Need a little help with my macro shots.

[deahtop]

Hello i just picked up a micro 105mm lens for my d90. Im what you would call a Camera Newb and this is my first real attempt at taking pictures to post up on the internet. Im going to post up my first picture. I understand a little about F-stop, ISO and shutter speed, but still a bit confused as how they all come together.


Would like to gather any criticism on this picture. i took it under 20k radiums + t5 atinics, opened up photoshop, hit 10k color temp and hit saved.

 

[deahtop]

guess i need to learn how to post pics aswell lol.

 

[deahtop]

 

[wetWolger]

Biggest advice is you need a higher f-stop (so a smaller aperture). This will increase the depth of field, and will also help make the parts in focus be sharper.

But otherwise it looks nice, the ISO is at a nice level (not too noisy IMO).

Here is how they all tie together (hope this is not overly simplified but I don't have time for more details right now):

ISO - how sensitive your sensor is, the higher it is means that it will collect more light, and thus allow for faster shutter speeds or a smaller aperture....But the higher it is, also means that it will increase the noise of the photo, this is particularly bad for long exposures.

Speed - faster = less light = more action, slower = more light allowing a smaller aperture

F-Stop - The higher the f-stop, the smaller your aperture will be. Meaning the hole in the lens will be smaller, thus allowing less light through. The higher your fstop the larger the area in focus will be, and in most lenses you need to have about a 6.3 or better to get images to in general be good and sharp (gross generalization, just saying most lenses are not sharp when the aperture is wide open). A small fstop means the foreground and background will be blury like your photo (can be a great effect). A small fstop means you will get more light, allowing lower ISO's (less noise), or faster shutter speeds.

It is all about trade offs and what trade offs you want to make with your image.


EDIT**
Sorry I posted too fast. I wanted to respond to your particular settings on this image:
* f-stop of 3.8 - too low to be sharp, try it in the 6.3 to 10 range

* ISO 100 - nice for low noise, but in most cases for macro you end up making too many sacrifices (unless you can do very long exposures, which with aquariums you can't usually)...try using it in the 400 to 800 range (depends on the camera as to when it gets too noisy, with my 50D i can take 1250 ISO photos and still be very very pleased with the results....But I try to not go above ISO 2000, as after that it gets too noisy in most situations, and i can make other sacrifices usually)

* Shutter 1/15sec - It's slow, I would not try going much slower, hopefully more ISO will help you keep from dropping this any slower when you also increase you fstop

 

[francis1123]

when i do macros i usually shut off flow to the tank so i can run i high f-stop, slow shutter, and low ISO. use a tripod, that helps a ton, my hand held macros are awful.
another thing that helps a lot with macros is having a remote switch to activate the shutter. this will pretty much eliminate any camera motion/picture blur. allowing you to have the shutter open for seconds if needed.

 

[Recty]

The other helpful little bit of advice to add is to make sure to take your pictures with the camera perpendicular to the tank. If you dont, you'll get distortion from the glass and no amount of ISO/shutter speed/tripoding will fix that.

 

[deahtop]

second shot at this, this time i used a higher f-stop. stoped flow and used a tripod. next round i plan to mess around with the iso and shutter speed. ive been using a 2 sec timer on the camera, do you think a remote switch would be better?

btw, what sliders in photoshop do you pay most attention to?

 

[the_rider]

Your first picture isnt quite focus or some move blur. You were at 1/13 shutter speed. Where you on a tripod ? Did you use a timer for this shot ? I use a 2 sec delay for long shutter exposure usually when I do more than 1". If not, maybe you werent perfectly at an 90 degree angle with the front glass.

But you second picture is really good. You have to develop the picture using photoshop. Depending on if you shoot in raw or jpeg but you should shoot in raw

I did a little S curve with the curve adjustment layer
Change the black slide just a bit to the right on the level adjustment layer
Run it in noise ninja to remove the noise
resize then unsharpen mask just a tad

 

[Reef Bass]

You're getting the hang of it. I'd suggest resizing your pics down for ease of viewing. I'd reduce pixel size to less than 1000 on the longest size and also reduce dpi to 72 for screen viewing.

Shooting in RAW, the slider I use most in PS is color temp and move it until the pic looks like what I saw with my eye. While at the RAW import dialogue, I also frequently tweak exposure, blacks, and fill. After import, occassionally I tweak brightness, contrast and generally sharpen. My goal is to create an accurate image of what I saw, so I rarely adjust color or saturation other than setting the white balance on RAW import.

 

[wetWolger]

Great progress, just keep playing with it and you will be pro in no time. Based on your EXIF the biggest thing to note is that shooting at ISO 3200 is going to provide way too much noise. But as you can see after some post processing it is still manageable.

 

[lperry77]

3200...yeah!

 

[deahtop]

ok finally figured out how to play with the shutter speed and iso a bit, heres what i got

 

[deahtop]

gotta work on resizing those images

 

[Me No Nemo]

Noise Ninja?

Noise Ninja?

Wow, what a difference! Can you explain what Noise Ninja is and also what you mean by unsharpen mask? Thanks!

Your first picture isnt quite focus or some move blur. You were at 1/13 shutter speed. Where you on a tripod ? Did you use a timer for this shot ? I use a 2 sec delay for long shutter exposure usually when I do more than 1". If not, maybe you werent perfectly at an 90 degree angle with the front glass.

But you second picture is really good. You have to develop the picture using photoshop. Depending on if you shoot in raw or jpeg but you should shoot in raw

I did a little S curve with the curve adjustment layer
Change the black slide just a bit to the right on the level adjustment layer
Run it in noise ninja to remove the noise
resize then unsharpen mask just a tad