Many aquarists at some point will invest in photographic equipment to take pictures of their tanks and its inhabitants. Some of the equipment setups can be pretty costly, what with specialized flash units, macro lenses and such.
The setup I’m using to take all of the pictures you see on this site and also our main album is a pretty simple one: it’s a digital SLR, the Konica-Minolta Maxxum 5D. The camera isn’t the most advanced digital SLR around – not by a long shot; but it suits my needs just fine. The features in it are pretty common for cameras in its class – except this: it has built-in image stabilization, a feature whose implementation can be pretty costly in other cameras. Surprisingly, despite its inclusion, this remains one of the most affordable digital SLRs around, and is perfect for persons who’d like to take great pictures but don’t want to spend a royal bomb on the camera. This one cost us about $1150 when we bought it in March 2006. A full review of the camera is right here.
That aside; I tend to avoid the use of flash when taking pictures of our aquarium. Apart from that the intense flash outputs can create stress for the critters, it’s tricky to position the flash unit in such a way that there’s minimal reflection but yet even casting of light on the picture’s subject(s) itself.
Nearly all of the pictures taken use natural or aquarium lighting, but this comes at the cost of image noise: three quarters of the images here were shot on ISO3200. However, they were all cleaned up considerably using Noise Ninja, a wonderfully nifty software solution and a necessity for folks who shoot in low-light conditions.
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