pic review & question?

[nm reef]

I use a Canon S45 to take pics of my aquariums and sometimes find it difficult to produce shots that capture what my eye sees. Does that make sense? I know ryebread once was the resident photo guru here but I wonder if any of ya'all can comment on ways to improve the pic quality of my efforts. I'll post a couple of shots I just took and resized to fit size restrictions here...I have 4x6 sized copies saved on my hard drive. I shot the pics using settings to allow for fast moving opjects(trying to get pics of the fish) macro mode was on/no flash/tripod/manual focus...all I've done to them is crop to either potriat or landscape 4x6 size then resize to under 500x500 pixels for postimg here...what ya'all think...how can I improve the pic quality....where the heck is ryebread when ya really could use his experience....:thinking:

 

[nm reef]

Here is another example of my results...I forgot to mention above that my camera is about 2 feet away from the display when these pics were taken...if that helps any.

 

[nm reef]

The photos seldom show true coloration and I have a difficult time compensating for the brightness from the sand and lighting. Manual control of the lighting/contrast/depth....it just doesn't seem the pics are near as vivid and "true" as others I see. I'm just looking for better results than the examples I posted.:thinking:

 

[nm reef]

Thanks for the comments ... thats the kind of stuff I'm looking for. I think this weekend I'll set the tripod and take several pics of the same reef location using different settings and see what works best. My pics normally turn out decent...I just want to clean them up some. I do use a fairly decent editing software and can adjust some...like the changes you made...I'm just trying to learn how to manually adjust the camera for better origionals.