Some photos

[frankyrivera]

Jroovers I am new to macro and I find conflicting advice. Most say shoot at the lowest iso of which I do then they say to shoot at a smaller aperture such as f16 or f11 but when I do that my shutter speed gets very slow. In lots of your pictures they are razor sharp across most of the coral do you get really close or do you shoot farther away and then crop. Do you have a sweet spot for shooting fish vs corals sort of like 125th s for fish do you shoot in aperture or shutter priority or full manual sorry for all the ?'s I'm just trying to perfect the skill and it seems like you got a good handle on things any advice is great. Your anthias pics are razor sharp and vivid. Even with all I've invested my pics still suck very frustrating

 

[Tradewinds]

Thanks, glad you enjoy them. In the shots with the darker background, it helps that the back of my tank is painted black. It also helps I find to expose for the fish - sort of similar to shooting white birds - you really want to expose for your subject, not the surrounding. I find when in evaluative metering underexposing by 1 stop and sometimes a bit more gives that effect. You could also spot meter and meter for your subject that way, but I'm too familiar with the evaluative metering nowadays and don't use spot metering, I just try and compensate based on experience.

I've so much to learn, thanks for sharing your techniques.

 

[jroovers]

Jroovers I am new to macro and I find conflicting advice. Most say shoot at the lowest iso of which I do then they say to shoot at a smaller aperture such as f16 or f11 but when I do that my shutter speed gets very slow. In lots of your pictures they are razor sharp across most of the coral do you get really close or do you shoot farther away and then crop. Do you have a sweet spot for shooting fish vs corals sort of like 125th s for fish do you shoot in aperture or shutter priority or full manual sorry for all the ?'s I'm just trying to perfect the skill and it seems like you got a good handle on things any advice is great. Your anthias pics are razor sharp and vivid. Even with all I've invested my pics still suck very frustrating

Sorry I didn't respond sooner, just saw this now.

Shooting at a low ISO and a smaller aperture is going to be tough with reef photos. The smaller your Av (the higher the number such as 11 to 16), the less light you are letting in to the sensor and the higher your ISO and lower your shutter speed will have to be to compensate.

I shoot exclusively in manual. I try and keep my ISO to 640 or lower... the lower the better... 800 and above the noise becomes evident. For coral shots, I shoot anywhere between 5.6 to 11. I've tried shooting wider open but the depth of field is just too thin... lately I've found the 5.6 to 9 range is better.

I typically shoot different for moving fish than coral. Coral is easier IMO - you can shut off all the pumps, set up your tripod, focus manually or automatically, and then use the timer to get a razor sharp image.

Fish, shooting handheld obviously, be careful to make sure you aren't putting your lens to an angle to the glass. I'd try and jack up the shutter speed a bit at the expense of the ISO, which will help give you a sharper image. I'll post some of my settings on some of the above pics, and hopefully that will help you out.

I do crop a lot of my photos, but not too much - the ones I do typically crop more are the corals that located deeper in my tank and that are harder to compose relative to the corals closer to the glass.

I've so much to learn, thanks for sharing your techniques.

Thanks, learning is all part of the process - the more we can share here, the better off we'll all be

 

[jroovers]

These are all at 90mm with the Tamron 2.8

1/320, f4.5, 640

1/320, f4.5, 640

1/320, f4.5, 640

1/500, f4.5, 640

 

[jroovers]

These are with the Tamron 90 as well, handheld

1/50, f5, 640

1/125, f5.6, 640

1/125, f5.6, 640

1/125, f7.1, 640

 

[jroovers]

Tamron 90, with tripod and timed shutter release

1/60, f11, 640

1/200, f6.3, 640

1/10, f16, 640

1/40, f11, 640

 

[frankyrivera]

Looks like for the most part you found a sweet spot setting your iso @ 640. On the shot of the anthias your shutter speed is amazingly fast did u use a flash to illuminate the fish. When shooting fish in assuming your lights are on full mostly white for the sake of helping you white balance images. Great pictures. When you soot with an overhead flash do you use a diffuser how close to the water surface is the flash thank you for all the advice

 

[jroovers]

Looks like for the most part you found a sweet spot setting your iso @ 640. On the shot of the anthias your shutter speed is amazingly fast did u use a flash to illuminate the fish. When shooting fish in assuming your lights are on full mostly white for the sake of helping you white balance images. Great pictures. When you soot with an overhead flash do you use a diffuser how close to the water surface is the flash thank you for all the advice

I would say 640 is the max I'm willing to push my ISO before I feel the image quality begins to suffer due to noise. On many other types of camera body, especially the full frame ones, you'll get away with much higher ISOs and not have noise issues. However, on the 7D, which has a crop sensor, the noise becomes evident at relatively lower ISOs.

On the anthia pictures, my LEDS were off, and I turned off two of my four T5s. So not that much available light really. Without the LEDs on, the images are much easier to white balance, both out of the body and in PP, where just minimal tweaking is needed. I turned the LEDs off for those photos as I felt the warmer colour of the T5s complimented the orange and yellows of the anthias better than with the LEDS on as well, which are more in the 22k range of colour. In PP, I didn't touch any of the saturation or vibrance - it is straight out of the camera colour. I didn't use a flash either - I haven't even tried with my reef photos even though I have one - I don't really see the need to use one. I like contrasty images as opposed to images where everything is illuminated evenly. The shutter speed is relatively high indeed, but not crazy high. For fish, which move around, I use a higher shutter speed compared to corals, which are stationary for the most part. When shooting birds in flight, 1/1250 to 1/1600 is the typical starting point - with shutter speeds much faster often being used. So to me the 1/300 to 1/500 range still seems pretty low.

 

[scuzy]

Awesome shots, if i need to wb on my 7d would focusing on a big piece of white pvc i place in then using that cwb as a set point work good with my leds on?

 

[frankyrivera]

I understand the higher shutter speeds for birds but you have the advantage of the sun flooding your sensor with all the light you need however when shooting at the tank I would imagine that shutter of 500 no flash and a smaller than 2.8 aperture you would lose some light yet your pictures are stunning lol maybe I should've bought a canon lol. I try again tonight

 

[jroovers]

Awesome shots, if i need to wb on my 7d would focusing on a big piece of white pvc i place in then using that cwb as a set point work good with my leds on?

You can try that, if it works out let me know! I never had much luck trying to custom white balance with the 7D. I set my WB to the highest specific k temp it will allow me, which is 10,000k. I then further adjust the WB in post processing Lightroom 3. You can also further adjust the WB in post using Digital Photo Professional, the software that came with your camera.

I understand the higher shutter speeds for birds but you have the advantage of the sun flooding your sensor with all the light you need however when shooting at the tank I would imagine that shutter of 500 no flash and a smaller than 2.8 aperture you would lose some light yet your pictures are stunning lol maybe I should've bought a canon lol. I try again tonight

Do you shoot mostly in evaluative metering as I do? Try switching over to spot metering (or whatever the Nikon equivalent is) and you'll be surprised to see how different the metering might be, especially if shooting fish. What might show as evenly metered in spot metering (e.g. "0") might be very underexposed in evaluative metering (-1 or even -2). Just remember that you are exposing for your subject, not necessary the whole frame. Also, if you underexpose a shot, it is easier to recover the exposure in post and maintain IQ than if you overexpose and try and bring back down in post - usually that is much harder to do in my experience.

 

[frankyrivera]

I'm sorry did you just start speaking Chinese I believe this is where my weakness lies I understood everything you said up until you started talking about metering. Sorry you got me lol

 

[jroovers]

I'm sorry did you just start speaking Chinese I believe this is where my weakness lies I understood everything you said up until you started talking about metering. Sorry you got me lol

When I bought my first DSLR, I thought I had gotten a lemon because I couldn't "live view" shoot - the LED screen wouldn't show what I was aiming at like a P & S would. The reason for this is because you should be looking through the viewfinder and seeing what your camera is measuring in terms of light. The scale from -3 to 0 to +3. "Metering" is seeing where your body is measuring the readable light in the scene. An evenly exposed shot is a 0. Underexposed is typically one or two "stops" below this, and overexposed is above 0.

Your body will have different metering modes. For Canon (I believe Nikon uses some different terms), evaluative metering mode measures the average amount of light in the whole viewfinder. For "spot" metering, it measures the light of the very center of the viewfinder. If you have a white bird against a black backdrop for example, your spot metering value is going to be very different than the evaluative metering example, as one is measuring the exposure of just the white bird, where the other is measuring the "average" light of the whole scene. If you are unfamiliar with metering, I would encourage you to pay attention to the light meter in your viewfinder the next time you take some shots. Also google metering modes Nikon or exposure compensation and check out some tutorials on those topics, will definitely help you out in terms of understanding your camera body and metering modes.

 

[frankyrivera]

I always use my viewfinder when shooting and only rely in the LCD for playback I did notice the little meter for nikon it's like <....0....> Sometimes when I play with that scale I purposely underexposed a bit but the evaluative vs spot is not something I've ventured into yet. Ill do some google searches and read a few books on the topic maybe that's myissing link thanks again

 

[scuzy]

This is what i get with custom white balance

 

[jroovers]

I always use my viewfinder when shooting and only rely in the LCD for playback I did notice the little meter for nikon it's like <....0....> Sometimes when I play with that scale I purposely underexposed a bit but the evaluative vs spot is not something I've ventured into yet. Ill do some google searches and read a few books on the topic maybe that's myissing link thanks again

Yes, all SLRs will have a light meter built into the display. It may not make an immediate impact knowing the different metering modes, but definitely knowing how to expose properly in different situations will certainly help your overall photography.

This is what i get with custom white balance

Is that under LEDs too? Looks pretty bang on to me. You used PVC?

 

[scuzy]

Yeah thats under maxspect razor leds, i just custom white balance off a big piece of pvc first

 

[scuzy]

Here is my sohal

 

[frankyrivera]

That's about as white balanced as it gets right there sweet sohal

 

[scuzy]

Thanks yeah he's a super fatty