Indoor / Low light issues with fast moving fish!

nixgeek

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Hi All,

I know this topic has been covered before, but I'm still not sure why I can't get enough light into my camera, and I'd really appreciate any advice you may have.

I have a secondhand Nikon D5100 which came bundled with a Tamron 18-270mm F3.5 lens.

Today I was trying to take pictures in an aquarium, which was relatively dark, but whenever I'm indoors I end up having to crank everything up to get a decent exposure.

At the aviation museum, this wasn't a problem, as stationary aircraft don't mind hanging around for a 1-second shutter speed, but fish don't have the same patience :)

So, I'm wondering if a different (lower mm / f-stop) lens would help me get more light in, and allow me to increase my shutter speed. Something like the Nikkor AF-S DX 35mm or 50mm F1.8G lens.

I was zooming in on a particular fish, so I was pushing it.

The picture had the following settings, and I was lucky he decided to stay still-ish, but he was still a bit blurry.

Any advice would be very welcome

Thanks

Matt

_DSC0266 by my0373, on Flickr
 
Last edited:
I'm wondering if a different (lower mm / f-stop) lens would help me get more light in, and allow me to increase my shutter speed.

Yes as would an increase in ISO.
 
Thanks, the camera can go to ISO 6000, but I had started to notice the noise above 4000.

I tend to set the ISO and the F-Stop for the environment in advance, and just adjust shutter speed on the wheel to make sure I keep the light meter happy.

Thanks for the replies, I'll try a wider lens with a lower F-stop as it's relatively cheap, and it'll be useful to have anyway.

Thanks

Matt
 
but I had started to notice the noise above 4000.

Shot this past week at an aquarium, ISO at 12800. Noise isn't a problem to adjust out in LR. Pushed this one in post to bring it out.
2017-08-19_08-31-25.jpg
 
Awesome, I think the camera tops out at ISO6400, although there are "hi" modes. Apparently, Hi 2 is the equivalent of ISO 25600, but I've not tried it yet.

Entering negotiations with the wife on a Nikon 50 mm F1.4G AF-S Nikkor Lens to hopefully future proof me (just in case I ever win the lotto and buy an FX body) :)

Thanks again, was really useful to have someone else trying to take pics in an aquarium.
 
Hi and welcome to the forum. The 50mm 1.4 would give you a shutter speed of 1/4000sec compared to the 1/80sec of your clownfish image. But that comes at the cost of a MUCH smaller depth of focus. You will get a blurred background which can look nice if desired, but also only a very small part of the fish will be in focus.
Also: in this example 50mm wouldn't have worked well considering you used 270mm for the shot.
Anyway: I love the look of 50mm lens images when shot wide open, so if you can convince your wife, go for it ;)
 
I hadn't given it much thought about the depth of field. Hmmm. I was reading about the different lenses and this one seemed to keep popping up as a decent friends + family pictures lens.

I could have gotten closer to the tank, I was just being lazy. It was a public aquarium so didn't push the kids out of the way this time... :)

So much to learn, I think I'll just have to get the lens and play with it.

Thanks so much to everyone that has replied. I've learned more in 24 hours than the last 6 months!
 
One last thing I noticed is, that despite the constant housekeeping by aquarium employees, when you have a gazillion little hands and noses pressing on glass it's hard to keep it clean. Plus even though the room is normally dimly lit there are still reflections to deal with. I was using the same techniques I use when shooting through a fence at the zoo.
  1. I was zoomed to 200 mm most of the time at 5.6..
  2. Camera was always on manual focus, to prevent any attempt to focus on the glass.
  3. The minimum focus distance on this lens is roughly 3.7 feet so I generally shot a foot or two from the glass which also helped keep anything from the glass from being in focus.
  4. I generally waited until the subject was further from the glass, again to keep any part of the glass from being in focus.
  5. Pay attention, to reflections and move around if need be to minimize those. When moving to a new location I would intentionally try to focus on the glass before attempting any shots to see what might be in the way.
  6. I leave my camera on auto WB, and routinely shoot my WB target before each series of shots, so I can adjust the WB post. Most aquariums I've been in are a sea of mixed light with a side order of black lights.
 
One last thing I noticed is, that despite the constant housekeeping by aquarium employees, when you have a gazillion little hands and noses pressing on glass it's hard to keep it clean. Plus even though the room is normally dimly lit there are still reflections to deal with. I was using the same techniques I use when shooting through a fence at the zoo.
  1. I was zoomed to 200 mm most of the time at 5.6..
  2. Camera was always on manual focus, to prevent any attempt to focus on the glass.
  3. The minimum focus distance on this lens is roughly 3.7 feet so I generally shot a foot or two from the glass which also helped keep anything from the glass from being in focus.
  4. I generally waited until the subject was further from the glass, again to keep any part of the glass from being in focus.
  5. Pay attention, to reflections and move around if need be to minimize those. When moving to a new location I would intentionally try to focus on the glass before attempting any shots to see what might be in the way.
  6. I leave my camera on auto WB, and routinely shoot my WB target before each series of shots, so I can adjust the WB post. Most aquariums I've been in are a sea of mixed light with a side order of black lights.

I think I had the same issues/thoughts you describe.

Camera was always on manual focus, to prevent any attempt to focus on the glass.
For the first time ever, I had to switch auto-focus off. I did find it hard to be sure I had the target in pin sharp focus, and for a large number of the pictures I got it wrong. I compensated by taking more pictures than I needed to be safe. Any tips around this would be much appreciated. I'll be doing some reading up on the subject anyway.

I leave my camera on auto WB, and routinely shoot my WB target before each series of shots, so I can adjust the WB post. Most aquariums I've been in are a sea of mixed light with a side order of black lights.

I've not met WB yet. I know you can take a picture of a blank piece of paper to try and ensure white is white. Up until this point, I've just trusted my cameras auto WB and balanced the picture afterwards if it looked really bad.

Your comment on lights rings true. So the jellyfish, although moving at a nice slow pace for my slow shutter speed had a colour light rotation, which played havoc with the amount of light required.

Here are a couple of pics that demonstrate the issue.

_DSC0370 (1) by my0373, on Flickr
_DSC0384 by my0373, on Flickr
_DSC0385 by my0373, on Flickr

I ended up just adjusting the shutter speed so the light meter was kept happy, although i'm not very happy with the result as the pictures just aren't sharp enough.
 
In regard to shooting through aquarium glass: you face the problem of so-called diffraction. That will make any image less sharp than it would be without shooting through the glass. It gets worse when shooting through the glass at an angle - so 90° is your best bet. That could be one reason why you feel your pictures aren´t sharp enough.
Regarding white balance: that depends a lot on the lights used in the tank. New LED lights are much more difficult to balance, and in the jellyfish tank, I guess it was blue on purpose, so you could just leave that blue as an artistic approach ;).
In regard to focus: it is really difficult to focus manually with moving subjects. A tripod and live view would probably give you the best results. There are different focussing screens available for some cameras, but if you don´t do it on a regular basis, it is not worth the hassle.
 
In regard to shooting through aquarium glass: you face the problem of so-called diffraction. That will make any image less sharp than it would be without shooting through the glass. It gets worse when shooting through the glass at an angle - so 90° is your best bet. That could be one reason why you feel your pictures aren´t sharp enough.

That makes sense, thank you. Some of the curved tanks were almost impossible to get a clean picture.

Regarding white balance: that depends a lot on the lights used in the tank. New LED lights are much more difficult to balance, and in the jellyfish tank, I guess it was blue on purpose, so you could just leave that blue as an artistic approach ;).

I wasn't aware of the LED light issue, however, given there was a palette rotation thing happening with the lights, they could well have been LED. The light meter was up and down like a yo-yo.
In regard to focus: it is really difficult to focus manually with moving subjects. A tripod and live view would probably give you the best results. There are different focussing screens available for some cameras, but if you don´t do it on a regular basis, it is not worth the hassle.

A tripod is a next item on my list when I get home. I hadn't realised I would need a tripod when I started (I'm just a happy snapper tbh), but I can see with slower shutter speeds and the amount of coffee I drink (the shakes are always nearby), it's an essential bit of kit.

Thanks!

Matt
 
A tripod is a next item on my list when I get home. I hadn't realised I would need a tripod when I started (I'm just a happy snapper tbh), but I can see with slower shutter speeds and the amount of coffee I drink (the shakes are always nearby), it's an essential bit of kit.

Maybe, but here's the thing, you have constantly moving subjects, and you have constantly moving visitors, in a dark environment. When I have $$$$ of equipment, I like to have a firm grasp on it in these situations. Shooting at 1/80 is about the limit of my ability to hold a 200 mm steady, but I've learned that breathing control, and bracing techniques make it possible. When I realized that I only had to hold steady for 1/80 of a second it became easier. LOL

Granted there was some diffraction on the "goldfish bowl" displays but by and large I found the water and the sediment floating in the water more of an issue.

The biggest problem I see is as I said earlier, the WB. There is such a mixture of light sources, that unless I shoot a target and adjust later, I never seem to get it right. Because of the light mix an 18% gray card is ideal for color but even a white target will get you close. Also, remember that contrast will give the illusion of sharpness. If you have LR or PS and you shoot in Raw, you make the adjustments posts. I took the liberty of adjusting it to show you an example. I was able to bring some of the detail out of the shadows, but the highlights on the right edge were blown, which brings up another thing to consider in shooting in an aquarium - it's better to underexpose slightly and recover post, then to blow it out and have nothing to work with later.

edit-1-2.jpg
 
I'll be honest here, I know little to nothing about wb. I've heard it talked about, and I know it's important, I've just fallen back on the camera to take care of it. That doesn't mean I should, or want to rely on it. If it's important for exposure then I need to understand it.

I've done some work with ps years ago, lr is very new and I've not considered myself at that level yet. There is something about post processing that just doesn't sit quite right with me yet. I feel like I should get to a level where I'm taking good pictures first, before I start postprocessing. If that makes sense?

However, I really appreciate what you've done with the pic. I hadn't considered the value of underexposing the image and bringing the detail out later. I'd just looked at it on a screen and said "too dark" and compensated by slightly overexposing the image.

You mention RAW format. So I've been storing images as jpg, and editing with Gimp (I was just dabbling, and I know Gimp really well). Should I be considering RAW if postprocessing?

Do you use an external light meter to determine the light breakdown? How important is it to understand the composition of the light?

I guess this is the point where I need to go read some theory on wb before I can have a proper conversation about it.

Thanks again for your help!
 
Awesome, I think the camera tops out at ISO6400, although there are "hi" modes. Apparently, Hi 2 is the equivalent of ISO 25600, but I've not tried it yet.

Entering negotiations with the wife on a Nikon 50 mm F1.4G AF-S Nikkor Lens to hopefully future proof me (just in case I ever win the lotto and buy an FX body) :)

Thanks again, was really useful to have someone else trying to take pics in an aquarium.
The d5100 image looks good up to ISO 1600. past that you start gaining a lot of noise.

A tripod is handy as it steadies the Camera itself. But of course at low shutter speeds it does nothing to stop the motion of the subject. And of course you then have the problem of panning or moving, raising/lowering etc the tripod all the time to a good position with a fish that isn't stopping.

I think in this situation working on one's hand holding technique is going to help a lot more than a tripod.==> Stability - making yourself a tripod versus using one
 

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