Photography for the aquarist

Aquarium Photography 101

In getting ready to get the Photo of the month contest going again and give people somewhere to start I've written an article that should help.

Visit any aquarium website or forum and you'll likely see amazing pictures of coral, fish, and aquarium in general. If you want to know how people get those amazing shots well just keep reading.  We'll go through the basics of photography and then some tips that will help you take better shots of your aquarium.  For the tips that I've put together, just click 'Read more'

First thing to realize is that it doesn't require thousands of dollars worth of camera equipment to take quality photos. Before I bought my first dSLR I was shooting great photos with a 5 yr old sony cybershot and it took great photos.  The trick is to follow some basic guidelines.  I'm not going to go into very much detail for definitions regarding camera functions (ie f-stop, iso, speed) as there are plenty of websites that go into great detail about what those are.  I'll just touch quickly on what they mean for aquarium photography.  The following guidelines can be found just about anywhere, but I'm pulling together what I think are some of the better ones and some I've used in my own photography.

Don't shoot while holding the camera

When you're shooting your aquarium you should always try to avoid holding the camera while shooting. Shooting in low light conditions, like aquariums, any extra shake can turn that perfect shot to just an entire frame of distortion.  A tripod is a must have.  It will greatly reduce any vibrations and blurriness from your shots. You can also look around for something else you can rest the camera on or brace yourself with like a table.

Keep shooting

If you're camera has the ability to shoot in continuous mode, this can really improve your odds of getting a sharply focussed picture and getting as many pictures on the card as possible. You may throw away a lot more of your photographs, but hopefully have more great ones to choose from.This will also give you the chance of shooting something unexpected, getting that perfect angle on your prized fish.

Tank lighting only

Turn off your flash before shooting any photos of your tank. This is good for two things. First, we're shooting through glass and any light from outside the tank is going to be reflected off that glass and you're going to get nasty glare or get unwanted objects (camera and/or you) in the frame. You shouldn't just turn off the flash but also any ambient light in the room, basically you want all your light coming from within the tank.  Now secondly, flash can stress out fish. Fish have no eyelids and can’t blink! Lots of sudden bright light can temporarily blind, scare and stress fish.

Dreaded algae on the glass

Give the tank sides a clean inside and out before you start – there’s nothing worse than seeing a big smeary fingerprint or a blob of algae AFTER you’ve got the otherwise perfect picture. However, don’t take your pictures straight after a water change as you’ll find the maintenance will have stirred up some less than attractive crud – give it a chance to settle first.

Shoot fast! Aperture/Speed Settings

While your camera is probably fairly good at guessing the optimal settings in most circumstances, it can’t really cope well with the low-light no-flash scenario in this case. Ideally, the shutter speed we need to capture fast moving fish is 1/250 or at a bare minimum 1/125. In low light, the camera will opt for a much longer shutter speed giving you that colourful blur you were hoping to avoid. To get a sharp photograph of fish at these speeds, you need to take the camera to aperture priority (shown as Av on most cameras) and use the widest aperture you can to let as much light into the sensor as possible. With more light going into the camera, the shutter can be open for a shorter amount of time and still expose the photograph correctly. Wide apertures are the lower f-numbers (for example, using my camera’s kit lens the lowest I can get is f3.5). Whereas narrow apertures have higher f-numbers (the maximum on the same lens is f22) which you want to avoid for this type of shot.

Take things into your own hands, manual focus

Unless you've got a very fancy lens that can focus extremely quick there's a good chance that by the time your camera's autofocus gets focus what you're wanting to shoot has moved and the camera will have to refocus. So take your camera's focus into your own hands and set it on manual. It may take some getting used to but if you can anticipate where the object, fish, is going to be and focus on that area before it gets there. Also a side-effect of using a wide aperture is that you can end up with a very narrow depth of field. In other words, the range of the photograph which is in focus is much smaller than normal.

Lastly, how about raising that ISO

The benefits of a high ISO is less motion blur (because that shutter isn’t open for so long – less chance of you accidentally shaking the camera at the same time) but a higher “grain” or “noise” to the picture. Low ISO numbers give you better picture quality but the shutter has to be open longer for the same amount of light.

Digital cameras automatically set the ISO for you to the best possible setting in most circumstances, however, sometimes they get it wrong. There is usually a way to manually override and set your own ISO (50, 100, 200, 400 sometimes higher…) – check the manual.

It takes a little experimentation to find which works best for fish pictures (usually a pay off in how much grain you’re prepared to put up with).

However, remember to set that ISO back to AUTO or 100 when you’re done. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve ruined because I’ve forgotten to set it back after I’ve finished!

These are just some very basic tips to get you started shooting pictures.  The best piece of advice I can give though is just shoot a lot of pictures...I mean a lot! I know sometimes when I'm shooting, I'll shoot a hundred photos and use maybe 10, but thats the great thing about digital, just go through and throw out the bad ones and you're left with the amazing photos.  The more you shoot, the more you'll figure out little things that make or break pictures and you'll begin to develop your own style.  So go out there and have fun shooting.