How to shoot Aquarium

snedelchev · Jul 23, 2008

I have beautiful 300 liters aquarium full with African Tropheus fish. This fish are extremely interesting. They behave like sea fish. I upload some photos of Tropheus Pemba and Ciprohromise. If anytime you try to shoot fish. O, God it's difficult. All the fish moving, the glass is like a bad lens and there are many small pieces in the water.
So when you shoot aqurium you need to make:
1. Clean all the glasses and wait pump to clean for 3-4 hours
2. Stop all the equipment - filter pump, heater... and removed from the aquarium
3. Put the flashes (I use my Canon 550II on my camera and Canon430EX) on the top glas of the aquarium
4. Is very useful to put black carpet, or some black paper up front aquarium. Then make in the middle whole, where your lens will be. In this way we eliminate all reflection of us and the light from the main flash.

5. Be patient. Put high speed, f14-22 and 200ISO. I use my Canon Macro 50/f2,5 lens. Make manual focus and wait fish to move through your focus zone. Shoot it!

icassell · Jul 23, 2008

Yeah, and a little luck helps too. This Moorish Idol was through the glass in Hawaii -- hand held -- no flash

How about posting some of your fish?

kenwood72 · Jul 23, 2008

through the glass at disneyworld on AUTO. THis is before I took a more "serious" approach and began to shun or LOOK DOWN on people who use the AUTO function....anyhow the lion fish is my FAVORITE fish to keep though I have not had a tank in a while. THe leafy sea dragons are also neat.

snedelchev · Jul 25, 2008

angelfish is beautiful, my next tang will be a marine. the photos looks with noise and a little out of focus. i think because of the glass

DragonMoon · Jul 28, 2008

I've been shooting my own personal aquaria for a number of years now and I've come up with a few tips and techniques that might help:

- The room the tank is in needs to be dark...cover all windows with light blocking curtains if needbe to reduce the amount of glare and reflections on the glass
- Make sure the glass is as clean as possible
- If you must use flash, the best method is with a remote speedlight that will shoot diffused light from above. If this is not possible (such as with public aquaria), then a hot shoe mounted speedlight with a diffuser will work. I always dial the flash down so that it acts more as a fill rather than the main light source to prevent the "flashed out" look. Hot-shot mounted flash is pretty much only useful if you are shooting close-up due to flash glare.
-On my own home aquaria, I've found that shooting large fish (Arowana, etc), is easiest with mounted external lighting

Here a couple of my shots with exif info to help gain an idea of what settings were used:

19" Jardini Arowana, Scleropages jardini:

Exif - Handheld Canon 20D w/ Canon EF-S 18-55m f/3.5-5.6 @ 30mm, 1/160sec, f/4.5, ISO 800. No flash used, external light source was a Home Depot halogen work light w/ custom white balance setting.

15" Leopoldi Stingray, Potamotrygon leopoldi:

exif - Tripod mounted Canon 20D w/ Canon EF 75-300mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 130mm, 1/80sec, f/5.6, ISO 800. No flash used, Home Depot halogen light used as described above.

Midas Cichlid, Amphilophus citrinellum:

exif - Tripod mounted Canon 20D w/ Canon 75-300mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 110mm, 1/80sec, f/5.6, ISO 400. No flash used, Home Depot halogen used as described above.

My tanks have painted black backgrounds...backgrounds were not digitally removed.

Here are some examples of public aquaria:

Cardinalfish:

Exif - Handheld Canon 20D w/ Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 55mm, 1/125 sec, f/5.6, ISO 800. Hot-shoe mounted Canon 580EX Speedlight used w/ diffuser.

Oyster Toadfish: