First Time Macro Shooter.

[JER-Z]

Hi everyone,

I just got a Canon Rebel XTI and Tamron 90mm f2.8 Macro lense for xmas.

I am new to SLR photography so here is the best of my first attempt at macro shots. Taken w/ a tripod using the timer function. Image was resized, no cropping.

Tips and suggestions welcome!

 

[JER-Z]

A few more...

 

[JER-Z]

one more..

 

[Brewen]

Great pics thanks for sharing..

 

[GSMguy]

great shots i have the same camera and my macros are great with just the standard lens 18-55mm

 

[jeffbrig]

Are you shooting in manual mode? The 5th picture (acan?) and a couple of others might benefit from having more depth of field. With a tripod, don't be shy to push the aperture higher and take very LONG exposures.

 

[JER-Z]

most of them were done in macro mode, but i will play around with the ISO settings tonight. Thanks for the suggestion.

 

[05Xrunner]

macro is fun. wait till you try to do bugs and they are always on the move. It takes some practice to handhold but its fun. What fstop did you use on the pics. looks like you gotta a big depth of field on a few.

 

[joker_ca]

man those are some nice pics

 

[JER-Z]

the first pic had the following settings...

Tv: 1/100
Av: 5.6
ISO: 400
Exposure Compensation: 0
White Balance: Auto
Focal Length: 90 mm

the others i don't remember off hand and can't pull them up from work. thanks for the positive encouragement everyone

 

[05Xrunner]

yea get out of the auto mood...if you got a tripod shoot in AV mode at like f9-11

 

[JER-Z]

cool i'll try that tonight...ISO at what? 800?

 

[05Xrunner]

noooo..if you got a tripod use ISO 100
dont gotta worry about camera shake...just make sure the corals are not moving. if you have to bump the ISO to compensate for stopping any slight movement with faster shutter speed. if they are still use ISO100

 

[jeffbrig]

I don't think it's a "must" to shoot at 100. With these cameras, you can easily get away with 200 or even 400 before you lose any visible quality to ISO noise. ESPECIALLY if you're resizing down to share pics on the net.

I like to limit my shutter duration to <1 second when possible, to minimize the chance of a fish swimming throguh the shot.

 

[05Xrunner]

well yes I know u dont have to...I have shot ISO1600 and had very little noise. its just to have a nice clean image is great..shooting at ISO400 would be fine and probably not even notice the noise.

 

[JER-Z]

well i messed around with the Av mode settings and I think they look worse than the auto macro mode, lol. what do you think? IMO they looked washed out and overexposed.

Pink Mille ISO 200 Av 11.0

ORA blue Mille ISO 100 Av 16

ORA blue Mille ISO 100 Av 32

A. Sarmentosa ISO 100 Av 16

Yellow Mille ISO 100 Av 16

 

[05Xrunner]

they look better I think...plus the Auto mode is going to do a bunch of extra in cam post processing to it..the creative modes give you MUCH more control of how the images come out of the camera.
Play around with the white balance.
Or shoot in RAW and then use the Canon Digital Pro software that came with the camera to process the pics....I think you will be MUCH more pleased with that.

 

[jeffbrig]

I usually shoot my tank at what the camera "thinks" is underexposed by 2/3 or a full stop (I shoot in manual mode exclusively). Of course, everyone's lighting and and rock colors are a little different, but this is a good place to experiment and see what brings out the best color reproduction in your tank. Also, feel free to try different white balance modes/tweaks, or use something like photoshop to clean it up afterwards.