Taking wide angle photos. Any Tips?

[RentAscout]

Okay, I have been playing around with wide angle shots (60D W/ Sigma 8-16mm) and never had any luck. They look like crap frankly. I can get great close-ups but scene shots have been difficult balancing f and shutter on manual ISO. This is what I get... Any tips?

[Lalani]

Looks like a good shot to me. What exactly aren't you happy about?

[Scorched]

The one time I borrowed a 10-22mm lens I had pretty good success with it. The first thing I did was manually white balance the camera using my standard 50mm since it was easier.

 

You may be using auto or even manual but your image looks very purple. Manually white balance to a piece of white plastic inside the water (a water container cap works well) otherwise a piece of paper held close to the glass or above the water to capture the brightness and color temperature of your lights. LEDs almost always will require you to manually balance as the blue intensity really screws with sensor.

 

After that I used a tripod for the wide angle because the f stop minimum is probably fairly high around 4 or 5. So if you have to have your f stop that high you need a slower shutter speed and higher ISO. Find the best balance so that your fish aren't a blurry streak but your ISO isnt so high that the image isn't just a grainy mess. A tripod is definitely a plus as it will let you use those slower shutter speeds to get rid of the handheld camera shakiness. Another thing that can help is to shut all filters, powerheads, and pumps off to let your corals completely stop moving. This can let you use a higher shutter speed for your fish knowing that your corals and water are going to be stationary. Other than that just take lots of photos. You can have 100 bad ones and 1 good one. The good one is all that matters.

[RentAscout]

I never thought of the white balance as the issue. I will give that a try.

[Bishop]

While I can agree that the White balance looks off, that is nothing more than preference the same as the color temp of the lights over your tank. This can easily be changed in your post processing software. No Idea what issues you have with that shot but it certainly has nothing to do with the lens.

 

This is obviously not a fast lens at f/4.5 and it's my guess that you don't have much light over the tank considering the size and the types of coral. Also looks like it is an All-in-one tank. My suggestion, if you want a good photo, is to turn off all water flow in the tank and get more light into it. This will let you increase your shutter speed to prevent motion blur from moving fish and xenia as well as cut the ISO back down. The goal should be to shoot at an aperture of around f8. Wide open will certainly loose sharpness on this lens.

 

One thing I did notice in the posted pic is that there is image degradation. Not sure if that is from being uploaded to the web or from some serious post processing work? Is this the image from the camera or close to it? If not, then the original image would show more of what is wrong when looking for advise.

[ldballoon4]

Use a tripod and open the shutter longer. Set up your white balance too.