Macro help please.

[Alexander]

I borrowed this lens from a friend that did a ton of nikon 35mm photography. its an old lens, but knowing nikon it would fit on my body. First. it says micro, this is the same as macro with lenses or no?

First im going to be honest I am not even sure what the best setting is for the lens. I started on 3.5 and then moved up to 8. Honestly It didnt make a huge difference like my other lenses do. I shot everything in RAW with 250 ISO and used a tripod too. Seems like there are a lot of detailed lines that have a blue lines that come off of some lines almost like an old rear projection big screen that is off on the convergence. Anyways I took 44 shots and as far as im concerned all rubbish. here are a few. If there are any tips you photo experts can give me I would appreciate it.

seems like with these mushrooms I could not bring them into focus no matter how hard i tried.

 

[SeaBee]

Looks ok to me. Try stopping down more, since you have a tripod. Go for f16 or greater for better sharper focus, but it will increase your depth of field a little. The color looks ok, maybe a little dark? Play with the exposure time a little as well. It's ok to go a little on the bright side since its a digital its free to play around. Good luck.

 

[SeaBee]

Also, what's the minimum focus distance? maybe you were a little too close with the mushrooms. Back up a little and try that. Is it a zoom? The lens looks real old to me, it could be internally knock out of focus too....

 

[Alexander]

9.5 inches is the minimum

 

[Smitty]

I don't know much about cameras and lens, but those sure are some stunning photos.

 

[Alexander]

Im thinking its just a crappy old lens.... Even this picture seems like it would have came out way better on my f1.8 lens. It just looks really grainy.

 

[RyanG]

I think part of the problem, at least with the mushroom shot, is deflection from the glass, I was having a similar problem yestuday when trying to shoot the zoanthids on my sandbed.

 

[Alexander]

Yeah I'm not sure, I didn't shoot at any unusual angles. Shot at angles where I have definitely produced better quality images, so I don't think that's it. Never know though

 

[Picasso]

Alexander, Anytime you add a lens to your camera that you're not used to using, it will kind of throw things out of whack for a while. You're getting a lot of noise in your shots. I found this about your lens: 55mm f3.5 Micro-Nikkor-P Auto

Read up on your lens and its capabilities. I'm not quite sure which version you've got. Keep some notes, set your camera in one spot and take a picture, change only the settings and do it again. Write down your settings. Change only one thing at a time, go through your aperture settings, then your shutter speeds, then ISO... Once you get to know the lens it will come faster for you. You got some nice shots but I agree, your camera should give you better than that.

Catherine

 

[Reef Keeper]

That's a beautiful Chromis(?) super rich colors. And great polyp extensions too. Looks like that lens brings out some nicely saturated pictures if they haven't been manually adjusted.