New kids in town

[Delphinus]

I have been trying to capture the lavender in a good photo. He has such exquisite features but so subtle so photos just don't capture them. Plus he's very very fast, for whatever reason, photos end up so dark for me, I have to have the aperture wide open which gets me a razor thin depth of field, so getting focus nailed in is a challenge.

Here are the keeper results of my last few attempts.













Thanks for looking. Also, any tips for photographing fish gleefully accepted.

[christyf5]

Tony! He's gorgeous!!! Wow, now I'm totally bummed I missed out on mine

On the flip side I ordered a female bellus today, don't know why the males arent' available though

Now I'm totally going to be on the hunt for a lavender tang. Wow!!

As for photog tips, have an itchy trigger finger for these guys, I think my average is about 1 in 50 or 1 in 75 of a decent tang photo

[Delphinus]

Thanks. Yeah, that's about the discard rate for me as well. Guess that's par for the course then .. I was just playing around with the camera settings and found that I was shooting in JPEG instead of raw, so I changed that and will see how things change from here on. The thing that annoys me is that I have the ISO equivalency set to 1600 which is enormous and explains the graininess but the shots are way too unusably dark if I don't have it that way. Maybe it's just a limitation of how much light the lens lets in???

[Delphinus]

I think the angels might be . er .. what's the word. Dichromatic? Dimorphic? Serial .. no .. um .. sexual sequential hermaphrodite (ok I looked that last one up on wiki). Eventually the female might turn into a male so you could always start there and see where it goes?

[Lance]

Tony, that Tang is a beauty! My Chocolate Mimic Tang is pretty but would be Miss-Runner-Up to your Lavender. How are the new kids doing? Is everybody playing nice?

[christyf5]

Thanks for the heads up Tony, just checking out a couple of threads on RC, looks like 2 females might be the way to go (dear god I just about typed 2 femails! I spend too much time on this board )

[Delphinus]

It was a rough go for the first 3 days but then it's settled down. The problem was with the potter's angel and the lavender. 4 weeks later and while they are not buddies per se they do swim together most of the time. There is the occasional bumping of elbows but it's 50/50 whom chases whom and no more real contact so I think it's OK now.

Originally Posted by Lance

Tony, that Tang is a beauty! My Chocolate Mimic Tang is pretty but would be Miss-Runner-Up to your Lavender. How are the new kids doing? Is everybody playing nice?

[fishoholic]

Cool pic.'s you're making me miss my old lavender. It's nice to hear people think it's pretty, I always thought mine was too but many people I know said she was the ugliest fish I owned

Mine died while I was Qting it for ich (my other tangs were picking on her so I was going to rehome her after the ich was gone) unfortunately she wasn't eating very well in the Qt tank and she died the day her Qt was over and she was about to go to her new home

[kien]

ooh, pretty! I didn't realize they had freckles. I like fish with freckles :-)

I noticed that you were shooting at 1/60s. Ya, for fast swimming fish you need to shoot a bit faster (shutter). This means a larger aperture or higher ISO (usually both!). If you are maxed out on all 3 settings then there isn't much you can do other than upgrading equipment (lens or body). For the faster fish I gave up on trying to chase them with the camera. Instead, plant yourself in one spot and wait for the fish to swim by. Often when you're chasing them you end up tilting the lens and shooting at an angle which will introduce distortion. A tripod isn't going to help with the fast swimming fish because you really need a fast shutter and at that high a shutter speed camera shake from your hands won't be registered.

My last suggestion is to ask a friend (perhaps one that works with you), to drop by with some expensive equipment and photograph your entire tank for you.

[lastlight]

Wow that last shot especially shows how beautiful the fish really is. Your videos didn't do the colors and details justice...wowzers =)