Aquarium shooters

bribrius · Feb 22, 2014

those on here I've seen shooting pictures of aquarium fish. This question is for you probably. im going with the family to the aquarium. And I thought id bring my camera and take some fish pictures. But from my experience with shooting through windows, there seems to be some reflection. is there anything I should be aware of or watch out for, helpful tips that might make it easier?
It is a public aquarium so naturally im not planning on using any flash as I don't want to scare the fish or be kicked out.

dxqcanada · Feb 22, 2014

Don't worry about the flash ... everybody around you will be popping them off.
Get lens flat up to the glass.
Make sure you walk around the tank/glass and find the place with the least background reflection first.

bribrius · Feb 22, 2014

dxqcanada said:
Don't worry about the flash ... everybody around you will be popping them off.
Get lens flat up to the glass.
Make sure you walk around the tank/glass and find the place with the least background reflection first.

Thanks. Am I going to be treating this like a lowlight situation? shooting through water? what about noise reduction, dlighting, those settings ? Never even tried shooting through a fishtank.

dxqcanada · Feb 22, 2014

Yup, low light.
You might want to try custom white balance.

bribrius · Feb 23, 2014

didn't work to well. Managed to keep a quite a few but not many from tank shooting. The lighting seemed either too dark or too uneven and bright in other places, I kept exceeding the camera DR. And with the fish moving I couldn't very well go for a long shutter either concentrating on the darker areas just came out with blur and noise. Thanks for the advice though. I do have some fish tank pics if you would like me to post but they aren't very good (too put it mildly).

kathyt · Feb 23, 2014

Yeah, most aquariums won't allow flash. So high ISO is going to be your friend. Look at my Flickr page to see what I get at aquariums. I use a macro lens. Canon 100mm. Have patience and look where the main light source is coming from.

bribrius · Feb 23, 2014

kathyt said:
Yeah, most aquariums won't allow flash. So high ISO is going to be your friend. Look at my Flickr page to see what I get at aquariums. I use a macro lens. Canon 100mm. Have patience and look where the main light source is coming from.

Thanks
This is one of the better ones sadly. Unprocessed. Camera was hating the light changes.

View attachment 67423

bribrius · Feb 23, 2014

View attachment 67424 View attachment 67425 View attachment 67426

and the focus... wouldn't quite lock on looking through the water. Don't really know why.. could see the little boxes red and searching. Then it would pick up something to lock and it would be a shadow or something else not even a fish. I had it set on target finding.
View attachment 67427

kathyt · Feb 24, 2014

bribrius said:
View attachment 67424 View attachment 67425 View attachment 67426

and the focus... wouldn't quite lock on looking through the water. Don't really know why.. could see the little boxes red and searching. Then it would pick up something to lock and it would be a shadow or something else not even a fish. I had it set on target finding.
View attachment 67427

I had to manual focus a lot of the time.

Civchic · Feb 24, 2014

I had SOME success shooting at the Aquarium a couple of weeks ago.

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I used my 50mm f/1.8 lens on my T3, not exactly high tech equipment. I tried to get either flat to the glass, or angled very steeply right near the glass. Focus tight and wait, wait, wait for the fish to be going slowly in the perfect frame. High ISO (1600) even with the aperture wide open. No flash. And take lots of shots. I kept about 20 of 175 shots because of blurry, but I was pretty proud of what I did get. There are a few more in my flickr, back on Feb 8.

bribrius · Feb 24, 2014

im using a point and shoot. 400 iso 1/20 f3 but I tried a few combinations...

grafxman · Feb 24, 2014

I've shot quite a few aquariums. I have the photos and videos posted on my flickr pages. Many times it is extremely difficult to get decent images. Ideally the subject will be some distance from the Plexiglas so you can place the lens against the glass or very close to it to eliminate reflections. The worst situation is when the subject is close to the Plexiglas. There are some other things to try. Stand off at an angle. Position yourself such that a reflection doesn't show up from either the flash or the lights. Unfortunately that is often impossible. I sometimes hold the camera high over my head so I'm shooting downward and sometimes I will hold the camera below my waist or squat down and shoot upwards to minimize reflections.

A superzoom lens is often your best friend in these situations and here's why. The easiest way I've discovered to eliminate reflections is to stand far away and then zoom in on the display. That's only possible if there isn't a lot of people walking around and if you have a powerful zoom lens. My favorite lens for my Canon 7D is the Sigma 18-250 macro. I can get the display in focus and, with an open aperture, most reflections will be out of focus. An even worse problem is that many aquariums use extremely thick Plexiglas. Worse still is that it's often covered with algae and scum on the inside. Sometimes the water is a little bit dirty. Often the tank will be poorly lit so you have to use a high ISO and a slow shutter speed with a wide open lens.

Sometimes though conditions are excellent:

IMG_2518 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Other times things are dark so a high ISO is required which then gives a noisy photo:

IMG_2574 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Sometimes you have to shoot through thick Plexiglas and several feet of water. You know the photo won't be very good the subject is so compelling that you can't resist

IMG_2591 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!