I would have rather been at the Prez meeting, after I heard the stuff they wanted to tell us with their chipper little smiles...  "troops will be back by Valentine's Day, ladies!!  Tee hee hee!!!"   Followed by, "Now don't you worry about those rocket attacks.  It's a big base."   I think she was high on life. 

Anyway, la laa laaa... life is good.  The tank is in one piece.  I have my health.  Valentine's day isn't all that far away, once you've done 115 days.  He was supposed to be back Christmas Eve.

Sooooooooooo.... camera gurus.... can I talk one or two of you into letting me know if you'd be willing to share your knowledge?  Corey??  Sean?  Dmanshep??

I have a polarized lens but rarely use it.  It does help on the "view from above" pics, but I don't think it's really needed for the through the glass pics, but maybe mine would be better if I did.

If your camera has an action setting, you should use it. That way, pulsing corals and swimming fish will be clear, not blurred.

It's always a trade off.  A faster shutter speed means a larger aperature which means an even shallower depth of field.  I would suggest using the slowest shutter speed that will stop any blurred movement.

The awesome thing about digital cameras is that you can take as many pictures as you like and it doesn't cost you anything to throw out the bad ones .

Here are some obvious tips.

Don't use flash

Set your camera to Macro Mode.  Read in your owners manual how close you can focus in macro mode (my olympus is 8" at wide angle and like 16" at telephoto).  Don't even try to get any closer to the object then that.

Find the white balance setting on your camera.  Take one shot of the same thing using all white balance settings (i.e. sunny, cloudy, inside, ect...).  Look at these pictures on your computer.  Pick the setting that you like best and use it exclusively.

Take the pictures at the highest resolution your camera will support.  You can always resize later and the higher resolution comes in handy if you need to crop the photo.

Hold very steady or use a tripod.

I always use auto focus, but if you're having trouble getting things in focus try your manual focus.

That's it. Oh, and remember that the depth of field (what will be in focus) is very narrow in macro mode so stuff in the foreground and background will be fuzzy.

I think that idea is awesome.  Jake and I discussed the photography meeting but didn't think a formal presentation is what people needed.  A seminar with "Bring Your Own Camera" at a house would be a much better way to go.

For citation reasons I'm trying to limit myself now to just using photos from Corey and Shane.  I'd get them to lead the seminar if it were me.

Adam