My journey into photography (formerly "Newbie questions")

[freezetyle]

I have recently come across a canon 5d. it has a canon 28-105mm lens on it. in order to get some of the close up shots i used a few of the magnifying filter on it. i can't seem to snap a decent pic in the water. Could there be too much distortion from going through both the magnifying filter (hoya 1+, 2+, 4+). I know i have the shakes a bit so a tripod is the next investment.

here is kind of the best i can get.

[Sunee]

Hi. I am not familiar with the equipment you are talking about but from the pictures it looks to me like a depth of field problem. It appears that small parts of your pictures are in focus. To get more of your subject in focus (front to back - depth) you need to increase the depth of field or the f-stop (5.6 and higher should give you better results). I don't have any links but if you do a search for depth of field I bet you will find alot of helpful articles/tutorials with better explanations than mine.
A tripod will also help if you are shakey.

[don.ald]

progressive has meantioned a photo taking workshop in the works for the near future. waiting for that
for me, i cant figure out the white balance thing??

[Sunee]

I have taken numerous courses in photography and they really help. White balance I understand but being able to set the white balance on my camera is another story. I only have a point and shoot since I stopped using my 35mm camera. It is supposed to be a "one push" setting Ha Ha so I just use the Auto white balane for now. If the course is good they should go over white balance and how to set it with your camera. Good luck!!

[SmallFry]

I think like Sunee said it's a depth of field issue. I've got a close up filter too but haven't tried it in the tank. Still, outside the tank, I get similar results to you - the depth of field is just insanely shallow (it's a 4+). The only thing you can do really is take the shot at the highest f-stop you can and with the shortest focal length lens you have (or a zoom at it's shortest setting) both will give you a greater depth of field. The trade off with the f-stop is exposure time, so a tripod would help lots with those longer exposures, though it's amazing what you can do with a beanbag, books or any other random stuff you have lying around, if what you're photographing doesn't move around too much.

There's a setting on my ancient eos 350d that has the camera try to get you the best depth of field automatically (labelled A-DEP on the main rotating selector dial on the top right of mine) - may be worth a try...

Failing that the old faithful solution is to pretend that's what you wanted!

I think the ultra short depth of field looks quite good when you use it to highlight the particular part of the shop that is of interest. Just be careful about selecting your AF points to make sure the camera is focussing on the exact area of interest since there's little latitude if the camera picks the wrong place.

For what it's worth I really quite like some of your shots.. If only there was enough light in my tank to take some shots that didn't look really dim or have blurred fish..

[freezetyle]

Thanks for all of the help. I think part of my issue is getting the idea of one or two good shots out of a group of 100. Practice, Practice, Practice... Patience.