How do you take photos like this? (Fish in an aquarium)

[bksze]

http://www.arowanaclub.ca/forums/showthread.php?t=1743

How does he take a picture of his fish so that everything is black but the fish? Using a flash there's always some sort of glare from the reflection. If I slow down the shutter, the fish is constantly moving so I don't get a sharp enough picture.

Is he triggering a flash placed above the aquarium?

The only decent pics I get are at 1/30 at f2.0 but the entire fish is never in focus. Usually it has the head in focus and the rest of the body is blurred out.

I asked him and he gave an answer more or less as follows:

"Think of the flash as a cone of light. You want your subject within that cone when taking the pic."

I'm having a tough time taking sharp pictures of my fish. Any tips appreciated.

[Mitsu3000gt]

Looks like off camera flash coming from above and also possibly from the side. On-camera flash won't be much good. You need to try angle the off camera flash in a way so that it doesn't reflect back into the camera lens, kind of like if you take a portrait of someone wearing glasses.

Secondly, a fast shutter speed will keep the background as black as possible even when a flash is used - the light falls off surprisingly fast behind the subject. Shutter speed and flash are totally independent, the shutter speed just controls how much ambient light gets into the exposure. So, if it was pretty dark in the room to begin with, or of there was black paper or cloth behind the fish tank, it probably wouldn't be that hard to get a black background with a flash & fast shutter speed to kill the ambient light. If you want to keep things really dark, you can light the fish with a flashlight or penlight so that the camera's AF system will still work but you don't need a bunch of light on.

Or, if you want, its really easy to paint in a black background in photoshop if you have a steady hand.

[D'z Nutz]

Originally posted by bksze
Is he triggering a flash placed above the aquarium?

Bingo. In fact, a flash might be too much light. Something even like a bright lamp would work. Depending on how bright your aquarium light is, that might work too. Just make sure there's no lid, black backdrop, clean glass (no water marks), and turn off all other lights so there's no reflection in the glass.

Originally posted by bksze
"Think of the flash as a cone of light. You want your subject within that cone when taking the pic."

Sounds like he's talking about waiting until the fish is under the light before you take the picture.

[quazimoto]

My guess is they placed black seamless paper behind the tank and used an off camera strobe firing from above. I would also guess they used negative flash compensation to make the light just soft enough.

[dragonone]

"I'm still having some difficulty lighting him. I tried a 10k t5 with a hagen powerglo and now I have a lot of yellow in the pix.

These were shot without flash."

[The_Rural_Juror]

So if I flashed a fish right in the eye, will it go blind?

[AccentAE86]

Flash placed above the tank is how to do it. If your tank has a lot of stuff in it then it will be very difficult to get a completely black background. His tank is probably almost empty except water, gravel, and the fish. I could never take a clean shot like that in my tank as it's planted and overgrown with leaves.

What he said was quite accurate. Whatever is in the "cone of light", that is what will be lit up. If you set your flash power to grossly overpower the ambient aquarium lights, you can get the background to be black as long as the background isn't also in the "cone of light". You can have a background of a naked chick in your aquarium but you wouldn't see it if you made sure your flash didn't reach it.

In his pics, you can see that the flash is placed high and to the right.

[bksze]

The first half of the pics were what I was referring to. Maybe I'll stop by the camera store sometime and pick up and wireless trigger and see if I can recreate his pics.

I'll post my results in this thread.

With respect to not using a flash. I can never get the fish to be so bright and clear. Either the shutter is too fast that the fish and the background is black. Or the shutter is too slow in which the fish doesn't come out sharp.

I will keep trying though.

Thanks!

I guess i should stress, i'm not too concerned about the black around the fish. So photoshopping in a black background is not what I'm after. I'm more after the visual pop you get from seeing those pictures as opposed to the dull flat look that my pics seem to turn up as.

[AccentAE86]

Flash will give you sharp shots as long as you have good focus.

[Mitsu3000gt]

If the fish AND the background are black, you need to turn up your flash. I would suggest using full manual mode, max sync speed, and experimenting with apertures & flash power. Also, if the pictures are taken through fishtank glass, you will most likely have to add some contrast, set black points, etc. to get the most out of the picture.

Also, I don't know what kind of camera you have, but if you have a Nikon you probably don't need to go buy a wireless trigger as you can do it with the onboard flash.

[AccentAE86]

The wireless commander will probably add glare to the image. An off camera shoe cord or PC sync cable will probably give you enough length to do it if you want to do it on the cheap.

[bksze]

So i spent some time this wkend trying to replicate the photos.

This is what I ended up doing. I run 4 36" strips with 2 T5 bulbs in each strip. I ended up putting two of the light bars over the front right side of the tank thereby doubling the normal amount of light in the tank.

I then used my 50mm at F1.8 with 1/100 shutter and no flash. Did a little bit of PP in lightroom, however I don't remember exactly what I did to get these pics to turn out the way they did.

Criticism and tips are appreciated!

[bighead2267]

very good. well done

[dragonone]

time to photograph your arowana ricki

[4lti]

Your arowana is amazing!

[D'z Nutz]

More pics of the clown(s) please

[bksze]

Originally posted by D'z Nutz
More pics of the clown(s) please

I will try the next go around. Clowns are hard as they tend to stay near the bottom of the tank and when they do make it up to the surface, they're very skittish. At the bottom, there's not enough light to bring out the colour and at the top, even 1/100 the tail ends up blurring sometimes.

Any technical comments? My pics still don't come out as sharp as the person I'm trying to copy haha.

[bighead2267]

Originally posted by dragonone
time to photograph your arowana ricki

my photo skill and the fish is not even close to what he have. haha. need more practice