Frustrated by quality of Macro Pics - Nikon Coolpix 5000

[sanjay]

I am getting frustrated with my macro pics taken with the coolpix 5000. The pics look OK at 50-66% of the full size, but when I look at them at 100% they are not sharp. I am using a tripod.

Any tips and suggestions. ? I especially have trouble taking pics of corals that are further behind in the tank.

Depth of focus also is an issue, when I shoot in aperture priority mode and set a higher depth of focus, there is not enough light or the shutter speed is too slow.?

Do I need additional lenses ?

I would like to keep this discussion limited to coolpix 5000, unless there are some common techniques applicable to macro pics of corals.

sanjay.

 

[NKT]

Hi Sanjay, something I found pretty useful when taking coral macros was turning off all circulation in the tank. It really helps to have a non-mobile subject especially at slower shutter speeds. Something else that might help is setting the camera on timer, instead of pushing the button manually. As far as corals in the back of the tank...that's a little tougher issue to deal with...as far as I know there isn't a good solution for that. Hope this helps!

 

[jamesw]

Hi Sanjay,

Chances are that you will need an external flash to get good macro shots. You want to shoot the 5000 at the highest f-stop ad a minimum shutterspeed of 1/60th. 1/90th would be better.

If you can borrow an external flash and a cord that connects it to your camera's hot-shoe, you will be able to get much better macro shots.

I find that when I shoot through my glass at an angle, my photos aren't sharp either. I have a horrid time shooting through "non-optical" glass.

I also echo what NKT said - you should turn off your pumps.

Also, at high fstops in macro, you won't get much Depth of Field - it's a physical property of aperture and focal length that you must live with. Try to get the foreground subject in focus and out of focus elements in the background will be blurred, but this can and does look OK.

I hear that the Nikon 2t converter lens also helps a lot when focusing further back in the tank.

Because of the Bayer pattern pixels, all digital shots will need sharpening in Photoshop. Go to Filter - Sharpen - Unsharp Mask and set it at around 100 with a radius of 2 and a threshold of 2 and see what happens.


Cheers
James Wiseman

 

[mkirda]

I am getting frustrated with my macro pics taken with the coolpix 5000. The pics look OK at 50-66% of the full size, but when I look at them at 100% they are not sharp. I am using a tripod. {snip}
I would like to keep this discussion limited to coolpix 5000, unless there are some common techniques applicable to macro pics of corals.

sanjay.

Sanjay,

It is all about light...

There are common techniques that apply to all macro pics. The biggest one is that you can almost never have too much light. My film camera uses a flash with a guide no. 134. That is a LOT of light. And yet, I have times where my slides are underexposed due to insufficient light. The flash needs to be very close to the subject- I often shoot an an effective aperature of f64...

Advice: Get an off-camera flash and cord. Look at the SB-28 with an NC-17? cord. Should run about $300 now. I think you will get better results. I have also found that using a flashlight to assist in focusing can really help.

For the Coolpix 5000, I would only shoot f5.6 or f8 and expect any meaningful depth of field. Shoot as high as it will allow.

Hope this helps.
Mike Kirda

 

[dgasmd]

Beisdes what has been said, there are other basic things. Make sure the gleas is as clean as it can be and get the lens as close to it as possible before you shoot in timer mode. Even with the tripod. I ahve the same problem shoorint at things in the back of the tank, especially since my tank is 36" front to back.

 

[sanjay]

OK. using some of your suggestions here are 2 pics. They are definately better than what I was getting. Thanks for the tips.

Let me hear what you think about these, and what could be improved. I will be borrowing a SB-50DX flash and remote cord SC-17 and will try it with the flash. These are taken without a flash.

sanjay

 

[mkirda]

OK. using some of your suggestions here are 2 pics. They are definately better than what I was getting. Thanks for the tips.

Let me hear what you think about these, and what could be improved. I will be borrowing a SB-50DX flash and remote cord SC-17 and will try it with the flash. These are taken without a flash.

First shot is under-exposed, but well focused. Second shot, the focus is wrong. You do not have nearly enough DOF to have all in focus. Exposure was better though.

Have no idea how far you have come, Sanjay, but the first one is a pretty decent image. I think you will be happier with them once you borrow the flash though. It took me a lot of rolls of film to get to where I am mostly happy with my images. The best thing about digital is the fact that you can practice with 100's of images at little to no cost.

Enjoy!
Mike Kirda

 

[NKT]

Hi Sanjay, first of all that is one interesting looking coral! Those are some neat-looking polyps . The first pic is quite good, focus is pretty much there...aperture can still be bumped a little higher to make the rest of the coral in focus. As far as brightness a little bit of tweaking in photoshop should bring out the color nicely.
The second pic, as mkirda said, isn't focused properly. I think the coolpix allows you to select areas of focus, so perhaps playing with that will give you better results. Also, you mentioned before you're shooting in aperture priority... if you can, try to play around with the manual settings and see if that won't get you better results. It takes a bit of trial and error but the results are worth it. Good luck!

 

[wade1]

Another tip for focusing with the coolpix is to set the exposure/focus by depressing the shutter button halfway and then moving the frame of reference a bit, although its hard to tell for certain what you have in the small lcd, it can make for some nice images.

Wade

 

[jamesw]

Turn on "Focus area mode" in the menu. This will let you tell the camera where to focus, as opposed to it choosing. You can move the brackets around and choose Center or one of the sides or top or bottom.

Otherwise, the camera often chooses something "wrong" to focus on.

Cheers
James

 

[Anonymous]

Also remember that a lot of things can be fixed in post-production. Let me get home from school and I'll play around with a couple of these in photoshop. Or PM me and I'll give you my email...you can send me the full-sized versions to play with.

-John

 

[Anonymous]

Here's the first one after about 10 minutes of fiddling with some basics in photoshop.

 

[Anonymous]

Here's the second.

 

[sanjay]

Sharky:

What tweaks did you do in Photoshop ?

sanjay.

 

[Anonymous]

Sharky:

What tweaks did you do in Photoshop ?

sanjay.

Sharky:

What tweaks did you do in Photoshop ?

sanjay.

On these I just did a 'quick&dirty' edit of them, so lost a little of the quality (mostly due to resizing for the web...a nifty feature in photoshop).

When I really work with a photo, though (which usually takes me around a half hour or so), I do usually go through roughly the same steps...

1. Adjust contrast & brightness. I use Photoshop Elements and it has a pretty good automated feature. I usually set the black point and set the white point, though, then fiddle around with the grey point to find a nice balance.

2. Adjust color. PE lets you adjust shadows, midtones, and highlights separately, as well as saturation. Depending on the primary color of the coral, I play around adjusting this and that and just see what looks more natural. Digital cameras are notorious for washing out colors somewhat, so what you see on the monitor is often not as vibrant as what's in the tank. Almost always I boost the blue a bit, the red/magenta a bit, and the saturation. The hard part is not overdoing it, because it ends up looking fake if you go too far, at least to reefkeepers. (If you look on some of the photo sites like photosig, you'll often see supersaturated photos of corals that are beautiful, but totally unnatural.)

3. Sharpen/Unsharp Mask. I only do this one sometimes. The Unsharp mask is a trickier function to use, but gives better results. If you go too far, though, you end up with a lot of noise in your photo.

4. Advanced stuff. Sometimes I'll have to work at fading the background a bit. One of your shots could benefit from that, as the background is very similar to the subject color in some areas. To do that I'd smart-select everything but the primary subject, then soften the background, fade it a bit, etc. to make it less obtrusive.


That all sounds pretty complex, but mostly it's just a matter of spending a couple hours playing with the software and a few different shots and seeing what works and what doesn't.

-John

 

[azcaddman]

Here's my shot at it

1st trick, mask out the foreground, so you're not applying (all) the adjustments to everything

oh, one other thing, make sure your monitor is properly adjusted

if you dont have something to calibrate it with try

http://www.zonezero.com/calibration/english.html
or better yet
http://epaperpress.com/monitorcal/

 

[sanjay]

NICE !!

So now I have to not only learn to take good pics but also get better at Photoshop !!

sanjay.

 

[Anonymous]

NICE !!

So now I have to not only learn to take good pics but also get better at Photoshop !!

sanjay.

Yup, one of the drawbacks to digital photography--it almost always looks better after it's been run through some post-work.

 

[azcaddman]

The trick is, to make adjustments, and not have it obvious that you did.

Art M

 

[investigator1]

I took that same original picture and tweaked one section of it. Hope u like it!