I posted more pics of my African Cichlids today you can view them at: http://www.sandmountain.com/Page.cfm?InfoID=1168

Here is a teaser...


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Joe Hackman
Check out my Cichlids http://www.sandmountain.com/Page.cfm?InfoID=1168

Wow. nice teaser. How do you do it? how do you take nice pics like that?

I have a SONY (MVC-CD1000) digital camera, I take pictures at a 1024x768 or 1600x1200 resolution and I have tried with and without the flash and varied the flash strength, I find low intensity to be best. I manually focus to a certain "depth" then I snap away. I'll filter through 10 pics to get 1 really good one, but I am improving gradually. I then use photoshop to crop the part of the image I want out and when I upload them to my web server it automatically optimizes them so they aren't excessively large. Many of the originals are close to or over a meg!

I originally purchased this camera for my work, I document projects and things with it, it is fun [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

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Joe Hackman
Check out my Cichlids http://www.sandmountain.com/Page.cfm?InfoID=1168

Nice job on the photography! Nice to have the digital where you know you're not wasting film isn't it? Good job, Joe. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

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-Jim
Moderator - African Cichlids — SA Cichlids
See our cats at: Mostly Maine Coons
Fish stuff coming soon...

Thanks Jim. Yea, this sucker holds about 150 images on a $3 CDR, not bad.



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Joe Hackman
Check out my Cichlids http://www.sandmountain.com/Page.cfm?InfoID=1168

Nice pics J I got to get me one of those digitals like now!!

$3? Oh yeah. Sony. They must use some special CD-R. Still, $3 for 150 shots is a steal! Is that a write once deal?

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-Jim
Moderator - African Cichlids — SA Cichlids
See our cats at: Mostly Maine Coons
Fish stuff coming soon...

Yeah, write once. It is a little slower when you pull the trigger than my FD-91 was but the increased capacity and resolution is well worth it.

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Joe Hackman
Check out my Cichlids http://www.sandmountain.com/Page.cfm?InfoID=1168

Great shot though...That shot looks pro. I'm very impressed, and I have been an amateur photographer for many years, so I know that a shot is 99% photographer and 1% camera, [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img] and I mean that sincerely.

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-Jim
Moderator - African Cichlids — SA Cichlids
See our cats at: Mostly Maine Coons
Fish stuff coming soon...

Yikes! Let's just call it luck! My approach is what you call the shotgun method, success by quantity. I figure if I take enough pictures I will end up with a useable one ;-)

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Joe Hackman
Check out my Cichlids http://www.sandmountain.com/Page.cfm?InfoID=1168

How do you think the pros do it? I shot with a couple of guys several times that shot CART racing cars. One of the guys and I created this website and Peter Burke is still there at: http://www.speedcenter.com Man that was a fun time....The other guy, Mike Levitt, shot for On Track magazine and a few others...Anyway,

My point is that these guys would shoot many hundreds of photos over a race weekend. Probably 500-800 photos for three days. Out of that, if they got 30 great shots, they were happy. The magazine guy would get 2-6 published out of the entire weekend, if he was lucky.

And that's how I shoot a subject, unless I'm in snapshot mode...I'll take many photos and hope for one good one.

You got that one with this shot. That's what it's all about. Kinda off subject a bit, but let's tip the scales back on.

The point is for people not to get discouraged because they can't get that shot you did. And to understand that is can take many shots, over a length of time, to get that one, awesome shot. Especially of fish in an aquarium. That is not an easy shot to get right.

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-Jim
Moderator - African Cichlids — SA Cichlids
See our cats at: Mostly Maine Coons
Fish stuff coming soon...