Maybe you have an aquarium at home and you’re longing to take some decent close-ups of the occupants. Or perhaps you’re planning a trip to your local Sea-Life centre and fancy taking your camera along for the ride.

Either way, with the wide variety of colourful and vibrant fish, you should get some stunning photos, right?

Wrong!

Often the combination of poor lighting, super-fast fish, and the difficulties of using flash with surface reflections (not to mention many public aquariums ban flash photography altogether) means that you are lucky if you capture much more than just a colourful blur.

So, how can you get the most out of your camera and your surroundings and get some fabulous aquarium pictures?

Here are a round-up of our favourite tips to get you started on your journey of fishy fun:

• Keep that camera steady

  In low light conditions, it’s essential to keep your camera as stable as possible to avoid camera shake.

  Use a tripod, monopod or look around for something else you can rest the camera on or brace yourself with – for example, a railing if at a public aquarium or use a table with a pile of books on it if at home.

  If using an SLR or DSLR without a tripod, check that you are holding it securely. A good way to hold it is use one hand to grip the camera body and use the other to cup gently underneath the lens, supporting the weight of the camera.

• Switch OFF that flash!

  It may feel counter-intuitive in low light, but remember unlike us, fish have no eyelids and can’t blink! Lots of sudden bright light can temporarily blind, scare and stress fish.

  If you’re a long-time fish owner you’ll know that often a stressed fish means a sick fish, so it’s wise to avoid anything which may distress them. In fact, many public aquariums ask you to avoid using flash photography for this very reason.

  If you absolutely must use the flash, then try an offset angle to minimize reflection and keep the photo session short.

• Give the tank a spring clean

  If photographing a home aquarium, give the tank sides a clean inside and out before you start – there’s nothing worse than seeing a big smeary fingerprint or a blob of algae AFTER you’ve got the otherwise perfect picture.

  However, don’t take your pictures straight after a water change as you’ll find the maintenance will have stirred up some less than attractive crud – give it a chance to settle first.

• Minimize reflection on the glass

  If you have any control over the lighting, make sure your tank’s lights are switched ON and the room lights are dimmed or OFF. This should help minimize any reflections from the window (unlike my photograph at the top of this post – do as I say, not as I do!) or other light source.

  If you are using a camera that you can attach filters to, then it’s worth investing in a polarizing filter. These are ideal for removing unwanted reflections from water or glass.

• Use aperture priority mode (Av)

  While your camera is probably fairly good at guessing the optimal settings in most circumstances, it can’t really cope well with the low-light no-flash scenario in this case.

  Ideally, the shutter speed we need to capture fast moving fish is 1/250s or at a push 1/125s. In low light, the camera will opt for a much longer shutter speed giving you that colourful blur you were hoping to avoid.

  To get a sharp photograph of fish at these speeds, you need to take the camera to aperture priority (shown as Av on most cameras) and use the widest aperture you can to let as much light into the sensor as possible. With more light going into the camera, the shutter can be open for a shorter amount of time and still expose the photograph correctly.

  Wide apertures are the lower f-numbers (for example, using my camera’s kit lens the lowest I can get is f3.5). Whereas narrow apertures have higher f-numbers (the maximum on the same lens is f22) which you want to avoid for this type of shot. Refer to your camera’s manual if you’re not sure how to change the aperture.

  DSLR owners can also choose a “faster” lens with wider maximum apertures.

• Up your ISO

  Test what shutter speed you’re getting now by half-holding the shutter release button down and reading it off the camera display. Chances are it’s still a lot slower than 1/125s. Here’s where a higher ISO will help, but first a quick explanation.

  ISO in a film camera is how quickly the film reacts to the light.

  A low ISO film will react very slowly to the light – good for outdoors and landscape pictures where you need detail and strong colour saturation without overexposing.

  A high ISO reacts very quickly to the light – means that you don’t need the shutter open for so long, giving you less motion blur in low light conditions. Perfect for indoor photography.

  Digital cameras, of course, don’t have film, but replicate this in how the chip records the light that falls on to it.

  The benefits of a high ISO is less motion blur (because that shutter isn’t open for so long – less chance of you accidentally shaking the camera at the same time) but a higher “grain” or “noise” to the picture. Low ISO numbers give you better picture quality but the shutter has to be open longer for the same amount of light.

  Digital cameras automatically set the ISO for you to the best possible setting in most circumstances, however, sometimes they get it wrong. There is usually a way to manually override and set your own ISO (50, 100, 200, 400 sometimes higher…) – check the manual.

  It takes a little experimentation to find which works best for fish pictures (usually a pay off in how much grain you’re prepared to put up with).

  However, remember to set that ISO back to AUTO or 100 when you’re done. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve ruined because I’ve forgotten to set it back after I’ve finished!

• Use manual focus

  The side-effect of using a wide aperture is that you can end up with a very narrow depth of field. In other words, the range of the photograph which is in focus is much smaller than normal. In combination with a moving fish, this can be very tricky for the camera’s autofocus.

  One way to get around this is to manually fix the focus on an area of the aquarium where fish are likely to swim and wait until they’re in the vicinity before taking that photograph.

• Use the continuous shooting mode

  Improve your odds of getting a sharply focussed picture by putting the camera into continuous shooting mode and getting as many pictures on the card as possible.

  You may throw away a lot more of your photographs, but hopefully have more great ones to choose from.

Not all of these techniques will always be possible or appropriate, but you should now be able to go out now and give it your best shot (if you’ll ignore the terrible pun).

Did you find these tips useful?

Perhaps you have some of your own tried and true aquarium photography tips you’d like to share with us.

Or just have a go and link to your successes or near misses in the comments.