set your white balance @ the tank,
White Balance Preset is used when you wish to show the camera exactly and
precisely what you want it to consider white to be. You then “pre-set� to this white reference, and it is remembered by the camera until you change it. At any time you can select White Preset and your last saved white balance will become the camera’s white reference.
Professional video cameras have a similar feature, but even these don’t usually have the range of the Nikon compacts. Setting up the white balance is straightforward.

You are balancing the camera to the existing light.

• Point the camera at a white surface that is in the lighting you wish to balance to.



• Tell the camera “this is it� by selecting the Menu choice: White Bal. Preset. This produces a menu screen that asks Cancel or Measure? and shows a square sampling area from the center of the image sensor. The 950 zooms full tele to limit the sample. The 990/995 lets you zoom wider if you wish.

• Choose Measure. If you choose Cancel, the camera’s preset memory
stays filled with the previous manual white balance.

• Press the Shutter button on the 950 or click right with the Multi- Selector on the others, and the camera cycles through a brief exposure sequence during which it measures the RGB content of the target area of the sensor. The camera will now assume that anything it just saw equaled white. The circuits responsible for detecting red, green, and blue pixels will immediately have an internal look-up file that tells them how to create a good-looking color image. This file stays intact through battery changes until you do it again. Point the camera at anything that is pure white or truly neutral gray. Some high quality bond papers and white fabrics have “UV brighteners� in them. They look a little “too white� to your eye and produce a slightly warmer white balance.

Use a Tripod.

Use the timer mode - YES timer.. Use timer when you go into macro mode, so your finger does not jerk the camera resulting in a blurry picture.

if you want macro with your 880 885 995 and maybe the 775 it works nicely to set your nikon into optional lense mode

usually, in manual setting (885 - its called CSTM - on the 990-995's called M)

Fisheye 2 For FC-E8 converter Lens
Lens locks at 15.3mm. The macro point.
No zoom available.
All flashes off.

2 lens setting is also useful with no adapter at all, when you want to move the lens to a locked intermediate position. The lens comes to rest right at the macro sweet spot, ready for your next ultra close-up. Barrel distortion at this point is virtually zero.


in Adobe Photoshop, there is ways to make your picture to come out a bit more realistic.

use Auto Levels, and also use Unsharpen mask.

THE UNSHARP MASK
(FILTER > SHARPENING > UNSHARP MASK)
Who would think that the best control to sharpen an image in a computer would begin with the word, unsharp? But it does. The Unsharp Mask control is a filter in Photoshop in the group of controls labeled Sharpening. Choose the Unsharp Mask, and a window appears with several choices and a small preview window. If the box labeled Preview is checked, the filter is already being applied to your shot. With images the size of the Nikon 990/995/885 and 950/775 shots, you should be able to leave this checked, providing your computer is of reasonably fast speed.
The top slider shows the amount of “sharpening� the control is generating. Under that you have a window that asks for a number. This is the radius, in pixels, of the influence of the filter. It works fractionally as well.

This is important. By being able to influence only about third of a pixel with an entry of 0.3, you are keeping the effect very tightly bound to the contours in your image. A 1.0 pixel radius will extend the influence of the sharpening effect a full pixel in every direction from the one being worked on.
How it works is interesting. It heightens the contrast between pixels of different values. A dark pixel against a light pixel will become a darker pixel against a lighter pixel. Since the original values are slightly exaggerated, the boundary from one to the other is exaggerated, and looks sharper to the eye.



Locally, the contrast between the two original features is increased, but it is our vision system that interprets this as being a sharpness improvement.
It is real easy to overdo Unsharp Mask. Try numbers like these to experience how they work:
RADIUS AMOUNT
0.2 100 - 500
0.3 80 - 300
0.5 50 - 170
1.0 20 - 90
2.0 10 - 50
Large number entries in the Radius box have a different sort of influence on the picture. Try putting in a number like 60~200 and moving the Amount slider around. Notice how areas of the picture adjust their relatively local contrast into looking more vivid? Watch out for bright areas, though, they can easily become too bright and lose detail. Often a conservative use of this technique will simply add a bit of snap to the image. Try a Radius of 80 and an Amount of 15.
This control is capable of achieving several effects and is worth playing with for a while, just to get a sense of how its various settings interact.



While the Unsharp Mask tool can perk up the effects of low or no in-camera sharpening, the camera has the image in memory before compressing and storing it, so the very sharpest images with the fewest
artifacts will probably result from appropriate in-camera sharpening. With the 950, this is moot, since the camera has no control over in-camera sharpening, and does fine as is. But with the 775, 880, 990 and 995, the Image Sharpening control may be set to its Normal or Automatic Sharpening setting without fear. Experiment with shots made using Low in-camera sharpening followed by judicious Unsharp Mask tweaking.



SIZING FOR POSTING IN REEFCENTRAL - THIS TIP IS GOOD INFO!

If you are preparing images for use on the Internet, it is doubtful that you will
need to display images larger than 1024 pixels wide. Photoshop’s scaling tool, Image > Image Size > Resample Image: Bicubic, produces the cleanest results. Specify a dimension in pixels in the upper windows and the rest of the window will calculate itself automatically. For the best results apply any sharpening after re-scaling your shot.


HOW DO I FORCE THE CAMERA TO FOCUS WHERE I WANT?

With the 950 you have two immediate methods of focus. Autofocus, and Manual focus. Since the camera is not a single lens reflex, manual focusing is given over to a series of preset focus ranges which lock in at 0.33 (feet), 0.66, 1.0, 1.5, 2, 3, 5, 10, 30, and INF (inity). In meters, the numbers show up as 0.1, 0.2, 0.5, 0.7, 1.0, 1.5, 3.0, 10, and INF. Obviously these are only approximations, but they represent focus areas in which the depth of field compensates somewhat for inexactness.
The 880, 885, 990, and 995 divide up the focus range into 50 manual zones
creating a more refined selection of focus areas. The range goes all the way from infinity to 0.06 feet (0.02 meters).

Almost everybody wants to shoot very close on occasion. While closer focus is available through the Autofocus mode, the minimum Manual focus setting is available at every point in the zoom range. And 0.33 on feet on the 950, that’sa mere four inches. The 990 and 995 achieve this close setting at just a hair under full tele zoom. This is a field of view just over 1-1/4 inch wide! Very closeindeed. Close enough to crop inside the long dimension of a 35mm slide. On top of the 950 there is a button dedicated to being the focus helper. It is the rearmost button behind the shutter release. Stepping through it selects Infinity, Micro, and Self Timer. Wait a minute, how did that get in there? Because the Self Timer in the 950 is in the selection rotation of Normal > Infinity > Micro > Self Timer, most people assume you can’t set up micro shots and have the Self Timer function at the same time.

Some subjects are unlikely to wait for
the autofocus. Preset the focus (here
at 0.33 feet) and prowl by moving the
camera into position.



The Nikon Manuals aren’t any help here either.
An undocumented procedure works around this problem:

To shoot a Macro close-up and have the Self
Timer trigger the shot, do this:

• First, choose the Self Timer. An icon looking
somewhat like a clock with a second hand will
appear on the view screen and on the camera top
display.

• Next, hold down the M-Focus button on the camera top, and keep it down while turning the Command Dial on the front of the camera. Now you are setting the focus manually while maintaining the ability to trip the shutter while not touching the camera.

The other models include Macro Focus in the Self Timer choice, so all Self Timer shots will be forced to wait through the longer macro focusing procedure. Unless you set the focus manually. The procedure is the same as for the 950. Set the Self Timer, press and hold the M-Focus button while the Command Dial selects the distance. As the manual distance is chosen, the monitor shows you the focus distance, and the camera top display blinks all the focus icons on the 950. The 990/995 shows the numerical distance without the icon animation.

TIP - If the camera falls asleep, the setup is lost and you will have to start over.

[Clyde]

i forgot one more photoshop tip

CURES OR LEVELS
(COMMAND OR CTRL -M, -L)
The Curves and Levels controls have a special feature useful in color control of your image. Three “eyedropper� controls with black, gray, and white fluid in them are used to sample the image’s brightest, darkest, and most neutrally colored places for fast adjustment.
The middle eyedropper is the one with the greatest color correction use. The default setting is for middle gray. Double click on it to see where it is set on your computer.

Not gray? Easy to fix.

See those boxes labeled H:, S:, B:? B = Brightness. Enter H: 0°, S: 0%, B: 50% and the rest of this idea will work for you. Now touch this Gray Eyedropper cursor on any object in your scene that would naturally be close to neutral gray. It doesn’t matter whether the gray part is light or dark, just so long as it is supposed to be without other color. The white trim of a house in slight shadow, a whitewall tire or the dark gray of the tire itself, a gray patch of pavement, a gray foggy sky, a colorless rock, lettering on a sign, a silver car, a white shirt… all of these will work if you find the right place to click.

As soon as you click on your reference object, the entire scene adjusts to
re-color balance to that sample. The control adjusts the Red, Green and Blue channels in a way that turns the pixel you sampled into a neutral gray hue.
The brightness of the sample isn’t changed, just its hue and saturation. Play with this control a lot. It’s surprising to see how dramatically it works. After a while, you will become quite adept at improving the color of images shot in shade, indoor light, office light, and in errors caused by outright mistakes. Shade often tends to look cool, due to contamination from the blue sky. Indoor light can be recorded too warm, due to incandescent bulbs on dimmers. In office light, which is often greenish due to fluorescent lights, the color is dependent on the exact formula of the bulbs and no one fluorescent setting will get all of them perfect. Then there are the mistakes. Some will be due to your forgetting to put the white balance on the right setting; some will come from mixed light situations that simply can’t be correctly guessed by the Auto White Balance feature of the camera. When any of these show up on your computer screen, hit that center eyedropper in the Curves window, and start looking for a likely gray object in the shot. The image above was exposed with the camera set to the wrong white balance. Fortunately, the strip of cement (arrow) was neutral in color, and simply clicking on it with the neutrality eyedropper created the vivid, realistic result.

[Clyde]

heres a pict I took a long time ago

1 with pre-editing and after editing.

[coralite]

Well, how much do I owe you for the photography lesson??
Thank you very much for all the info. So i am assuming you like the coolpix, what features does a 995 have that a 775 doesnt. For aquatic photography purposes and macro shot abilities, is there a $400 difference between the 2?

[JohnL]

Nice tips Clyde!

I'll be trying them very soon

[ATJ]

I have a Nikon CoolPix 950. Other than whole tank type photos, I always use an external flash (Nikon SB24) connected with a sync cord.

For most pictures I use the flash in TTL mode (although the CoolPix does not actually use TTL flash control).

For difficult subjects I use the flash in manual mode set at 1/16 power and move the flash in or out to control the exposure.

For ultra close-ups, I put a white handkerchief over the flash to cut the power further.

When using the flash, I set the camera to aperture priority with the aperture at its samllest (largest f-stop). This increases the depth of field - i.e. more of the image will be in focus.

Here is a sample:

and another:

[Doug]

Hi Clyde,

That is some excellent info! Thank you!

I don't have the same camera that you do but many of the things that you said to most photographers.

Also, I really like the info that you gave about the unmask in Photoshop. I would have never thought about that.

Thanks again.

Doug

[wdt2000]

How do you use Paint Shop Pro images on reefcentral. Paint Shop Pro always makes me use .psp and will not let me switch it to .jpg


Thanks
Will

[Doug]

Hi Will,

I have never used Paint Shop Pro but when you are saving the file does it give you the option to "save as"?

Or is there a choice on file menu to do a "save for web"?

Or is there and "export" option?

Those are some of the more common choices that I have seen with the software that I use.

If you find one of the above options you will want to choose the .jpg format.

HTH

Doug

[JazzMan]

Holy Crap CLyde!!!!! Thanks for all that info!! That's the best thing about this board, people always posting tons of info!!

Thanks again!!!!

[Clyde]

nada, no charge :P knowledge is power.

I have a 885, my parents have a 995.

What a 775 does not have that a 885,995 does not ?

thers several - best is go to a photography store, ask em to read the manual on both (features)

if you're taking point and shoot pictures most of the time and your budget allows for a 775 not a 995 - then I would suggest, maybe check out other cameras.

the 775 is a bit too small for me, the 885 had almost everything that the 995 had, cept the flash TTL, etc etc.

is there a $400 difference between the two. yes.

my aunt has a 775, I noticed the camera was slower in accessing info than my parents 995. I have not studied too much on the 775 myself, so I cannot say TOO much, but do check out these four or five links.

http://www.steves-digicams.com/2001_.../nikon775.html

http://www.steves-digicams.com/2001_.../nikon885.html

http://www.steves-digicams.com/2001_.../nikon995.html

http://www.digitalsecrets.net/ - where I got most of my info.

http://www.megapixel.net/cgi-bin/fs_...cle-macro.html

Originally posted by aquafresh
Well, how much do I owe you for the photography lesson??
Thank you very much for all the info. So i am assuming you like the coolpix, what features does a 995 have that a 775 doesnt. For aquatic photography purposes and macro shot abilities, is there a $400 difference between the 2?

[Clyde]

Chose File

Then Choose EXPORT - JPEG OPTIMIZER

Then thats it - save to whatever.

when you want to post a picture here in this forum, you ll see '[QUOTE]Attach File:

Find the file on your computer, or click browse - then a window will pop up, you look around where the file is.

after you're done typing your stuff and all then click submit or preview reply, to make sure it shows up.

so like doug says most programs use export, save as etc.

this applies to everyone else whos reading this and is usiing a different program.

to point out, some people say the Photoshop costs too much, but you just spent 600 bucks on the cam

I've seen Photoshop for sale at Half-Price books for cheap 80 bucks or so, not the NEWEST version, but heck do you really need Adobe Photoshop 7.0 for macosx, Photoshop 3.0 4.0 will work VERY nicely - but photoshop's save for web, I cannot remember when it first came out in 4.0 ??

Try ebay for photoshop ?

another nice software not as bad is Adobe ImageReady (But I do not think they sell this one seperatly)


[QUOTE]Originally posted by wdt2000
How do you use Paint Shop Pro images on reefcentral. Paint Shop Pro always makes me use .psp and will not let me switch it to .jpg


Thanks
Will

[andyk227]

Clyde - lot's of great tips. I can't wait to try them out.

thanks!

[Rick O]

Thanks for the info Clyde. I have a Coolpix 950. I've also noticed that the camera moves a slight bit when I press the shutter release even though I'm using a tripod. Does the timer mode work in macro mode? It's on the same selector button and it appears that the camera goes out of macro when you switch to macro. Or am I doing something wrong?

Thanks.

[Clyde]

Because the Self Timer in the 950 is in the selection rotation of Normal >
Infinity > Micro > Self Timer, most people assume you can’t set up micro shots
and have the Self Timer function at the same time.

To shoot a Macro close-up and have the Self
Timer trigger the shot, do this:
• First, choose the Self Timer. An icon looking
somewhat like a clock with a second hand will
appear on the view screen and on the camera top
display.
• Next, hold down the M-Focus button on the
camera top, and keep it down while turning the
Command Dial on the front of the camera. Now
you are setting the focus manually while maintaining
the ability to trip the shutter while not touching
the camera.

[Pinecone_Jeff]

First of all, thank you Doug and JohnL for putting this forum together! This is exactly what I was looking for.

And thank you Clyde for posting those wonderful tips! I work in related media, but the finer details of basic photography (let alone digital photography) has had me mystified! I'll be using your tips for sure.

Thanks again!

[mgk65]

Clyde:

Thank you very much!

I have the digital secrets book, but have not had the time.... plus, it is difficult to read it in the bathroom.

mgk

[gregr]

>Do you use a tripod?
not for fish pics, but i do for about 95% of all my other photography (people pics are the other 5% +/-)
>Do you use a special lens (i.e. macro) when taking your pictures?
i have a set of close-up filters but i don't use them much. i am hoping to rig some sort of off-shoe flash bracket- when i do i will try more really close close-ups because with the flash in the hot shoe the light won't reach that close.
>Do you use a flash.
for fish- pretty much always
>If you use a flash is it on camera or off.
see above. getting the flash off to the side will help a lot i think.
>Do you add supplemental lighting?
just what's on the tank (55g with 150 watts actinic and 150 watts daylight).
>Do you edit your images in an image editing software before posting them?
i use photoshop- mostly resizing, sharpening and levels adjusting.
>Are you using auto focus or manual?
mostly autofocus.
>Are you using other special camera settings like manual exposure or manual aperture?
i like aperture priority.
>Do you use specific white balance settings?
i play around with this- always searching for the "truest" look. sometimes it's the daylight setting that works best.
>Do you have any suggestions for the best settings on the specific camera that you are using?
i use the Canon G2 and as i said i like aperture priority, and i usually have the flash compensation set to minus one stop (although that gets adjusted back and forth).
>Are you using special metering modes?
these new digital cameras have such accurate meters that that really isn't an issue- i use center weighted metering and when i'm using the flash it is almost always good. without the flash there tends to be more contrast because that extra added light evens things out- sometimes that's good sometimes not so good...
greg

[Doug]

Hi Greg,

Thanks for the great info.

I was thinking the same thing about the off camera flash. I am going to try it as soon as I figure out what parts I need for my camera.

That is a nice shot of your angel and tang. The funny part is that I have both of those same fish and I took a shot last week that was almost identical to yours. I even have mushrooms just like yours which were in the same picture that I took. I will have to find it and post it here.

Thanks again.

Doug

[dennisV]

Well I sometimes use a slave unit flash.
It's a secondary flash that has a white-light detector.
I put some cardboard in front of my camera with a hole cut into it for the lens. The flash on my camera hits the cardboard instead of the glass of my tank. The slave unit, being held above or beside the cardboard, detects the flash and then flashes at the same time, so the light hits the subject from this angle instead of straight next to the lens.
This is inexpensive and easy.

[Clyde]

theres another way, tape a small peice of developed film, its powerful enough to trigger a slave flash, but does not affect the picture, or stray light hitting the lense if it occurs.

I will be following up on this on how to build one for your nikon based cameras shortly - in about 30 min, it takes time to take picts, write up a summary and examples

[lbussy]

Great. Here 2 days and I went form reef envy to camera envy.

Thanks guys. :P

[Leslie]

Clyde,

OMG, where did you learn all that?

That info is amazing! I have had the 995 for months and gone from taking publishable pics to horrible pics. I have been so frustrated! I even tried to return the camera. I had a photographer who uses the camera, also the sales person at SAMY's, who sold me the camera, come over and give me a lesson. It didn't even come close to what you presented. I keep seahorses and as you probably know they don't move all that much or all that fast and I still have not been able to get anything but a very occasional shot.

I can't wait to try all your great suggestions.

Thanks so much for taking the time to share all that.

Gratefully,

Leslie

[Pinecone_Jeff]

Leslie,
I have a coolpix 990 and I also had trouble taking good closeup pics of my critters. But after Clyde's instructions and, ahem, reading the manual >sheepish grin< I've learned most of the ins and outs of my camera. Now, I really need to learn the nuts and bolts of basic photography before I can really exploit the power of my Nikon. And then I'm sure it'll take even more experience to get the kind of pictures I really want. Boy, this stuff is more involved than even my reef tank! Good luck with your new hobby!