How do you get great full tank shots?

[marino420td]

I would love to get great full tank photos like the first one in this post

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1140629

Of course, my tank looks nothing like that masterpiece but the photography is awesome.

Can one of the experts please explain how to get shots like this, in detail (what f stop, what shutter speed, white balance, etc.)?

 

[maroun.c]

Actually it gets easier with that classs of tanks, simply because theyre very well lit. Still it's not too easy.
I would recommend the follwoings:
-Tripod
- stop circualtion to avoid airbubbles or more motion in corals.
-Clean tank 24-48 hours earlier
- A photo session a couple of days after a big water change is better as it minimizes water coloration
-you can get more strict to the level of running carbon for few days before a shoot and even minimize feedings on the couple of days before.
depending on your camera and lens anything you rparameters can vary as follows:
-aperture 8-11
I-SO set at the lowest possible to minimize noise and still provide a decent shutter speed.
-as your on tripod shutter speed can be a bit slower as your not dealing with blurr from handholding still it's best to have a shutter speed at least 1/90 or even faster.
-The farther you go back and zoom on your tank increases your DOF (if i remember correctly) there is even a DOF calculator somewhere that would tell you how much you have in focus according to aperture distance and foal distance. Still it's not a major factor as your limited by usually smaller rooms in case of tanks.
-Some cameras give more noise at same ISO than others, in Nikon cameras I guess the worse one in noise is hte D70/s with the D50 being very good even better than D2x...
-Good quality glass basically your choice is limited as you need a good wide angle unless you have lots of space
-Working on getting hte right WB wether by using preset ones or setting WB for your lighting or shooting in RAW and corecting after the fact.
-Shooting in RAW allows you to deal with clipped highlights right under halides or lights for example. You can recover a lot more than what you do with JPEG.
-making sure camera is at vertical angle to the tank which minimizes distortions through the glass.

Guess this is all I can think of for now

 

[jwedehase]

The advice above is good stuff. Low ISO, tripod, etc. etc. As mentioned, make sure you're centered and perfectly perpendicular with the front glass of the aquarium.

The key to these shots is, of course, lighting. Metal Halide lighting looks GREAT to our eyes, and the corals love it, but the camera doesn't, AT ALL. The camera is going to have a much more limited EV tolerance. This means, it can't see both the bright areas and the dark areas at the same time, like we can. This leads to either the highlights being washed out, or the dark areas being impossible to see into. Either way, it leads to a photo with too much contrast.

The fix? Even lighting. A large light source (physically large in size) is much nicer to shoot than a pinpoint/small light source. Have you ever noticed how nice a photo looks when taken on an overcast day? This is also exactly what studio and wedding photographers are doing when they shoot their strobe into a reflective umbrella, or use multiple light sources. The smoothest, most pleasing shots I've ever made of my tank are when it was lit with PC fluorescents, instead of the MH. I would bet "acropora nut" has a LOT of supplemental lighting, which helps even out the contrast by filling in the dark areas.

So go buy a truckload of T5 lighting, and you're set.

 

[Absolute Reef]

Turn off the ambient light to reduce glare and reflection, that;s something I would like to add.

 

[bassettmd]

Yea and if your tank is like mine and it is situated by a window... shut the blinds and make sure that you are not getting any glare. Whenever I want to shoot my tank I have to hang a blanket over the blinds... in order to reduce the glare. It feels like I am back in 5th grade again making bed sheet forts.