Aquarium Photography

Dear Viewers and Fellow Photographers,

Aquarium Photography is hard. Normally, the photo turns out to be blue and even discoloured, and leaves the untrained photographer wondering why the camera cannot capture what the human eye sees, and aquariums are the perfect example of this:

This is not a very 'fabulous' photograph, lets just say. The photo has no clear object, which is meant to be the shark but it really isn't visible, the angle of the photo doesn't give it a sea-like effect, it's blurred and "its all blue". There are many, many visible problems with this photo.


http://ilmadventures.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/big-shark.jpg

Lets start torubleshooting, if your photos turn out like this when you go to the aquarium then its not quite worth keeping them. The first problem with this photo is with the object. In order to get a good photograph in the low light situation, keep your aperture high as well as the shutter speed. This will minimise the blurred effect on the photograph, while still letting light into the camera. If you sort out the problems with the object in the photo, it might turn out like this:


http://www.thesaltybox.com/News/3088-Sea-Life-London-Underwater-Pumpkin-Competition.html

This photo has a clear object, and has lost some of the dark bluish effect which is good. Now to remove the dirty blue you have to unsaturate the image, possible on some versions of digital cameras but not very effective, so what you have to do is probably edit it on any software on your computer, Picasa will be able to do the job. If you are able to do this successfully, your image may look more like this:


https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-vnZaWjSNVDA/UVi0CX6N3nI/AAAAAAAAAhw/zCLgujcB6xQ/s250-c-k-no/2013-03-31

The object is now clear, the water is not coming into the way of it, but the image has 'vignetted'. To solve this sort of problem, (if you get it) is to add a blue 'lighting setting' on your camera. This will undo this to a certain extent, and will also remove any remaining 'blueness' to the image. It should turn out slightly like this: