Beginner Shooting a fish tank

Dan ives

Dan ives

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Daniel
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i have a marine tank at home and have been playing around with the camera trying to take a few shots of the inhabitants, it's quite tricky as the lighting is biased more towards blue actinic which is a matter of choice but there's differing ranges of light throughout the tank meaning you have to play around with the aperture and shutter speeds to freeze motion but not let too much light in, I was takin there with shutter speed of 1/100 and ap I think was 5.6 with iso around 1600. When I upped the iso a step there was way too much noise. The images themselves I think need to be sharper as there is some blurring what can I do to try and remedy the exposures in that situation? image.jpegimage.jpeg
 
If you have any photo manipulation software, just change the white balance. Brings the colours back just fine.
Fish%2016731_zps3lpm9uyj.jpg
 
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That's brilliant thanks for that I will have a look in to that.
What about the exposure does it look ok?
 
It's difficult. I've tried a few times with my marine fish without success
The can move quickly as well, so I always ended up with a lot of blurry shots.:)
 
Dan ives said:
i have a marine tank at home and have been playing around with the camera trying to take a few shots of the inhabitants, it's quite tricky as the lighting is biased more towards blue actinic which is a matter of choice but there's differing ranges of light throughout the tank meaning you have to play around with the aperture and shutter speeds to freeze motion but not let too much light in, I was takin there with shutter speed of 1/100 and ap I think was 5.6 with iso around 1600. When I upped the iso a step there was way too much noise. The images themselves I think need to be sharper as there is some blurring what can I do to try and remedy the exposures in that situation? View attachment 54073View attachment 54074
Click to expand...

The blurriness is down to shutter speed or camera shake.

The sharpness has nothing to do with the blur, this comes from the subject moving whilst the sensor is recording the picture.

The way to combat it is to use a fast shutter speed, but then you're going to need to up the iso so that you can get that fast shutter speed (or use a fast lens to let in more light). Obviously, the high ISO will generate more noise, but it's much better to have a sharp, noisy image than having a blurry one :)
 
Some nice images there use there I love a good photo of a fish ;-)!
 
Tulipone said:
If you have any photo manipulation software, just change the white balance.
Click to expand...
•
A pixel editor is not required for this. A good RAW converter with layered
adjustments will do very well.
 
You can also use flash, with care and depending on the species present. White balance is always tricky, it usually varies at different locations in a tank, and it's always a personal preference anyway with this genre. LED lighting is very tricky for colours. The other thing to remember - you don't have to use the everyday lighting when photographing the tank. There's a lot to be said for adding a lot of extra light you wouldn't normally have on just for the purposes of photography.

There are some pretty decent guides on UR, although the more interesting ones may now be quite a few pages back in the Photography forum. When RUK died a couple of very interesting articles on reef aquarium photography were lost.
 
I've been trying to get some photos of my own fish & it's not easy as they won't stop still but the best photos i've taken are of my dwarf puffers & best time seems to be not long after they have eaten. I did do a few hours of googling on this subject & most articles stated to add a lot of extra light above the water, i've not tried it yet
 
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