Canon G10

[Canadian]

Anyone have recommendations for settings (manual or otherwise) for getting the best out of this camera when taking full tank shots? I can do a little post-processing in Aperture to try to get things back to reality but I'd really appreciate any insight with respect to taking nice pics with this particular camera.

[andestang]

I also have a G10, great little camera so far. Still playing around with the settings to find the best for aquarium shots. I like using the RAW settings, seem to get better results.Some day I hope I can get nice pics out of it. Have you considered any lens ?

[Murminator]

What I did is used a tripod and set it on 1 spot and took about a 100 pics of the same thing each with a different setting but make sure you write down what you did each time then download the pics and it makes it easier for what everything does. The you can start doing combinations to get the best results .....but always write them down cause you will never remember and what looks good on the little screen never looks the same on the computer screen

Just make very sure you do not overexpose the highlights as you do not have a lot of headroom with the G10 even in RAW.

[Canadian]

Originally Posted by Mr31415

Just make very sure you do not overexpose the highlights as you do not have a lot of headroom with the G10 even in RAW.

Can you expand on this a bit please?

Sure. The G10 is like most small sensor cameras - it does not have a large dynamic range. Dynamic range (for in case you did not know this) is the largest difference in dark and light areas that can be captured on the sensor. If it is limited like in this camera, it means if you do not underexpose the shadows the highlights will most probably clip (blow out - i.e. loss of detail in the highlights) in a typically lit tank.

This is from practical experience trying to photograph my tanks using a variety of cameras. My Canon 1Ds Mark III has a very large dynamic range, meaning I can take a photo of the tank and adjust it in Lightroom afterwards and pull back the blown highlights and boost the shadows to get a more pleasing photo. With the G10 I could not do that - if I take a photo of the tank the tops of the live rock is always blown out beyond recovery. So what I used to do is to expose for the highlights (i.e. make sure the histogram moves to the left and is not bunched up on the right hand side). This way I do not blow the highlights and I get a more pleasing photo.

[Canadian]

Excellent! That's exactly the kind of feedback I was looking for and it confirms my experience with the camera - washing out of highlights and being unable to recover them. I'll start trying to shoot for maintaining detail in the most brightly lit areas and then try to recover some light in the shaded areas as you suggested.

There will be more noise in the shadows if you push them, but for me I personally prefer that to blown highlights.