Super Macro

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seaducer

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Location
New jersey
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Hi all,

Just a question on macro and super macro shots. Those tiny shrimp in the anenome shots? For an example Alcina's bubble coral shrimp pic in the Ningaloo thread.

BTW that is a beautiful shot...

Are those pics taken like that? Or are they more or less normal macro shots that are then zoomed and cropped on the computer after the fact? Surely that shrimp didn't look like that in the camera?

I ask, as there is NO WAY I can get a shot like that with my setup, though looking through my shots I found an anemome shot that had a shrimp in it. My quality settings were far too low to make that pic work, but I could change those on future dives...
 
Depends on your set up.

The Oly 5050 has no trouble with shots like that. There are add-on lenses for compact cameras that will help increase magnification.

With dslr there are several lenses that will give you 1:1 or close to 1:1 and then you can also add Woody's dioptre to your port.

Sometimes you know your camera can't get the size ratio you want, so you take the shot to the limits of your rig with the aim of cropping for the final image.

On that particular shot, it's just a full frame, not cropped.

I think the only image that was cropped was the yellow moray - off the top of my head, I think I shot the frame one way because my rig wouldn't fit for the way I wanted the shot, but I knew I wanted the final image to look as it did. So I shot the way the camera fit into the space, set up my composition (such as it is) for the final cropped image in my head and cropped him when I got back to the computer.
 
I'm kind of new to the game as well and it seems that crop is a 4 letter word in the underwater photo community. This puzzles me because most modern cameras can crop right inside the camera. I'm always cropping something although it usually costs in terms of quality at some point. It's a rare day when I get that perfectly framed shot that wasn't cropped in some way. I think I've finally arrived at conscious incompetence when it comes to underwater photography. In other words, I know how bad I am..haha. Stacked lenses and 1:1 macro take extreme dive and photo skills. So I'm always in awe when I see it done right.
 
I'm kind of new to the game as well and it seems that crop is a 4 letter word in the underwater photo community. This puzzles me because most modern cameras can crop right inside the camera. I'm always cropping something although it usually costs in terms of quality at some point. It's a rare day when I get that perfectly framed shot that wasn't cropped in some way. I think I've finally arrived at conscious incompetence when it comes to underwater photography. In other words, I know how bad I am..haha. Stacked lenses and 1:1 macro take extreme dive and photo skills. So I'm always in awe when I see it done right.

...would be nice if you could always just take the photo straight out of the camera with no post processing, but often it needs a bit of "help" - either because of a non co-operative subject or simply your setup (either for that dive or in general) is not able to get exactly as you want. Cropping will reduce the number of pixels, but how many of us will ever print an 8x10 picture - mostly it ends up on a web page or computer screen where the cropping doesn't harm the pic.....and i'd prefer to see a good cropped pic that the photog liked rather than lots of very average "almost" pics....and one day I'll get a dSLR underwater and hopefully reduce the amount of post processing i currently need to do !

For cool subjects I always try and take multiple pics - it is interesting to see how some very small differences make the difference between good, average and bad ! (although if taking mutliple shots you have to balance your desires with the being nice to the queue of camera wielding divers behind you !)
 
Hi Drew

Can you post us details of your camera setup? There is a wealth of experience here on the add on lenses alcina mentioned, maybe someone has a similar setup and can offer advice.
 
Hi Drew

Can you post us details of your camera setup? There is a wealth of experience here on the add on lenses alcina mentioned, maybe someone has a similar setup and can offer advice.

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

My setup is a Sealife DC500 with digital strobe and removable wide angle lens.

As I mentioned, I had taken a pic of an anenome that happened to include a shrimp, when I blow the image up, or zoom in, I get a similar effect to what I am hoping to achieve, only things are blurry zoomed in. I did notice that my settings were middle of the road for file size and quality. I have adjusted that for my next trip and hopefully I can get a shot or two.

I had feared the answer would be that you need a profesional setup to achieve that type of result. I am thinking that while the better camera's will improve your good to bad ratio, I might be able to pull off a shot or two.

I have a long way to go though. Every now and then I get a few shots like the ones posted here, only mine are accidents still at this stage, lol
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/

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