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Photography Question 

Dana F. Greenwood Sr 		 

How to shoot fish in a home tank


 
 
I am trying to take pictures of fish in a home tank. I used 800 speed film and they come out motion blury. No flash just the light on top of the tank. Should I use a higher speed film or just change my iso setting on the camera and/ or manually set my shutter speed faster. I am using a Minolta Maxxum 5 and used a Minolta 50mm, Minolta 35-80 and a Tamron 28-200 with the same blury pictures.I did use a tripod and remote trigger so I would not touch the camera.


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August 14, 2004

 

Bob Cammarata 		  To freeze the action of the fish, a shutter speed of at least 1/250 sec would be required. Take test meter readings at different aperture settings to see if the aquarium light is bright enough to allow this.

I tried this once long ago, and experienced similar results,... so I tried rigging up two home-made brackets on either side of the tank to hold two flash units...one hot-wired to the p/c of my camera, the other slaved. Each flash head was pressed against the glass on the sides of the tank facing in.
This worked great for overall illumination and for freezing the action, even with slow film (KR 64) but the flash also highlighted the little pieces of gunk floating around in the tank.

If you try this with flash, use a daylight-balanced film, and turn off the top light before exposure to avoid mixing the two light sources.


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August 14, 2004

 
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