Capturing aquarium fish

[ThisOldSpouse]

I have a PowerShot S3 IS that I've been trying to use for photographing the fish in my aquarium. I feel I've tried every setting there is, but I just can't get a consistently good shot. Too blurry, too dark, too grainy, blah, blah, blah. Does someone out there have the secret??

[Skirball]

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@ThisOldSpouse wrote:

I have a PowerShot S3 IS that I've been trying to use for photographing the fish in my aquarium. I feel I've tried every setting there is, but I just can't get a consistently good shot. Too blurry, too dark, too grainy, blah, blah, blah. Does someone out there have the secret??

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You're dealing with a low light situation, so your camera is pushing variables to try to get what it feels is the right settings to get the exposure.  It'll push ISO, which gives you grainy, it'll lower the shutter speed, which gets blurry, etc. Honestly, this is a good situation for manual exposure, but that may be a big jump for you.  I don't use those automatic settings, so I'm not sure which one of those to recommend.

I'm not sure you can do it well without off-camera lighting.  I don't have a powershot, but it would be pushing most cameras to capture this without lighting.  You can't use the flash on your camera, because it's just going to reflect back at you off the glass.  Maybe, if you have (or make) a lens hood, you could press it up against the glass and still use the flash.

If I was to do this here's what I'd do.  I'd consider setting the camera on a tripod so I could use slower shutter speeds. It limits your composition, but it'll give you extra light in terms of lower shutter speed.  However, if it gets too slow you're going to get motion blur from the fish, so there's a balance.  As a rule of thumb, it gets tough to handhold at speeds slower than 1/60, but this varies a lot due to a many variables. 

Then I'd set my ISO for the largest value that I can without 'too much grain'.  It's completely subjective, but just look through some photos and decide for yourself what ISO is your max.  Then I'd open up the aperture as wide as possible.  Voila, manual photography.  Chances are your photos are still too dark, so I'd get whatever lamps I could and place them on the side of the tank, as close to the front as possible.  If you have flash it'd be best, but if not you might be able to work with just lamps.   If things start to over expose, up your shutter speed to compensate.  If the fish have motion blur, up the shutter speed.  This style is too slow for many people, but I find it can be very rewarding in terms of the results.

[cicopo]

It's going to be a challenge & I've never tried it but have some suggestions. I haven't read the manual for your camera but did use an S1 IS on a few dive trips with good results. You're going to have to find a way to really light up the aquarium but without creating hot spots or glare the camera can see & you'll need to shoot straight into the glass rather than at an angle to it. The higher the shutter speed the better but my S1 wasn't very nice even at ISO 400 so rather than suggest higher ISO's I "d work on more light. Based on how Canon & others equip their underwater housings it looks like rather than using the built in flash as is (should you try using it) use a difusser mounted in front of the flash. Canon supplies an opaque white plastic piece to mount in front of the flash which can be replicated with things like plastic cut from common containers & pails such as a jug used for windshield washer fluid, bottom of a white margerine tub etc.

If the S3 does macro easily you might want to try shooting with the lens snuggly against the aquarium glass using the widest angle the lens has.