Macro Tips Please

For those of you who take macro shots, do you have any particular settings for your camera. Do you set the aperature/f-stop to a particular size? Do you control shutter speed? Any info would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

alexoki:

For those of you who take macro shots, do you have any particular settings for your camera. Do you set the aperature/f-stop to a particular size? Do you control shutter speed? Any info would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

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see my response in the canon section...

did I hear "macro"

anyway

Aperture is everything in macro. smaller is better due the limited Depth Of Field " DOF" ( the distance between the nearest and farthest area between the lens and subject which is in "acceptable" focus ). The closer you get the shorter this distance becomes. Aperture has a great affect on this. large apertures ( smaller F # ) reduce the DOF and small apertures increase it.

Therefore, Try to use the smallest aperture ( larger F # ) available on your camera and that your flash will be able to properly expose.

shutter speed is not an issue, just use the fastest one that syncs with the shutter. or just shoot in aperture priority mode ( if you have that option )

this is the beginner mode, for special affects like a lighter water background requires more precise aperture/shutter speed control

Edit: I stupid, ignore.

more macro tips

get a spotting light, helps the camera focus on the subject! In most cases with small apertures the flash will over power the light so it will not show up in the image

Chris

Thanks for the sound advice. I am interested in your comment about a spotting light. Are we just talking about a small underwater flashlight? Whats the setup for this?

Depending on the camera that you used. I use both point and shoot (Oly C5050) and dSLR Nikon D70. For point and shoot camera, I tend to use the highest F stop (F8 for C5050) to get the widest depth of field. Sometimes it is fun to experiment with narrower DoF for certain pictures but usually the LCD screen doest not have enough resolution to show accurate DoF so I just leave it at F8. Usually I am about 6-18 inches away from the subject so shutterspeed around 1/125-1/250 will work with my lowest setting (1/8th power on Ikelite DS125) or next lowest (1/4th). If I want a black background, sometimes I would go up to 1/1000 s since the Ikelite is quite powerful and F8 is still fairly bright. I keep my Oly at ISO 64.

For dSLR, DoF is significantly smaller than point and shoot camera at the same F stop so I end up using around F22 most of the time. D70 only go down to ISO200, the strobe power at around 1/2 power to start with.

focus light is handy in low light situation.
I don't always use it as certain subjects like a goby will not stay still for long when you shine light on them. It also depends on your camera's ability to auto focus.
Usually a small flashlight mount on top of the housing or on top of a strobe will do the trick.

ssra30:

Depending on the camera that you used. I use both point and shoot (Oly C5050) and dSLR Nikon D70. For point and shoot camera, I tend to use the highest F stop (F8 for C5050) to get the widest depth of field. Sometimes it is fun to experiment with narrower DoF for certain pictures but usually the LCD screen doest not have enough resolution to show accurate DoF so I just leave it at F8. Usually I am about 6-18 inches away from the subject so shutterspeed around 1/125-1/250 will work with my lowest setting (1/8th power on Ikelite DS125) or next lowest (1/4th). If I want a black background, sometimes I would go up to 1/1000 s since the Ikelite is quite powerful and F8 is still fairly bright. I keep my Oly at ISO 64.

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Thanks, I had no Idea that the point and shoot digis had limited aperture settings, In the future I will add wording in my posts such as ( highest available f stop )

flash sync at 1/1000? now thats interesting?

second, why do the small digi cameras have better depth of field? I would guess that it has to have to do with the lens ( 21 mm on my old 3040 ).

thanks for the info

With C5050 and Ikelite housing, I can hardwire the sync cord to Ikelite strobe. In manual mode (no TTL), the flash sync can go up pretty high. Don't know how fast you can go in TTL mode since I did not get the Ikelite upgrade for TTL.

Same story with D70, flash sync is listed at 1/500 but with Ikelite strobe in manual mode, flash sync will definitely go to 1/1000 or faster.

Someone explained to me once about why DoF on point and shoot camera is wider than dSLR. Something to do with size of CCE or something, I tend to fall asleep and my brain goes numb when I hear something like that. There used to be a table somewhere on the internet that list the DoF of C5050 at various F stop and it definitely is quite a bit wider than dSLR.

Same story with D70, flash sync is listed at 1/500 but with Ikelite strobe in manual mode, flash sync will definitely go to 1/1000 or faster.

Thanks

The D70 is looking quite attractive. the faster sync may do ownders for my shots with the sun in the background, something the Fuji S2 fails at

Chris