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RE: Camera play: Aperture

Umm_fish — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 13:30:47 GMT

I have another example of the difference your aperture settings makes. Both of these photo were taken at 5x lifesize. The first was taken at f/2.8. Honestly, I would have been happy with this depth-of-field and magnification had it been one of my aquarium inhabitants before I started playing more with my camera. The second photo is at f/16 (the smallest I can get from that lens).

BTW, the reason I was able to get this shot is that a cold front just hit and the floors in our house are very cold. It's just not warm enough for this little guy to run away from the camera.

RE: Camera play: Aperture

Umm_fish — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 08:23:32 GMT

Were all of these taken with just the ambiant room lighting?

No, I have a macro flash that goes on the end of my lens. I need to play with that, though. I found out last night that, given the choice, the 20D will base all of it's decisions on ambient lighting and will only use the flash as fill lighting. That doesn't make a lot of sense in macro shots because so little of the ambient lighting is going to get to the camera sensor anyway. So, if I can get the flash to fire full out, I can probably reduce those shutter speed times by quite a bit.

But, you can get decent photos without the flash. Your shutter speeds will be much longer and the shadows will be deeper (I like that part), so you will loose a lot of sharpness to your image. But, I often like the color better on photos without flash. Of course, that's probably more to do with me as a photographer rather than an inherent limitation on using flashes.

Also, flash that is bounced or angled from above the tank would make for better photos.

I think that depends on the situation and what you're shooting, but mostly true. I usually try to shoot with my lens pushed all the way against the glass whenever I can for a couple of reasons: (1) That ensures that I will be flat to the glass (shooting at angles to glass really sucks), and (2) that way I don't get any glare from the flash off the glass in my shot. The wonderful thing about the macro flash that I have is that each of the two mini flashes are detachable from the ring and can be placed where they'll do the most good for the shot. They really do a good job when I'm trying to do microphotography.

Using a tripod is a must of course.

Yes. Absolutely. My tripod is out of commission (the one flimsy part on the whole tripod broke, of course, and made the whole thing useless). But, the setup on the counter with a manual shutter trip was really stable for these shots. There are people out there who get good shots handheld, but they must take a _lot_ of photos to get anything useful.

Would it be possible to take any through water photos & post results?

Well, as I said I don't really have a lot of corals to shoot at the moment. We're in the middle of the renovation process and living in a rent house. What corals I have are in plastic tubs and (gasp, horrible for photography) bow-front nano tanks. But, I'll see if I can find any square glass or acrylic containers around.

RE: Camera play: Aperture

CTReefer — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 07:38:07 GMT

Hi Andy: Very interesting photo shoot! Were all of these taken with just the ambiant room lighting? Did you manually focus the camera or was it on autofocus? It would be interesting to compare pictures taken through tank water. Obviously, you would have to use the flash in order to get decent photos. Also, flash that is bounced or angled from above the tank would make for better photos. Having the camera as close to the glass and straight in line with the subject is also beneficial. Using a tripod is a must of course.

Would it be possible to take any through water photos & post results? That was a good exercise in the use of a changing f-stop for depth of field. Thanks for taking the time.

I am still considering purchasing the Canon 40D.

Steve

Camera play: Aperture

Umm_fish — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 21:19:41 GMT

Hey guys! I don't know if you all know this, but I'm a freelance typesetter and I unexpectedly had a day without work today. I decided that I'd spend some time with my camera trying to teach myself how to get better shots of my aquarium. The shots I get are mostly fine for what I want to do, but I do want to improve.

I thought it might be cool to share the results. Then again, it might just be boring. You tell me.

For those of you who don't know, I shoot with a Canon 20D. My favorite lens is the Canon 100mm/f2.8 macro lens. I also used the Canon Canon MT-24EX Macro Twin Lite Flash for these shots.

I wanted to set up a situation that would mimic taking macro photos of corals. I wanted small pieces that would look like polyps and I wanted to set it up where there were different levels and a lot of complexity to the composition, just like we find in our tanks with corals that we can't move to make things easier on ourselves. But, I wanted to also take away the problems of shooting through water and glass so I could get some easily reproducible results where I could control most of the variables. Well, that and I don't have many corals at the moment.

So, I found a seedhead of Queen Anne's Lace. That's a flower that I have in my garden. The seeds are in a circular pattern and have little burrs that look a whole lot like coral polyp tentacles.

I set up the seedhead on my kitchen counter, propped up on a bottle of blood red fingernail polish (Halloween _was_ just yesterday). I just simply plopped my camera setup down on the counter. Ambient light was the fluorescent under-cabinet lights and the ugly spotlights in the kitchen. (Man, they are ugly.) I did use a remote shutter release to try to keep my grubby hands off the camera. I didn't use the mirror lockup feature of the camera (and you can really see it in the f/32 photo).

By the way, I do shoot in camera RAW format. That means that I do have to do some exposure adjustment in Photoshop. For all of these photos, I made these values the same:

Temp: 3750 (For some reason, RAW color temps are the opposite of lighting. The bluer colors are lower values and the yellow colors are higher).
Tint: 0
Exposure: 0 (I like my photos a little darker)
Shadows: 35 (Again, I like my photos a little darker)

I left the rest of the values alone.

I'm shooting these shots in "Aperture Priority" mode. That means that I had manual control of what the aperture value (the "F-Stop") would be and the camera automatically made decisions regarding what the rest of the values would be. That makes it really easy to get a bunch of quick shots of the same scene, just by rotating one control. You'll see below that changing the F-Stop made a dramatic difference in how long the shutter would be open. That's something to definitely keep in mind.

Let me present the overall photos first. Photo details follow the shot.

IMG_8343.cr2
Shutter speed: 1/10 sec
F-Stop: f/2.8
ISO: 100

A really quick shutter speed, but as you can see a really shallow depth of field.

IMG_8342.cr2
Shutter speed: 1/6 sec
F-Stop: f/3.5
ISO: 100

IMG_8341.cr2
Shutter speed: 1/4 sec
F-Stop: f/4.5
ISO: 100

IMG_8340.cr2.jpg
Shutter speed: 0.5 sec
F-Stop: f/6.3
ISO: 100

IMG_8339.cr2
Shutter speed: 0.8 sec
F-Stop: f/8.0
ISO: 100

IMG_8338.cr2
Shutter speed: 1.6 sec
F-Stop: f/11.0
ISO: 100

IMG_8337.cr2
Shutter speed: 3.2 sec
F-Stop: f/16.0
ISO: 100

IMG_8336.cr2
Shutter speed: 15.0 sec :eek:
F-Stop: f/32.0
ISO: 100

The difference that changing the F-Stop made is really quite astounding. But, the question becomes: Can you keep your corals still long enough to take some of the shots with the looonnnng shutter speeds.

As an aside, notice that at the higher F-stops, you can really start to see the dust specks on my lens or sensor. Time for a cleaning!

I also made some crops that include roughly the same group of seedpods throughout this series. Here are those shots:

IMG_8343.cr2
Shutter speed: 1/10 sec
F-Stop: f/2.8
ISO: 100

A really quick shutter speed, but as you can see a really shallow depth of field.

IMG_8342.cr2
Shutter speed: 1/6 sec
F-Stop: f/3.5
ISO: 100

IMG_8341.cr2
Shutter speed: 1/4 sec
F-Stop: f/4.5
ISO: 100

IMG_8340.cr2.jpg
Shutter speed: 0.5 sec
F-Stop: f/6.3
ISO: 100

IMG_8339.cr2
Shutter speed: 0.8 sec
F-Stop: f/8.0
ISO: 100

IMG_8338.cr2
Shutter speed: 1.6 sec
F-Stop: f/11.0
ISO: 100

IMG_8337.cr2
Shutter speed: 3.2 sec
F-Stop: f/16.0
ISO: 100

IMG_8336.cr2
Shutter speed: 15.0 sec :eek:
F-Stop: f/32.0
ISO: 100

Thanks! I hope this helps someone decide to start messing around beyond point-and-shoot.