Banded Coral Shrimp [Critique]

Of several shots of these guys, there always seems to be some part that is out of focus.

That 1st shot would've been spectacular!!!

Just make sure to keep the eyes in focus. Even with an uw digicam and min aperture it would be a real challenge to acquire focus from the near tips of the antennae to the tail. You will need to select the focus point, and try to keep the out of focus areas from being distracting.

I agree with Kasey - when DOF is minimal using 50's 60's & 100+ - stick to the eyes. This way you aquire a soft gradient slipping into the background. Anything like antennae are distracting unless paled out.

Another option for shooting shrimps is the 3" depth of field method using a close focus zoom - Record the main subject in the image with all of the superficial information in RAW, save as a TIFF then crop out everything you don't require - As you know in film lingo this called selective duplication and the end result is everything inside the 3" will be in focus (over the length of the critter), anything not required is OOF. The file after cropping is still large enough to produce good quality prints.

I think Jamesw used a similar method on a shrimp image - It works well.

I think this is what Bob is talking about Scott. Here is an image I shot w/the S2 and the 60mm my first day diving w/ the camera:

The shrimp is about 1" - 2" long. You can see what Bob is referring to - about 3-4 inches of DOF is all you get (Remember, cause of the 1.5x crop factor on the camera, you get 1.5x the DOF).

Now here are the tight crops to eliminate the out of focus areas:

First, eliminate theh OOF area in front of the subject. OOF behind is fine:

Now get in super close and check out those eyes!

My tip for obtaining macro focus w/ the S2 - Set the camera in single servo (not continuous focus). You can use the shutter half-press to lock focus. Now look through the viewfinder and move in or out until the eyes are in focus.

HTH

James

Very Impressive Tutorial.

Eric: Maybe you can Copy the two replys of Bob & James in a Thread in the Tipps & Techniques Section.

Simon

You have reaffirmed my suspicion. Relying on the cameras high resolution capabilities and sharpness of the lens, in my case 60mm, you should back away from the subject slightly instead of trying to achieve minimum focus distance. This allows for the entire subject to be within DOF and then you crop as needed.

I was trying to fill the frame with the subject as much as possible as you would a WA shot.

I have also noticed, now that I am on my work computer (CRT monitor), that my pics are too dark again. This is because my wife confiscated her monitor and I have been editting on my LCD again. The photos are much brighter on my LCD.