Saltwater aquarium pictures - figuring it out

If you have ever wanted to visit a foreign world with unexpected visitors a salt water aquarium is the ticket. You start out with sand, saltwater, "live" rock (has healthy bacteria and tiny critters), a fish or two and before you know it things are popping up you never added or seen before. As a result you can sit for hours studying all the tiny new things going on in there. Some of it is really alien and interesting to take pictures of, but nothing comes easy. The aquarium appears bright and well lit to the human eye but the camera disagrees. However, I am determined to get some great shots of this alien world and figure out ways to better illuminate things without increasing the light intensity and boiling off the aquarium :highly_amused:.

Anyone have suggestions/tricks that worked for them? And what about getting the fish to look at the camera? As of yet I can't get them to understand that eyes make the portrait.

And happy end of the world +1.

Lens 35mm f/1.8
f/3.2
1/40th of a sec (a little slow for a hand held shot)
ISO 800


Lens 17-50 f/2.8
f/2.8
1/80th of a sec
ISO 1600

Both were shot at the pet store.

No flash, Use fast glass, High ISO Aperture priority set to twice the size of your lens at least. Take lots of pictures.

You will find fish sometimes swim in a pattern, learn the pattern and fire away. If it's just sitting there, better yet.

We have a 110 gallon salt water aquarium and I have upon occasion photographed my Black Volatan Lionfish. Leo is getting HUGE now and eats as many as 8 or 9 goldfish at one feeding, at which point he can barely swim and heads to a corner of the tank and hangs there for a couple of days until he has digested all of them. I have had a lot of success using a single strobe from above, the same direction as the tank lights. The image below was taken with a single Sunpak 544 on a stand pointing down and the D700 and my 55mm Micro Nikkor. It is important that the glass is as clean and as free of algae as possible. I place the front of the lens directly gainst the glass to prevent any reflections from getting into the image. As far as getting them to pose, as soon as I come near the tank, Leo comes right over to check me out, presumptively because he thinks I have more fish for him!



I photographed this little (about 6 feet) fishy in a nine hundred trillion gallon fishtank, the Gulf of Mexico. This female sand tiger shark followed us around like a curious puppy for the entire dive, never once acting threatening. It was a deep (therefore a decompression) dive USS Oriskany and she even followed us up to our decompression stop. I used a Nikonos V, 28mm f/3.5 UW Nikkor and SB-102 strobe with High Speed Ektachrome. I wonder where she is now, this photo was taken about 8 years ago. She had been caught at least once, as evidenced by the tears below her left nostril.

I am going to Moody Gardens in Galveston, TX where they have an amazing aquarium. I have only had my camera for a few weeks now but I am going to try to get some good shots and post them here.

I do have a pic of a fish, but it is freshwater.


18-55mm
F/5.6
1/20s
ISO 800

this is one of my biggest challenges, i have 3 tanks (freshwater) a 46g at home and a 10g and 4g at work, i find it hard to get good clear close ups of the fish, but will keep trying

Yes keep playing with settings and find what works best for your lighting situation. I have only been doing photography for a couple weeks. That pic was on day 2 of having my D3100. I had the lens about an inch off the tank and zoom at 50mm.

A challenge for sure though. One of my not so successful pics.

So I am back from the trip! Did not get quite as much time to experiment with settings and lighting since there were crowds of people there for Spring Break. Many pics were slightly blurred with trying to shoot through glass and the rush. Here are a few though:

And a couple more. One thing I had to do on a lot of these is go back and edit sharpness to bring out more details.

It can be a real challenge to get sharp photos in an aquarium.

Beautiful. I am a bit envy cos I can't get shots same es yours when I visiting the Marine Aquarium here.