Photo Journal
 

Nikon D40 using either basic 18-55mm lens that comes with the kit or using the 55-200VR and standing way, way back because I can't afford the macro lens because I keep buying corals to take pictures of....Vicious cycle....enjoy
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Tinkering around with settings, still having some color issues.

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I've made some room in the front of my frag tank for a photography staging area, only thing is once you move a coral to this area it has to retract and the polyps don't look really great, so you have to wait, somtimes just a few minutes, sometimes hours.
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I like detailed macro shots, driving me crazy having to use this cheap lens, but can't afford the macro lens

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WOW!!! everything looks so healthy and colorful...very nice!

Very beautiful pics

Just ordered a Nikon 105mm MACRO AF-S VR lens. This lens should put the below pics to shame. It all comes down to the fine details, just can't capture it with the lens I'm using, macro will make a huge difference. Lens arrives on Monday!
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More.....My Macro lens arrive on Monday
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Oh yeah, I should add that there is no photoshoping or playing around with colors, heck it took me weeks to figure out the camera, can't imagine trying to figure out photo program

Some random pics
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Looks like the tang has skin issues, but it's the glass
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This clown looks like he's got a light strapped to his head and he's out snooping around, weird photo but funny
[IMG]http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p187/maxalmon/a029-1.jpg[/IMG]

Nice pictures I'm sure they'll still improve witht he 105 VR.
A cheaper alternative would have been to add 1-2 extension tubes to your 55-200 that owuld have made the working distnance a lot closer but still doable.
Couple of things I notice: you're shooting at your corals at an angle through glass. this increases the distortions that are more visible on the Zoos shots. try shooting perpendicular at the glass. even if that means not getting a face on shot of hte coral it'll still be better. as you are moving the corals maybe you can put them in a postition where they are facing the glass.
also I seee some increased noise inthose is it because of resizing or are you using higher ISO?

When I ordered the Macro lens I also ordered a set of 3 extension tubes.
I've been setting up a staging area inside of my tank so that corals are perpendicular to camera.
I'm using the softwear that came with the camera (pictureproject) I only crop the photos and save them as a jpeg "larger file suitable for 8x10 photo" or should I save them as something else?
I'm using automatic Macro mode, as I've only been photgraphing for about 3 weeks and still learning what all the settings are.
What do yo mean by "noise" ? thanks for any help!

Don't think you'll need the extension tubes with a true macro lens unless you're after very high magnification ratios. Extension tubes are a bit hard to work with as you will have to focus manually and your DOF will become very thin. getting automatic extension tubes might still allow auto metering however focusing will be manual even if hte extension tube has the contacts to permit autofocus it will be very hard for the lens to focus.
Not familiar with resizing as I use photoshop for that, What I do is to resize the image to 1000 or 800 pixels at the longest size then decrease quality setting to get a file size around 100-300Kb. This way loss of resolution is kept to a minimum. Not sure how you can do that with Project without causing severe losss of resolution.
Macro mode on the camera does not allow it to focus any closer AFAIK what it does is to control focusing area and maybe metering to the common settings that work best with the selected preset. A macro lens will be a lot better for that purpose.
noise is visible in some of your pictures and mostly on this one.

[url]http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p187/maxalmon/c0250001.jpg[/url]

noise results from higher ISO or longer exposure time. it appears more on darker areas of the pictures and amplifies when you increase the brightness of an underexposed shot.
you can try taking two pictures one at the lowest Iso setting on teh D40 (200 i guess) and one ona higher Iso 800 100 or 1600(don't know what the highest ISO on a D40) The difference betweent he two will be the added noise on the higher ISO image. it used to be called grain on film and it was very nice on film however in digital it just ruins hte picture.
It is still better to have some noise because of High ISO than to use lower Iso which will cause longer exposure and more risk of blurr. a noisy piture is still acceptable (to some extent) but a blurry picture is not. also you can decrease noise with dedicated noise reduction software but a blurry shot cannot be fixed.
make sure to post some pictures with the 105 VR when you get it.

Maroun c, thanks for your detailed explanation. I have so much to learn, there is no such thing a buying a nice camera and lens and expecting great photos to "just Happen" There is some serious skill, now I understand when they say someones a "good photographer" geez, I have a long way to go....
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Here are the photos with the 105VR, this is even harder! Macro is not easy!
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So far about 350 pics and the ones above are the only good ones. I'm playing around with a lot of settings, trying to figure things out

Random pics
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Time to update photo journal.
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This pic is just kinda fun, was playing around with colorfilters and decided that this would be interesting, can you imagine if this actually existed...
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Still playing around with settings, the white balance is really tricky. Enjoy
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