I am having a lot of trouble taking good pictures of my tank. They are usually grainy, not sharp. I suspect that my lighting is too low, but maybe that's not the problem. I need some advice from some good photographers.

I'm using a two year old canon elf. I set the ISO to 800 (max) and put the camera in macro mode (for close ups). I turn off all the lights in the room so I don't get reflections off the glass, and I turn the flash off (it scares my octopus away). I do not shoot using a tripod, but I turn off all the pumps so that things aren't moving much.

My tank is 30 x 18 x 24 tall, and lit with a single 40 Watt fluorescent t12 tube (20" long) with a color rating of 10K. My tank has double paned glass, and I'm using auto focus. Could my auto focus be getting confused, causing slight out of focus issues? The pictures are high res in terms of megapixels, but when I enlarge them I get no sharp edges, everything is "mushy".

So what am I doing wrong? Do I need incandescent light instead of fluorescent? Would a camera with a higher ISO rating work?

Example?

tripod is a must. also, shoot straight on with the glass - any angle and you'll get distortion. check the photography thread on here for a primer for taking reef pics.

nvm, here:

http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=190521

the higher the ISO can also cause grainy shots especially in lower end cameras

Those are the causes of your soft pictures and grain issue.

Also:
http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=190521

Unless he's using his flash, in which case he should be @ a 45* angle

A tripod would help immensely though

give this a shot to see if it helps

http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=190521

I don't know why everyone keeps offering links and advice and stuff, I totally wrote a primer on how to photograph your tank.

Has anybody posted a link to that yet? If not, it's here:
http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=190521

Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man.

Thanks for all the great advice guys! I think my main trouble was that I wasn't using a tripod, and I wasn't perpendicular to the glass. I got some good macro shots by bracing the camera right up against the tank glass. My depth of field is still a bit limited, but I can tell from reading some of the links that if I crank up the lighting (and lower the aperture), then that will get better.

Thanks for all the great responses.

yeah, I've found with point and shoot cameras that the macro or super macro modes work best as far as pleasing depth of field, and if you can't get a tripod close you can usually get enough steadiness by resting the lens of the camera against the tank glass.

trial and error, though. it doesn't cost anything to take pictures, and if you take a few hundred (or a couple thousand, lol), you're bound to get a winner eventually. and don't let any photog tell you they always get it right the first shot.