nikon d5000 settings

[tmgrash]

What settings do you use on your nikon d5000 when shooting your reef?

[Misled]

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=333197

[qfrisco]

It's hard to give specific settings as a lot depends on the lens you are using, what you are shooting, and what kind of lights you have on your tank. For example, the ideal settings will be different if you were shooting fish versus corals versus FTSs. And the only way to know what the best settings are is to understand the basics of exposure. How experienced are you with photography?

In general, you need a fairly fast shutter speed if taking pictures of fish, especially ones that dart around frequently. The fast shutter speed helps freeze the motion of the fish so you can avoid bluring. When taking pictures of corals, you can usually get away with a slower shutter speed.

For me, I use the following general settings:

ISO 800 (as bright as we think our tank lights are, they still aren't that bright as far as the camera is concerned.)
Tank pics: Shutter speed of at least 1/80 with a matching aperture in order to get a slightly underexposed picture. The lighter parts of your tank (sand, tips of acros, etc) will washout, and underexposing helps prevent that.
Fish pics: Shutter speed of at least 1/125 or 1/160 to freeze motion, with a matching aperture.
Coral pics: You can usually get away with a slow shutter speed of 1/30 (as long as you turn your pumps off so polyps, etc. have minimal motion), with a matching aperture.

I say the above are general settings because a lot still depends on what kind of depth-of-field you're trying to get, but the above should be able to get you going with experimentation.

Also, I mention "matching aperture" above. I shoot in all manual so I set all settings myself. You can get away with using the camera's "Shutter Priority" mode ("S" on the mode dial), and the camera will automatically set the matching aperture for the shutter speed you select.

A couple other things unrelated to camera settings that's crucial to taking good tank pics:
- use a tripod
- and take pictures directly perpendicular to your tank's glass. Any kind of an angle into the glass will cause blur due to the light refraction through the glass.

Hope that's enough to get you going!

[tmgrash]

Thanks, I appreciate that and it does help get me going.

I am very new to photography and just learning how different settings effect the picture.