I’m not sure I’ve ever actually seen them feed the sharks, though. Maybe they think the kids would be traumatized! They just feed the turtles and other fish.

Surprisingly, when I looked back through my files, I saw that the last time I attempted to take pictures in the aquarium was May 2010, and I can’t bring myself to post that particular shot.

I had the camera set to “auto,” as always. I didn’t even know how to turn off the flash.

Here are several earlier pictures, though, from trips in October 2008 and June 2009:

In the first one of my son, there’s an obvious bright reflection from the flash. The second one of him reflects his face in the glass, probably because I was angling the camera away from the glass to avoid the flash reflection. In the bottom row, the jellyfish are… less than attractive. And while my daughter is much more attractive, I can’t even tell from the picture that we’re at the aquarium!

This right here is the number one reason (of many) that I want to learn photography! Not surprisingly, it’s a lot more fun to look back through the family album, remembering the good times, when we can see what we were doing.

Last week we visited the aquarium for the first time in several months. This time, I knew how to turn the flash off. Annie called while we were in the dark lower level. I might have danced and sung a little over the phone because I was so excited that the pictures were finally turning out!

I posted this one already, on Wednesday’s post:

Quite an improvement from the first shot of my daughter at the jellyfish tank! And… she’s so much taller…

I took all of my shots from this aquarium trip in aperture priority mode (Av on Canon’s big dial).

In fact, I’ve been stuck in aperture priority mode for a few months now. It has improved my pictures incredibly, so I haven’t really understood why I should be interested in switching to manual…

…until Wednesday night, when I read this post at Mom and Camera, where she explains how she chooses exposure settings for different photography situations. It’s finally starting to click!

I had wanted to post last week’s jellyfish pictures to show the improvement. As I went back through the shots and reviewed the settings, I saw for the first time how I could have taken better pictures if I had been shooting manual.

In the picture above, the only thing I was selecting was the aperture.

And this was only partially true… I set the aperture to the lowest number possible (letting in maximum light) by turning the vertical dial that is located just in front of the big dial. I was using a zoom lens, though, and as I zoom in and out, the lens has to adjust the aperture automatically just a little.

The camera took its best guess at selecting the other settings for me. For the jellyfish above, the settings were:
Aperture: f/5.0
Shutter speed: 1/125
ISO: 3200

Here are a couple more, with the settings.

Aperture: f/4.0
Shutter speed: 1/60
ISO: 2000

Aperture: f/4.5
Shutter speed: 1/50
ISO: 3200

With the ISO so high, there is graininess, if you zoom in on the picture a lot. I’m happy enough with that for these pictures! The ISO is at its maximum for this camera, so there really isn’t a lot of leeway with the other settings.

It was when we got to the shark tank that I would have chosen different settings than the camera chose. It knocked the ISO way down, which means less light registers on the “film,” so to speak. And then it compensated by slowing the shutter speed to let in more light!

I would have chosen a much higher ISO and a faster shutter speed. Many of my shots aren’t very crisp, probably due to camera shake.

Aperture: f/3.5
Shutter speed: 1/40
ISO: 250

The shutter was open for 1/40th of a second, leaving plenty of time for me to shake enough to cause blurriness. At least 1/60 would have been better, and 1/100 might have been a safe bet. I wonder how this picture would have looked if the shutter speed had been faster.

The only way to know for sure is to take another field trip to the aquarium! I might be even more excited for the next trip than the kids are…

And, because I like these pictures, here are a couple of my favorites of the day, reposted:

This little turtle is swimming away from us here, but that’s only because the kids had left the tank and were waiting for me at the door. This was a very friendly turtle. He came right up to the tank and obviously was wanting to interact. Was he hungry? Trying to protect eggs?

(Do they do that?)

Or maybe he was begging for a scratch behind the ears?

Where are this guy’s (girl’s?) ears, anyway?

I don’t know.

Obviously we have some reading to do before our next trip!