# My African Cichlids



## Stoogie (Apr 9, 2011)

Here's a few pictures of my Africans with my new lens, the Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8. I'm completely in love with this lens, and have hardly taken it off my camera since I got it.

Here's a half decent one (finally) of my sub-sub dominant male Saulosi. The sub-dominant male has been making a go for king of the tank, and the current dominant male is giving him a run for his money, so this guy has been a bit less shy, since he's not getting picked on as much now. You can see a bit of yellow fringing around his fins, and a just a faint hint of black barring on his side.










Here's Sonic, my male Red Empress.










And, the obligatory 'showing off my new lens' shot (100% crop, it blows the kit lens out of the water)










This one was taken at 17mm. You can see the dominant male Saulosi on the far left, and the blue and black one top right is the sub-dominant male, the two yellow ones are female Saulosi. The brown fish in the front is a sub-dominant male rusty.










Thanks for looking!


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## Claudia (Apr 21, 2010)

Real nice shots


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## Pamela (Apr 21, 2010)

Beautiful photos!


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## 2wheelsx2 (Apr 21, 2010)

Which camera? Canon or Nikon? Just wondering which kit lens it came with. It would be nice if you tried the same shot with the kit lens so they can be compared directly.


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## Stoogie (Apr 9, 2011)

Thanks for looking and commenting everyone! My camera is a Pentax, actually. My model is the k-r, which is a great little camera. I've plugged the brand before, and quite shamelessly. You get a lot more bang for your buck, compared to similarly priced canon or Nikon products. The Pentax 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 is the kit lens that I was using before. I'll take some shots with it and post a few for comparison.


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## Krashy_Cichlids (Apr 22, 2010)

Are those some of the saulosi I sold you? Tank looks great.


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## rich16 (Mar 25, 2011)

Some great shots, and nice looking fish / tank. Love that close up of the Empress...


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## Blackbar (Apr 23, 2010)

Stunning shots. Very Nice!


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## Stoogie (Apr 9, 2011)

Thanks everyone! Yes Krashy, the lowermost female and male are from the ones I got from you. Very nice quality fish, by the way! Unfortunately, only one of them was female, so I had to rehome a few of the males, and I picked up another few females from another forum member, but they're a bit long in the tooth and not as nice quality.


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## Stoogie (Apr 9, 2011)

Here's another one of sonic, I've been experimenting with different light sources and angles, trying to find something that will show off the nice blues on his face.


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## Sidius (Mar 25, 2012)

Amazing photos.. I just picked up a Canon T3i over the Christmas holidays and I hope to be able to take these kind of shots eventually. What lens are you using aside from the kit lens? Mine came with a standard 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 but I'd like to get one better suited for aquarium photography. Do you use auto focus? What ISO, Aperture, Shutter speed, etc.?

Sorry for all the questions, just trying to learn lol


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## Stoogie (Apr 9, 2011)

Thanks Sidius,

The standard 18-55mm kit lens is actually pretty good for aquarium photography. I've since replaced mine with the Tamron 17-50 f/2.8, which has better image quality and is quite a bit faster, and has a constant aperture throughout the zoom range (which is nice, as it's a bit harder to blur backgrounds in an aquarium at f/5.6). Basically the only other lens that I've used (and gotten good results from) is a 50mm f/1.4 (great for taking pictures using only your aquarium lighting!).

If you don't yet have an external flash and off camera capability, that would probably be the purchase that will allow you to get the best results for aquarium photography. Using an overhead flash will make a big difference in the quality of shots you get, since it allows you to nicely illuminate the fish without any nasty reflections off the tank glass. Two flashes are even better than one, as they will allow you to show more depth in your pictures, and if you don't like the black background look you can aim one behind your fish to illuminate the tank behind him. They don't have to be those fancy, expensive flashes either. Many old flashes work well with modern DSLRs, and can be found for a reasonable price. Just make sure that their trigger voltage is low enough to use with your camera, as some of them have high enough voltages to fry it! You can pick up a cheap, wired off camera flash adapter from your local camera store (or from dealextreme/ebay/etc.) and you're off to the races!

I shoot mostly with manual focus, as my aquarium lighting is quite dim so it's difficult for the autofocus to lock on, and it gives better control over what you're focusing on. The settings I use depend mostly on what kind of shot I'm going for. Using a larger (lower number) aperture will give you a narrower depth of field (the area of the picture in focus), which can make for some nice portrait-style shots with a blurred background, and even allow you to have only certain parts of your fish in focus in order to call attention to certain features. Using a smaller aperture setting will increase the depth of field, allowing you to have the whole fish, backgrounds, etc. in focus. Generally I'll use as fast a shutter speed as I can to avoid motion blur, and use whatever ISO setting I need to take a proper exposure (I'd rather have a noisy picture than a blurry one). If I'm using a flash, I'll usually drop my ISO as low as it will go, push my shutter speed up as high as it will go, and set my aperture to achieve whatever depth of field effect I'm going for, and then either vary the power or distance of the flash, or put tissues in front of it, so that the image exposes properly.

Here's a shot of my Red Empress that I took using two flashes, one illuminating from above and one from the side of the tank. I used as large an aperture as I could get away with (and I cheated a bit by manually focusing slightly in front of the fish) in order to blur everything but his face.


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