Professional Photographer who Can't Photograph Aquarium. :)

[GreyhoundTrish]

I'm a professional photographer, and do some pretty amazing wild animal and botanical (especially orchids) work. But I have yet to get a clear crisp pic of my Biocube 8 or any aspect of it. I need tips. It's really depressing to know what I can do if it doesn't involve my aquarium. I sure could use any and all advice.

 

[edwing206]

Aren't bio cubes slightly curved? The glass I mean?
It might be distorting the pics.

 

[GreyhoundTrish]

Nope. At least not I can tell unless it's like an interior type of curve that's not visible to the eye. I've seen other good pictures come out of Bicubes.

 

[flipteg]

the first thing you need to consider is you need to have the inside of the tank brighter than what is outside... this will let you shoot though the glass without glare... that is why if your aquarium's lighting is bright enough, you can get good results... if you're going to use flash, you can not use flash located behind the pane of glass you are shooting through... ie, on camera flash... bouncing an on camera flash is not ideal as well because you are lighting the entire room... most of the time all you'll get is a picture of your reflection... i got good results by placing the flash on top of the aquarium... when you try that, just make sure that none of the light bounces off of yourself...

check out my thread here about placing flash inside the aquarium... still waiting for a response though... maybe i should just go ahead and try it...

 

[flipteg]

i take back all that i said about not using on camera flash... i was experimenting again and i got pretty good results from the on camera flash... the flash just have to be far enough from the lens, the lens long enough and the camera close enough to the glass so it would not catch the glare off the glass...

here is one that is shot with head on flash... although it is possible, i think i prefer the light coming from the top... it looks more natural and with the light coming from the top, it defines the scales much better...

head on flash...

compared to flash on top...

 

[edwing206]

Wow. Those pictures are fantastic flipteg!

 

[clippo]

best to post some pics Trish... as you probably know its hard to make recommendations without identifying specific problems.

What camera/lens are you using?

 

[GreyhoundTrish]

I use a Nikon D50 with the 70-300 lens on Macro so I'm generally shooting about 4 feet away to get macro shots, when I do botanicals. I've used the kit lens on macro close to the tank w and w/o flash. My thread in the Nano forum has all the crappy pictures I've come up with so far.

And Francis, that second shot is awesome. Big difference. I'm thinking I could use either a studio light or hot light above the water rather than the tank lighting. What do you think? I have both available.

 

[flipteg]

the modeling light should help out a lot since the Cube's stock lighting is not that great for photography to begin with... for macro shots of the fishes, i find it best if the aperture is closed up to atleast f8.0 but you probably already knew that... but it becomes even more important when shooting wiggly fishes...

by studio light, do you mean flash...? i think both modeling light and flash should work, but i think i prefer flash... try it out and let us know the results... i don't have modeling lights... i don't know how powerful your studio lights are, but one thing i noticed with my Canon Speedlites is the spotlight effect... my tank is only 21 inches long and 19 inches high, but if i put the Speedlight on one side of the tank, the spotlight effect is so great that it would not allow me to shoot on the other side...

 

[GreyhoundTrish]

Yes, studio light = flash, but the similar style light as the hot lights, not the square off camera flashes. I have a set of three of them, and a set of three of the hotlights. I'm tending to think the hotlights will work better, since I specifically got them for my macro work on botanicals to avoid shadows, etc. Hope I get some time to set them up this weekend. I may wait to go to that effort until I have more to show. I just ordered three zoa frags and plan to get my Frogspawn this weekend. The hotlights would work great, I could use just one overhead and I bet that's all I'd need, if I had any from any other angle I think there'd be light bouncing of glass somewhere.

I actually haven't used the hot lights yet. They're brand spanking new. Haven't even taken them out of the case yet. EEP!

 

[GreyhoundTrish]

Francis, hope you don't mind, but I used that second pic as my wallpaper for today. I'm hoping it will inspire me to keep working on my aquarium shots. Granted, there's not anything that adorable to photograph in my tank yet, unless you count, Bulldozer the redfoot hermit. LOL!

 

[flipteg]

Trish, the complete series is located here. the very last picture shows how i setup the lighting... it worked great for the clownfishes since those fishes stays pretty much in one place...

 

[GreyhoundTrish]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10321545#post10321545 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by flipteg
Trish, the complete series is located here. the very last picture shows how i setup the lighting... it worked great for the clownfishes since those fishes stays pretty much in one place...

Thanks!!!