My first SW 30 Gallon setup - 3 months in.

[Bifferwine]

When you say complete darkness do you mean your tank lights aren't even on? Or just any lights from the room are off?

[messiah023]

Biff, I mean complete darkness. All tank lights & all room lights (as much as possible) are off. If you "pre" spike your flash, right before you snap the picture, you will have a nice colorized finished pic. Make sure you don't aim your flash at a 90 degree, as 45 will be much better (or you will get a reflection from the glass). Try messing with the ISO settings & F stops, you will get different results.

The picture with the (2) clowns and the blenny on the polyps is taken with the digital rebel using F/4 & 1/30 second exposure at ISO-400 (this is a pretty standard / generic setting).

Also, using high quality lenses are helpful. Cheaper Chinese or import lenses will give you a strange haze or bend.

I know, total geek......sorry!
I had my first child with a point-and-shoot camera. Everytime she did something I wanted to capture, it took too long to snap the pic and I ended up with a junk photo.
When kid #2 was hatched, I decided I better upgrade to a nicer camera so I could get some good photos of him. It's amazing what a difference the camera & lens makes.

Good luck!