Photographing Fish in Your Aquarium

From time to time I see people on various forums including this one bemoaning the fact they have trouble with taking pictures of the fish in their tanks or even of taking pictures of the tanks themselves.
As a former lecturer of digital imaging I thought I would provide a little insight into how to take better photos.

1. Muddy, dark shots of blurred fish- Light, light and more light. The more light you have, the faster your camera will capture the fish. The faster the camera takes the shot, the less likely your fish will be blurred. Turn on all tank lighting as well as any room lighting, heck if your room is still dark bring in your portaflood to add to the lighting (do keep it about 8-10 feet away though so it gives the tank an all over glow as you don't want blind fish :) or glare). Try limiting the amount of lights pointing directly at the tank though as this can add to glares on the glass. If you cannot find an angle where there is no glare turn off the offending light or move it so it bounces off a nearby wall rather than directly on to the tank.

2. Glare from flash or other lights- move the camera around so it is at a different angle. You see a flash reflection because of the angle of the camera in relation to the light so that as the light bounces from the glass of the tank it comes back at the lens. Pointing your camera slightly downwards, upwards, left or right often assists with deflecting the light away from the camera lens. Always try to be as close as possible to the glass of the tank.

3. Lens shake- caused by slow shutter speeds. Adding more light can fix this as you can then have a faster shutter speed. If you cannot add more light for whatever reason you should be adding a tripod or similar (like a stepladder or even crates or boxes) and setting your camera up on that in order to take your shot (also remember to GENTLY depress your shoot button as the simple act of stabbing the button can cause considerable camera shake).

4. Fish out of focus but stuff in front or behind is in focus- usually caused by not focusing your camera carefully. It is often difficult to focus your camera with small objects like little fish that rarely will just sit still for you. Your camera will usually have a point or points where it focuses. It may be the centre of the viewfinder or it may be at multiple points around the viewfinder. You will need to work out where your camera focuses. Often a camera has a half depress state that allows you to lock the focus of the camera then move the camera slightly so you can take a better composed shot before depressing the button fully. The camera will often have an image either a circle, a box or similar that will appear to show the camera has locked on. It will usually show up where the focus has locked. Find out if your camera has this function and learn to use it by practicing lots and don't be discouraged, you can always delete anything that doesn't work.

Remember:
*If you are using digital cameras you can take as many shots as you like and delete the bad ones- they don't cost anything except time.
*Even professional photographers only keep one or two out of each set they take.
*Clean the tank glass on both sides. Don't ruin what would otherwise be a great shot because you got the drip marks from water runs outside or algae inside the tank.
*Get hold of a photo editing program so you can crop away the bits of the images you don't like, adjust colours and so on. I currently use Adobe's Photoshop but there are plenty of great programs out there for little to no cost.
Try the following:
http://www.gimp.org/
http://www.freeserifsoftware.com/sof...hotoplus-9.asp
http://picasa.google.com/
http://www.photopos.com/PhotoPosLiteInfo.asp

*If you have a lot of trouble with reflections it is possible to get hold of polarizing filters for your camera. These filters can be turned so that as they turn they polarize the light and reduce the reflections. If you have a compact camera you can still use one of these but you will need to hold it and turn it manually in order to get the polarizing effect.
*Save your photos in the largest size your camera can take. If you have a 5MP camera save in the largest format possible even if you are going to put it on the web. Many editing programs can save a copy of the image for web but you want to have the original in the largest size you can.

Please feel free to ask me any questions you might have on taking photos and I will do my best to help you.

Regards
LL