I have a half decent camera, fujifilm finepix s5600, but can never get good pics of my fish. With the flash on auto they come out too bright/white and you can't see the colours on the fish (overexposed?) and with it turned off the camera wont focus on anything moving and i just get rainbow blurs of light where the fish are. Can anyone suggest a better setting for the camera, or way of taking photos, or do i need a better camera?

Have the room dark, and the tank the only thing with the light on. It works much better with two flashes to get the lighting work out.

make sure "macro" mode is on, and if you like you can use the ISO mode.

you can always turn the flash intensity down if your camera has that setting too.

I use the macro setting, and it focus's lovely when the flash is on, just wish it would do the same with it off. If i have the room dark and tank lights on the flash still goes, and can't turn it down. What's the iso setting?

I find that if I press the lense up against the glass (Careful not to scratch the tank!) I can usually get some really good pics with Macro and Flash forced.

ok, i'll get some batteries :evil: and try out a few different ways

How about covering your flash with some tissue paper to reduce the strength of the flash?

You want the flash as strong as possible, as long as it's not visible reflecting off the glass. This is why you press the lense against the glass. Then manually set the shutter and aperature. Longer shutter lower aperature=darker, more streaks from movement but wider depth of focus.

i think the main problem was i was letting the camera move too much, tried sitting it on the front of the tank stand and suddenly it focus's quicker

Took a heap of photos of my daughters tank, since i can make the room dark easily, but it only has a tiny light at the moment, photos still heaps better though.

Here's mister killie, ignore the reflection of the camera lol

and some guppies

and all i could get of the snakeskin boy was a dissapearing tail,

so who can tell me how to teach him to sit still?

I'm very happy, the photos are far from perfect but 100 times better than what i was getting before, will keep practising.

is that one of the boys you got from me?

Awesome! To reduce the glare, angle the camera a little bit.

I'm building a thin, short tank so the fish can't swim anywhere to put them in to take photos of them. My dad's an avid photographer and has the patience to take good photos - me, not so much.

sure is oeminx, isn't he pretty

i think they've grown a couple of cm already

will be setting up a tank just for them in the next couple of weeks, have the boys and girls seperate for now.

lmsmith, i've got a couple of decent photos before using a glass, keeps them relativly still. Would be interested to see how your little photo tank turns out

The one time i put a killie in the glass to take a photo of him, he did nothing but try to jump out, i put him back into the tank very quickly lol.

Oh, and another good technique is having the flash Above water, and the focus just below the water. No horrible flash reflection on the back of the tank, or reflection of the camera in the glass.

sure is oeminx, isn't he pretty

He's looking good