Camera Labs

Hey everyone,

My friend asked me to take some pictures of his fish in his aquarium with my new D80 with 18-70mm.

Do you guys have any tips as how I should go about doing so?

I would assume I will need a high shutter speed since the fish move quite a bit but other than that, I'm not sure where to start.

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D80 || Nikkor 18-70mm DX

Just take the widest angle (i.e. 18mm), put on the lens-shade, direct all the light into the aquarium and switch off any unnecessary ambient light to avoid reflections. If you press the shade against the aquarium wall you can make steady shots without tripod, without reflections and without shake at 1/15 or even 1/8 sec.
Just try it out before you up the ISO to shoot at shorter speeds...

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Thomas (beware: Nikon-fanboy and moderator!) My Lens Reviews, My Pictures, My Photography Blog
D800+assorted lenses

I did virtually as Thomas described for a test shot with the Pentax *istDL two years ago - scroll down on the Gallery page for it here:

http://www.cameralabs.com/reviews/Penta ... age5.shtml

Gordon

Alright -- well for small aquariums and small fish you need a flash or really fast lens.

So trying without the flash here's the best I was able to do (in regards to noise and sharpness):

http://ewoutvb.com/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=145&g2_serialNumber=4

Then I made my own ghetto flash diffuser for the built-in flash...

http://ewoutvb.com/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=263&g2_serialNumber=1

And here's a quick preview without much work, I can probably do much better (sorry about the dirty tank):

http://ewoutvb.com/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=271

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D80 || Nikkor 18-70mm DX

Hi Ewout_vB,

If you have a polarising filter, that's another very good way to reduce reflections off the glass.

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My Flickr

Thanks for the suggestion!

I'll see if one of my friends has one so I can stack it really quick and try it out to see if it's worth it .

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D80 || Nikkor 18-70mm DX