Taking those awesome coral macros... a question of placement?

[Hookup]

G'day...
I'm always blown away by the close-up coral macro shots that so many of you post. I am having problems re-creating the effect. I have the gear, and the technique, but something is not comming together.

I want to ask, do you move the corals for the shots? Do you place them closer to the glass?

The reason i ask is my tank is a corner bow, meaning a bunch of my corals are 2feet deep in the tank...


Secondly, do some of you edit out the backgrounds, dodge/burn the heck out of them to mute them down?


Thrid, can you verify my process.

1) turn off pumps
2) get tripod, use remote shutter
3) ISO 100 or 200
4) Focus, settings - I try to do sub 1sec shutter
5) click...
6) get disapointed in light room ;(

I admit the last step is all wrong.. but hard to eliminate at this point.

I'm using a Canon 20D + 100mm macro from canon... I konw the gear is good enuf... it's all photographer...

Thanks,
Tim

 

[Recty]

Just a quick word of advice, if you're shooting through a bent front pane like a bowfront has, you'll have distortion problems and your shots will never look nice and crisp.

Yes, a lot of the really really zoomed in pictures you see of corals are because people "stage" their stuff up front of the tank so they can get great magnification.

 

[Misled]

So Tim, you wonder why you rarely see pics of my tank, but there's pics of almost everything else.

Just a quick word of advice, if you're shooting through a bent front pane like a bowfront has, you'll have distortion problems and your shots will never look nice and crisp.


That's it. Unless you can shoot from a side, the distortion will always be there. You can try to get the coral as close to the front glass as possible and that may help some, but the distortion will always be there.

You can use a topdown box.

 

[Hookup]

Thanks Recty & Jesse... For some reason I never considered the bowfront as an issue... I mean I see clearlly thru it, all be it not at a macro-shot kind of focus.. I'm no Steve Austin...

I feel less stupid and yet still not bright all at the same time... weird.

 

[TitusvileSurfer]

Sounds like you need one of these to!
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1707203

 

[Reef Bass]

You've been well served. +1 for bowfront curves wiping out your clarity.

TS's suggestion about a 10g photo tank is good. You could also do a plexi "lens condom" - acrylic box into which one inserts the lens / camera - and then you can work from the top of the tank and shoot any coral at any angle (because you'll always be shooting straight through the front / bottom of the plexi box which itself is flat and not curved).

As far as staging corals goes, it's a good idea if your straight on shot is blocked or if the coral is so far back in the tank that you can't get the shot you want. I'd guesstimate that I've moved the subject for photo taking about half the time. Of course, if the frag is encrusted on a large rock which can't moved for whatever reason, you'll need to shoot it as it lies or go with the plexi camera / lens box.