Gah Darn Cherries refusing to be photographed....

[Terran]

Every once in a while when Im wheeling away from my computer and I slide past my 29 gallon shrimp tank... I see one of the larger shrimp in a primo spot for a picture....

I hurry to get my digital camera....

I snap picture after picture....Usually the flash ruins the picture.....

Then I turn the flash off....but then the exposure time increases and its blurry....(cant seem to find my tripod...)

Then maybe after 40 pictures I get a semi decent one....but instead the autofocus has focused more on a snail on the glass in the foreground than the shrimp....(In anger I grabbed that snail and put it in my mothers cichlid tank)

Ive read some hints and tips from other sites on taking pictures of water tanked animals....a lot of these websites suggest taking pictures at night and only using the tank light and no flash....(so a pitch black room cept the tank)...but my camera doesnt have an extension cord thingy to snap pictures without jostling the camera so even if I found my tripod there would be some blur action.....Only other option seems to be to use the timer on the camera...but then I run the risk of the shrimp not being in frame once the timer runs out...

The best focused picture I took the shrimp zoomed out of frame before the picture was taken...



This was the picture that I took right before it moved behind the rock....(it was fustrating because once he moved the picture was in perfect focus)....
So so far thats the best picture Ive gotten of the shrimp in their tank...



I thought about maybe ripping pictures from taking video with my digital video camera.....but my digital video camera is like 10% broken...(sometimes it captures like seperated 2''bars of video(2'' on a 32'' screen...so 2'' captured video bar horizontally across the screen...and then a 2''width bar thats blank, then a captured video bar ect...ect)...I blame taking the video camera to Duck Beach in North Carolina(either heat or combination with salty air)...


So part of this post is just venting fustration ...because I really want to share with others how awsome having little freshwater shrimp is...

And the other part of this post is a question....Some others on this site seem to have been much more successful in snapping photos of these dwarf shrimp...do any of you have any advice or methods that have worked for you in the past?....

[Ecir]

Lol, this may not work for everyone... But I let someone else take my photos!

[badflash]

Get a tripod and eave the camera set up. Keep the flash turned off and have all the settings close so all you have to do is focus and shoot.

[fishgeek]

if you have autofocus problems
hold the button down, let it decide where it wants to focus the move in or out to where you think it should focus


use macro and shot with the camera against the front glass, i think you defintely need a macro mode to get any decent images

have light as high as you can, get a desk lamp and put it shining into the tank from the side or above so that not bouncing light of front glass

clean the glass

change the iso speed up so that the shutter is open for shorter , might be slightly less quality though will help with movement blur

clean the glass again

rest the camera against something when you shoot

these are somethings to try
and most of all takes lots of photos on different settings if you can manually change things , and see what works best
at the worst you will have to delete them

andrew