lukeROB
Contributor
justleesa:Thanks....I'll try all that too!
I now shoot fully tele with macro, as I have the macro lens now it allows closer focusing when at the tele end. The focus is definatly finicky and the DOF is bad.
Fixes take a least 3 frames, set apeture to max (as said already it is strobe lit anyway). Set shutter to something high depending if you want black backgrounds, but against anything but blue water this is going to have little effect. My camera can still sync at 1/500th I usually use about 1/250 minumin for this short of shot.
Final trick is manual pre-focus. That is I move the focus down to the minimum focus distance mine is 25cm for macro at tele. Since the macro lens allows closer focusing of about 10cm I just slowly move in until the image is focused in the LCD. This is often hard to tell as you are working with very small DOF but a couple of shots usually gets a usable photo. This is my new number one complaint about my camera though is that focusing is such an effort for these type of shots (my favourites). But when you get a good one it is worth it.
This is a photo I took at full tele, using auto focus, this was one of only two frames shot. I could look and see how sharp it was underwater and didn't bother harrassing the poor thing anymore. This has had no sharping at all. Only adjustment is -5 brightness and +2 contrast in PS7. I took several like this while in Bali and the results I think are awesome. Before I could focus this close it was never worth using tele as getting closer with wide filled the frame better.
