Aquarium photography

Shooting in an aquarium is a bit challenging. I captured these sea nettles in the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta, and I had to position myself such that reflections in the room behind me weren't seen in the glass. The best way to avoid reflections is to place the lens up against the glass itself. In addition, if you shoot obliquely through glass or Plexiglas, the sharpness of the images is degraded. You'll get the sharpest pictures if the lens axis is perpendicular to the plane of the aquarium glass. I chose to use daylight white balance even though the lighting was tungsten because I wanted a very warm color bias. Finally, the ISO has to be raised high enough so the shutter speed is sufficiently fast to freeze the movement of the subjects. My settings for this shot were 1/100, f/3.5, 1000 ISO, and I used a 50mm macro lens hand held.