1st Attempt at aquarium shoot

[NickRummy]

Can't say I'm pleased with the results. :sad2:

Seems like every picture that has more than about 2-3" of water in between the lens and the subject turns out terrible. I think it's just debris in the water?

Here are a couple I liked but still not great. I borrowed a Tokina 100mm 2.8 Macro lens from a friend of mine. Used my D200. Suggestions? I mainly shot in Aperature priority for this first round. I think next time I'll control the ISO too as they are a bit grainy.

 

[IslandCrow]

Granted, they're small versions, but your noise level looks very acceptable to me. Just make sure you don't sacrifice depth of field (f-stop) or shutter speed in order to use a lower ISO. I see two big problems here. First, you need greater depth of field for most of these photos. . .i.e. larger f-stop. It depends on the lens and the subject, but I'm usually using an f-stop of at least 11 when shooting aquarium macros. The second issue is your photos are lacking a little contrast, which can be easily fixed in post. I hope you don't mind, but I took the liberty of editing your clownfish picture. All I did was adjust the curves in order to add some contrast, and I gave a little boost to the color saturation:

I could have also applied some noise reduction, but like I said earlier, I don't see a significant noise issue.

 

[NickRummy]

Granted, they're small versions, but your noise level looks very acceptable to me. Just make sure you don't sacrifice depth of field (f-stop) or shutter speed in order to use a lower ISO. I see two big problems here. First, you need greater depth of field for most of these photos. . .i.e. larger f-stop. It depends on the lens and the subject, but I'm usually using an f-stop of at least 11 when shooting aquarium macros. The second issue is your photos are lacking a little contrast, which can be easily fixed in post. I hope you don't mind, but I took the liberty of editing your clownfish picture. All I did was adjust the curves in order to add some contrast, and I gave a little boost to the color saturation:

I could have also applied some noise reduction, but like I said earlier, I don't see a significant noise issue.

Thanks! I didn't want to over "shop" it but I do like the enhancements you did.

I picked up on the f-stop issue after looking through the group of photos on the computer. I just got the lens from a friend to mess with and was intent on using the 2.8 f-stop to help with shutter speed but soon realized the distance of what's in focus is REALLY shallow which is understandable. I'm going to try and shoot some more stuff soon and will up the aperture to get more of the subject in focus.

Just out of curiosity though, it's a 2.8 lens but for some reason the aperture seems to be dependent somewhat on focal length? When focusing on something close (around 12" away) it would only stop down to 3. Any idea why? I tried in aperture priority mode and manual?

 

[GhostCon1]

I think your pics look good, especially the last one of the hermit. I don't know why but it seems to have a lot of character in it.

 

[bigdog69]

pics look real good four ur first time

 

[flaj75]

I think the pics look great, I'm still researching a camera and lens to take close ups of my tank. I still have a point and shoot camera.

 

[IslandCrow]

Except for the upper end lenses, the maximum f-stop on most zoom lenses will increase as you zoom in. And you hit on why this happens when you talked about focal length. If you look at the way f-stops are written, you may realize it's actually a ratio. For example, let's take f/4.0 on a 100mm lens. In this expression of aperture, the "f" is for focal length. So, in this example, 100mm/4.0 = 25mm. . .so, that means the actual aperture (i.e. opening) at the front of the lens is 25mm. . .this is a somewhat theoretical number with the more complex modern lenses, but the principle is still the same in actuality. Now, let's say f/4 is the maximum aperture of this lens at 100mm. . .i.e. the opening can't get any bigger than 25mm. Let's also say the lens zooms out to 200mm. . .so, we've changed the equation. To set f/4, we would now need an aperture of 200mm/4. . .or 50mm. . .oops, the lens has gotten longer, but we don't yet have the technology to make the lens any wider. What this means is that an f/4 aperture is no longer possible in this scenario. Fortunately, the camera figures all of this out for us, so we don't have to work algebra equations while we're trying to take pictures.

OK, that's a really long answer to a simple question. The simple answer is, "yeah, that's normal".

 

[IslandCrow]

OK, I just realized I got my posts confused, and you're not using a zoom at all. What mode are you shooting in (M, AV, TV, etc.)? If you're shooting in M or AV, the camera shouldn't be changing your f-stop on a prime (i.e. fixed focal length) lens. Are you sure you're looking at the f-stop? I don't know if you just used 3 as an example, but that's not a valid f-stop. At 1/3 stop increments (the smallest any SLR I know of uses), 3.2 is the next stop after 2.8. Now, if you're in TV or Auto exposure modes, as the scene changes, the camera may change your aperture to compensate. It's not actually a function of distance from the subject.

 

[NickRummy]

Sorry was just throwing a random number out there for the F-stop.

I did find out why the aperture changes based on focal length though. It has to do with "effective aperture" which I posted about in this thread.

 

[Rich D]

I personally like the shallow depth of field look. I like the clownfish and xenia pictures a lot.