Aquarium Photography (February 27, 2006)

I've always been fascinated by the underwater world. The fishes are some of the most amazing creatures - there are so many varieties of shapes and colors! So far, I've not had yet the opportunity to explore underwater photography, but my love for fishes is always strong. Every time that I see an acquarium I give it a fascinated look - and you can imagine how I was attracted when I saw the big, beautiful and well kept acquarium of my sweet friend Fenice :-)

Fenice's acquariums (120lt) hosts various freshwater species, as the colorful Trichogaster leeri (Pearl Gourami), native of south-east Asia. Capture its beauty with your camera requires some skills, it is not easy to take a perfect photo, both technically and aesthethically. The biggest problem is light: I don't like to use flash, because it creates a lot of reflection on the glass surfacts, and it tends to create unpleasant shadows. Of course with two of three well-places flashes it would be possible to create a good illumination without reflections, but I have only one 580EX and I preferred to keep things as simple as possible. Fenice's aquarium has two 18-watt neons that are active from 4 p.m. to 12 p.m., plus two other 20-watt neons that are active only from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. These lights are enough to get shutter speeds between 1/40 and 1/125 at ISO 800 and f/4. The noise at ISO 800 is not a problem, if the photo is well exposed; a little of noise reduction and good post processing techniques are enough to get rid of the noise. To have good oddies to get a sharp photo, you need a shutter speed of at least 1/100: indeed, the sharpnest photo that I've taken was at 1/125. If you are very lucky you mey get some good shoots even at 1/50 or 1/60, but it is an exception, not the rule.

The ideal lens is a stabilized short tele with good macro capabilities. My choice has been the 24-105 L IS USM: at 105mm, it gives a macro ratio of 1:4, that is quite good, in particular on APS-C cameras as the Canon EOS 20D. The Micro-Nikkor 105mm f/2.8 AFS VR would have been perfect - but so far Canon doesn't make any similar lens. Anyway, even the 24-105 was enough, except for the smallest species. I photographed at f/4 to obtain the fastest shutter speed that I could get, and to blur as much as possible both the background and the glass surface. At these macro ratios, the depth of field is truly razor thin: to get the entire subject in focus, it must be perfectly parallel to the sensor. Moreover, you have to keep the camera as parallel as possible with the glass surface: if the lens is angled, the image quality suffers a lot. If the camera is parallel to the glass, instead, the image quality is surprisingly good; if you photograph the fishes that are at least at 5/6 centimeters from the glass, you won't see any trace of the glass surface in the photo (at f/4, 105mm).

Of course, it is not possible to use the tripod - I toke these photos handheld, following the motion of the subject during the exposure. With such slow shutter speeds, it is not easy to get truly sharp photos - I toke more than one hundred of shots to get few sharp images. Evaluative metering worked well in this situation, and AI Servo AF with center AF area was able to focus quickly on the subject.

The super colorful Trichogaster leeri (Pearl Gourami), shown in the first photo, was my preferred subject, but Fenice has also many other interesting species: one of them is a green/yellow fish with red head that later I identified as Hemigrammus bleherii. I was quite surprised when my sweet friend told be the name of this fish...this is one of the many species discovered by Heiko Bleher, one of my myths! This man is one of the last real explorers of our age. He has travelled all around the worlds hundreds of times, and he has explored some of the wildest and most unknow areas. He founded the magazine "Aqua Geographia, Life Above and Below Water", that has been one of the most fascinating magazines about nature, fishes and exploration (sadly, now it is almost disappeared, even tough you can still visit its website www.aquageo.com).

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