How to take great aquarium photographs

[flanque]

Hello,

I went out and got myself a Canon EOS 400D digital SLR camera. I've got two lenses with it.. a 18-55mm and a 75-300mm.

http://www.canon.com.au/eos400d/

I'm not expert but it seems as though the best way so far that I've been able to find to take good pictures is to leave it on complete manual mode, then move the ISO up to 1200 and adjust the lighting setting to be under fluorescent (around 4500k).

Does anyone have any ideas on taking great, high quality images of aquariums? The problems I see are that the camera doesn't appear to have enough light (it thinks) to take the shot, so it forces the flash which removes that blue water look. The other problem is that the fish are moving too fast to get a sharp shot.

When taking photos of people or objects that don't move much the shots are fantastic and it seems a waste not to get that 10MP to work on the aquarium.

Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

 

[ReefRaff]

MH lamps over the tank, a tripod, manual focus, no flash, and a wide open apeture.

 

[flanque]

MH lamps over the tank... cannot do. :-(
a tripod... cannot do. :-(
manual focus... CAN do.
no flash... CAN do.
and a wide open apeture... probably can do, but am not sure how. :-|

 

[ReefRaff]

and a wide open aperture... probably can do, but am not sure how. Neutral

your camera should have aperture priority mode. meaning you can set the F-stop manually.
wide open is the lowest F-stop number. F4 or F3.5. The camera will automatically select the best shutter speed. Without the MH lamps, I would at least go get a tripod, you will need it.