# My first aquarium fish photos



## MSDdivers (Nov 24, 2014)

Now that I have a home aquarium, I read some of this forum's posts on photographing aquarium fish. I thought I would share some of my first photos and would appreciate some constructive criticism.

My tank is 100 gallons and my cichlids are about 3 cm long.
I used a Nikon D60 in automatic mode configured for macro shots.















I also put some of the pictures on my scuba diving website that I didn't include here if you're interested to look at them.

http://msddivers.wix.com/masterscubadiv ... rium/c22cz


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## DJRansome (Oct 29, 2005)

:thumb: Nice


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## GTZ (Apr 21, 2010)

You're off to a great start, those are some nice shots! Try shooting in manual mode and playing around with ISO and aperture, shutter should be fine anywhere above ~1/80. I usually shoot at a narrow aperture (f/13 or higher) to increase depth of field so as to keep as much of the fish in focus as possible. While using the built in flash, it isn't always feasible to shoot upwards of f/16 or higher as the exposure is usually too dark. In this case, try raising the ISO to 400-800 and experiment with higher f-stops. Higher ISO will cause some graininess or noise so it's a trade off sometimes. You can review your images in an exif viewer like Opanda afterwards to see what settings you used for specific shots. This way you can track which settings worked the best. Note that they're not always the same for differently colored fish.


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## MSDdivers (Nov 24, 2014)

GTZ said:


> You're off to a great start, those are some nice shots! Try shooting in manual mode and playing around with ISO and aperture, shutter should be fine anywhere above ~1/80. I usually shoot at a narrow aperture (f/13 or higher) to increase depth of field so as to keep as much of the fish in focus as possible. While using the built in flash, it isn't always feasible to shoot upwards of f/16 or higher as the exposure is usually too dark. In this case, try raising the ISO to 400-800 and experiment with higher f-stops. Higher ISO will cause some graininess or noise so it's a trade off sometimes. You can review your images in an exif viewer like Opanda afterwards to see what settings you used for specific shots. This way you can track which settings worked the best. Note that they're not always the same for differently colored fish.


Just downloaded your recommendation software, I must admit when I try different settings I get discouraged trying to remember which pictures had which settings. this is also true when I do scuba diving photography. This has fixed my problem. I will try more photographing soon with different settings as you suggested.

By the way, how do you catch those little fish that dart around like lightning?


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## GTZ (Apr 21, 2010)

MSDdivers said:


> By the way, how do you catch those little fish that dart around like lightning?


In my experience, I take upwards of 150 shots and end up with 2 or 3 that are usable.


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## DJRansome (Oct 29, 2005)

A high speed flash also helps.


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## chopsteeks (Jul 23, 2013)

Enjoyed your photos. Thanks for sharing.


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