Mo macro

[Reef Bass]

I'm developing some habits and I'm not sure yet whether that's a good or bad thing. IS0 100 and fs 11-14 are my friends. Maybe I'm just getting dialed in on the lighting conditions in my tank.

As always, I welcome and encourage comments, questions and constructive criticism.

ORA Blue Voodoo:

Devils Armor Zoanthids. Is the image too dark or just a dark subject?

Undata. I notice this subject causes me issues. I should probably explore that. This time I'm wondering if there's too much contrast and / or too much "polyp pop"?

Horizons (?) Zoanthids:

And one of my favorite subjects, ORA Borealis:

 

[handoko]

nice shots Reef Bass.. :eek1: :eek1:

but.. can u show us some more specs from your nice macro shot like wat cam, lens, and so on..

thanks..

 

[Reef Bass]

Thanks handoko. Much of that info should be listed with the EXIF info with the shot. I'm happy to list it here also.

My camera is a Canon EOS 50D. I'm using the Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens. All my reef pictures are taken from my 100 gallon tank which is illuminated by 2 400w MH lights with 20,000K bulbs and 2 4' 54w T5 actinics. I mount the camera on a tripod and shoot remotely using my laptop to control my camera. For the last shot above, for example, I used ISO 100, f11 and 0.8" shutterspeed. I shoot in Av mode using RAW image storage. I load the RAW shot into Photoshop Elements, set the white balance, tweak brightness, contrast, etc., resize for screen display and save off as jpg to post here.

 

[nightOwl]

Reef Bass,
Man you are really making me think about getting this macro lense before my walk around lens. I am loving that last shot.

 

[Reef Bass]

Thank you.

That last one is a favorite of mine as well. Several of what I feel are my best pictures feature Borealis as the subject. I have a couple other brown body blue tip corals (ORA Blue Vodoo, ORA Roscoes Blue Tip) and my images of them are good but not great.

Borealis brings green polyps to the party which contrast nicely with a diffuse purple coraline background. Plus it's not shy with its polyp extension. For me, polyp extension brings visual interest. The other element is of course its position in the tank and hence the way it is lit. It's about 1/3+ of the way up in the 24" tank slightly forward of the overhanging lights which adds a touch of backlit translucence to the polyps.

Trying to specify a formula for the success of that image, it would include having the brightly lit (for a reef tank) yet not overexposed polyps sharply focused in the foreground with medium depth of field showing the foreground subject well while allowing proximal items to blur and the background to be completely diffuse.

Compositionally the sharply focused foreground polyps are not dead center and their offset position is counter balanced by the softly focused strongly protruding background branch and its polyps.

It also satisfies my macro desire not to see the whole piece, but to get lost in the piece.

I figure if I can understand what I did right, I stand a better chance of doing it again down the road.

I'm hesitant to recommend getting a macro lens as one's first lens, as it is not good for general purpose use. It has worked for me because I have such a strong macro lust and a decent point and shoot megazoom (Canon S5IS) that handles non reef shots for me currently. I look forward very much to my birthday when I will pick up the 24-70 L lens as my walk around and the point and shoot will be reduced to "didn't want to bring the dSLR" duty.

 

[Heart & Sole]

Love the last shot of the Borealis. Nice work.