Macro Photography

I recently shipped out a Smartphone Floater to a customer that has a Samsung Note8 phone. His immediate concern was that he was going to flood the box and ruin his phone.  I've been making a type of floater box for iPhones for the past six years or more.  I'm sure in that time, someone has had an accident and got water inside the box because not everyone is perfect.  That being said, I've never had that problem. I put the phone in the box, place it on the surface of the water and hold it where I want to take a picture.

I bought a new lens for my D90 today. I've been having a problem using any of my lenses for topdown photography, even though I've lowered the corals to the rockwork in my recent reef reset.

The camera wouldn't focus, and I couldn't even press the shutter button. It was one of those annoying things I've been putting up with for a long time, raising the camera more and more away from the subject. The minimum focal distance was the hurdle.

Two days ago I took a few pictures of the corals from the side of the tank, but today I wanted to get a few images from above as well. However, the lenses I have require a minimum focal length that frustrates my process. Basically, the corals are too close to the lens for it to focus. Shooting from the side of the tank with a tripod, I can back up slightly to get that perfect distance for a good shot, but from above there isn't much room.  I'm going to try out a new lens soon and see if that works because I love shooting from above.

I took this picture yesterday, and once I pulled out the blue fog via Lightroom, I was blown away by how pretty this coral is.  I see it from the front of the tank all the time, but I just don't get up on the walkboard to gaze down into my reef nearly enough.  Hope you like it as much as I do.

Spock says hi. Shot with a 105mm macro lens.

From time to time, my fish seem to want the spotlight.  I was about to shoot a cerrtain coral and this gal (yes, it's a female Lyretail anthias) decided to swim into the frame.  Fine, if you want to block my efforts, I'll just shoot you instead. Ended up with a really great shot.  

I took a picture of a lobophytum with a macro lens, and loaded that RAW file into Lightroom 5.0 for the normal adjustments.  This picture was taken under 20,000K lighting with VHO super actinics, and I used a flash to add some light from the side to avoid the dreaded shadows...

This is the original picture, only resized for my blog.

Still awaiting the replacement tank to arrive, but that doesn't mean the livestock is on hold.  It continues to grow and thrive, and here are some pictures taken this month.

I've had a group of five Pajama Cardinal fish in my reef now for about 9 months, I believe. They don't move about much, but at night they seem to be on the prowl. These are nocturnal fish, not unlike Bengaii Cardinalfish (wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banggai_cardinalfish).

When I was moving corals, I discovered a peanut worm. Since I've never had one that was out in the open, I grabbed it and my camera.