Daniel Doyle Pleasantville Shares How to Capture Great Photos of Aquatic Pets
Photos taken of your prized fish collection in your aquarium can be nothing short of amazing. The problem is that there are a few issues you need to overcome in order to get those quality shots. It takes a bit of preparation and practice to learn how to get past the inherent problems of reflection, illumination and overdone blue tinting.
In order to find out more about how to capture the best photos of your aquatic pets, we spoke to Daniel Doyle Pleasantville. Doyle has a successful Queens, New York photography studio that specializes in event, portrait, advertising, and landscape photography. He was a fine art and photography major at Ohio State University. He is opening a new studio in his hometown of Pleasantville, Ohio, and trains new photographers.
Preparation
Clean the Glass and Vacuum the Gravel
Today, digital cameras will accurately record everything in the aquarium tank. If your aquarium glass is not clean or the tank is not vacuumed, the camera will faithfully record that for you.
Background
Nikon suggests using a piece of poster board against the outside, back aquarium glass plane. This will allow the focus to be on your fish, not your living room.
Turn Off the Pumps
According to Dan Doyle Pleasantville, the motion caused by the pumps working will likely cause blurry photos and create distractions for the eye. Turn off the pumps for your shoot and back on again afterwards.
Color
Fish Tank World states that one huge issue you will have in photographing your fish in your aquarium is that there is so much blue color in the scene, that it will overwhelm your exposure. You can clip on an orange filter to your phone or your point-and-shoot camera, or get an orange filter for your DSLR. This will provide the correct color compensation to make the scene look as your eye sees it.
You also can color correct in Photoshop or Lightroom in your processing. It is just more efficient to solve the issue with a filter.
The Shoot
Flash
You will find, if you try to use your on-camera flash, you will end up with a reflection of the glass, spoiling your picture. According to Fish Tank World, if you have a DSLR, though, and an off-camera flash, you can use a fill flash right above the tank, which will illuminate it and eliminate the glass reflection problem.
The caveat here is that the fish may get really upset with the flash going off over the tank. You have to gauge if this will stress them too much before you try fill flash above the tank.
Reflections
The reflections from the aquarium glass are your worst enemy. According to Nikon, a simple, rubber lens hood pressed against the glass is your best bet to get a reflection-free image. The rubber will conform to the shape of the aquarium and keep other light out. Shoot perpendicular to the face of the tank.
Also, it is best to just have the illumination from the aquarium or your fill flash above the tank, if you opted for that. Other light in the room will cause reflections from the glass.
Lens
Nikon recommends 40mm to 60mm macro lenses for your aquarium shoot. This means you will want to be in macro mode if you are trying to capture your fish digitally with a point-and-shoot camera. You will literally only have inches of space between the glass and the fish.
Exposure Settings
Nikon recommends an auto ISO setting on your DSLR, an aperture of f/5.6 and a shutter speed of 1/125 second. That will give you the depth of field you desire as well as stop the fish’s movements, so you don’t introduce blur. Auto ISO will give you the lowest possible ISO, in order to eliminate noise, but will also allow you to deal with the differences of lighting you might encounter within your aquarium tank.
Dan Doyle Pleasantville recommends the white balance setting should be on automatic. Shooting in RAW mode will allow you the most latitude in editing your photos.
Daniel Doyle Pleasantville states that you can take some visually appealing pictures of your aquarium with proper preparation that places the focus on the fish. It will take a bit longer to get the knack of it, but the photos will be more than worth the effort
Category: Fish