A few Pictures with my new toys

[Sinistard]

After several years of jonesing after a dslr to upgrade my several year old "high" end Sony digital camera I finally bit the bullet and got a Nikon D7000 kit. I would have picked up the body only then got a better lens but my local photography store had a several week waiting list and my inpatients overcame my desire to wait. Off to best buy I went.

Naturally I started snapping some pictures with the stock kit lens and was very happy with most shots but I was less then happy with aquarium close ups so I began a quest for a macro lens.

Over a few weeks I researched macro lenses and even rented a used 105 sigma from the local shop. I tried to buy an older Nikon 105 macro from a guy off craigslist but he wanted to much for it then after a good night of poker I decided to buy the new Nikon 105 f2.8g.

Anyways after some practice here are a few photos I took with it of my fresh and salt water tanks. I did not do any post processing as I don't have a program to do any yet (my photoshop and lightroom trials ran out haha). I still have some practicing to do.

Damn Flat worms.......

 

[Sinistard]

and a few more(of coarse these are all ones I though looked decent, plenty of not so good ones ha)

 

[108reefer]

Pictures look great, i have the same camera - and still "saving" for the macro... the pictures all look a little dark - IMO. are you using the aperture mode, or shutter, or auto? curious as to the settings you are using... I found that the kit lens does fairly well on some of the shots, but still looking for the best lens to use -

 

[jbird69]

Sweet! I was drooling over that camera, but Ive got the d3100 and am going to have to make the most of it. What is the kit lens with the d7000? FYI My friend lent me his older version of nikon 105 macro lens and the AF didnt work on the newer nikon body. I was SERIOUSLY looking at the new tamron 60mm f/2 macro. If I still had a tank (sold it 2 weeks ago) I would have more use for such a lens. Ended up getting something else.

Another thing you can mess with to improve your exposure is make sure your Active D lighiting is turned on or stop up your exposure comensation.

 

[kilroy217]

these images are all composed really well, but they basically all seem underexposed. are you shooting with a tripod? if so, you can probably decrease your shutter speed a stop or two. if not, you can bump up the iso or the exposure compensation. great work for an SLR "beginner", and keep practicing!

 

[Sinistard]

Thanks everyone.

jbird, the kit comes with a 18-105 f3.5/5.6 lens (the same one as the d90 kit). I believe that the older 105 macro will auto focus on the d7000 as the d7000 has a built in motor where the 3100 does not. I could be wrong on this but I seem to remember that when I was researching what camera to buy. So far I am very happy with the d7000 and am glad I spent the money on the new 105 macro lens. I really like the fact the the 105 macro is internaly focusing. When I was testing out the 105 sigma macro the lens expanded way out to fucus up close and sometimes bumped into the tank.

For the most part all the pictures were taken on a tripod in either aperture priority or full manual. ISO varied from 100-1600

As far as the exposure I actually under exposed them on purpose. On my monitor and on the cameras LCD when I took a picture using the cameras meter they looked over exposed so I stepped it down around 1-2 stops to compensate assuming I was just getting weird spot metering or something. After you all mentioned them looking underexposed I checked out the pictures on a couple other computers and they looked a lot darker then on my main computer screen. I guess I need to calibrate my monitors and trust the cameras meter a bit more haha.

Thanks again for the tips.