The fish are either fuzzy or the light in the pic is wrong, I need some help. She has a cannon powershot sx40 hd. It has alot of knobs and menus all of which are Chinese to me. Any idea how to set it up for fish pics? Shutter speed?(like I know what that is lol) flash?, at night or in the day? There is a knob on the top with: c2, c1, m, av,TV, p, auto, scan, a little guy running?
The Powershot SX40 should give you some pretty good results.
There has to be enough light on the aquarium for the auto-focus to work,
otherwise you will have to focus manually.
Bring some lighting from another aquarium and place it on top of the tank you are photographing.
If you have it on automatic exposure, chances are that the results will not be the best.
Darken the room.
Go with manual settings.
The Tv setting is for the shutter speed, try around 1/125 of a second, the camera will choose the aperture ( how much light gets let in )
If it chooses something like f2 or f4, then you need more light on the tank,
otherwise parts of the fish or the tank will not be in focus.
You can also try setting the aperture with the Av setting to about f8 or f11 to get more in focus, but the camera will then choose a slower shutter speed and you might bet a blurred fish.
After a lot of photos, you might get brave and go all manual with the M setting where you choose the shutter speed and aperture.
Lots of experimentation is required.
Using the flash on the camera should be okay, it should adjust the amount of light the flash produces, to get a good result based on your aperture and shutter setting.
Try taking your photo at a slight angle to the the left or right of your subject to avoid a flash flare on the glass.
Sometimes a slight downward angle helps as well.
As mentioned in another post you may take hundreds of photos and keep only 5 when you begin to take aquarium and/or fish photos.
It does get better as you understand the lighting requirements and can better predict the settings to get a good result
