aquarium photography

[fishfool]

we're having a discussion on our board about what wide angle lenses are best to use for underwater photography with compacts, with regular cameras, doesn't matter. A lot of users there are you know, neophyte kind of photographers, most of the people using Canon and Nikon. Are there any products you think offer something to the aquarium enthusiast that maybe we just haven't had the exposure to? Does anyone have any specific experience? Of course, we have to take the lighting and water refraction into consideration, as well as the desire to capture the color in as most vivid a way as possible. Thanks.

[Dan Fromm]

LF isn't well suited to closeup photography with moving subjects. For that application, a 35 mm or 6x6 or 6x7 SLR is the tool of choice.

Its been a long time since I surveyed a large fraction of the world's published aquarium photographers. Back then, the consensus was:

35 mm SLR. Flash illumination, with lens axis perpendicular to the tank front and flash axes at 45 degrees to the tank front. Macro lens, usually 50 - 60 mm (I prefer 105, but I did the survey before ~ 100 mm macro lenses were widely available.). KM. The only significant differences in practice had to do with brand of camera. And the consensus was very strong, whence I conclude that there really is only one good way to do it.

Wide angle lenses make no sense in this application. And the hard problem is managing the subjects. The photographic problems are trivial, i.e., easily solved.

No one does underwater photography in small aquaria. No one. The fish won't put up with it.

Oh, yeah. I've published fish pictures in TFH, FAMA, JAKA, BB, DATZ, Das Aquarium, Aqua-Terra, ...

[Pat Kearns]

Putting another sheet of glass in the aquarium to make the swimming area smaller will keep the subjects closer to the front.

[Dan Fromm]

Pat, squished fish rarely deport well. Much of the art of photographing fish is in arranging the interior of the aquarium -- plants, stones if any -- so that the fish will perform where, um, the shooting is easy. H-J Richter is a master of that art, careful study of his pictures in, e.g., TFH will repay the effort many times over.

As I said, the photographic problems are easily solved. Managing the subjects is much harder than getting in focus well-exposed reasonably well-composed shots.

Cheers,

Dan

[Dave Brown]

It's been decades since I've done this, but I always had good luck using a 35mm SLR with a remote flash above the water. These days with most decent cameras providing TTL flash exposure things should be much easier.

As to focal length, close focusing is naturally desirable, and I always used something in the normal to portrait range.