Taking photos?

[Stevepet23]

Hi all,

I'm not sure if this question goes here but just wanted to ask how you all take photos of your fish as everytime i try they are blury and look like they are of very bad quality. I have a good camera which takes great photos of everything else but i just cannot get it right when i take them of my fish. Do I zoom in? Do stay up close or far away? I have tried most ways & positions but nothing seems to work.

Thanks,
Steve

[Professor_J]

Hi Steve,

Don't know about everyone else, but what I usually do is make sure that the only lights in the room are the lights in the tank, or they're at least significantly brighter than other ambient light sources. This deals with reflections.

I tend to use a fast lens and higher speed film (or setting on digital camera). This works well for fish that are relatively calm and slow moving and brighter tanks -if you have algae growing on your canopy under your lights, now's a good time to remove it.

To chose an exposure, I get close and meter off some plants. They're green and tend to balance well between bright and dark. Then I just manually set the exposure to that and use that setting for all the photos.

If you need to use a flash, make sure to shoot at an angle to the glass or all you'll see is is a reflection.

Other things could be to use manual focus instead of auto - some cameras will autofocus on the tank and not the contents - especially if the glass isn't clean (so clean that inside and out too before you get started).

HTH and good luck