In a way, this now starts a sequel. A while back I posted Indoor Projects - Take Notes. Coming to think of this just born idea I kind of like it and who knows, maybe the winter about to start will bring whole bunch of other home photo projects that do not require parkas, hats, and gloves.

Aquarium Clown Fish I could not motivate myself to head out today to check out the first real snow dusting of the season. So instead a home project it was. I tried this many years back with my Nikon D200 + Nikkor 80-400 mm + Kenko extension tube combo. I was curious what I could get out of the D600.

The theory has it that the APS-sized sensor crop factor is better for telephoto use since one benefits from the magnification. Well, with the D200 being 10.2 MP compared to the 24 MP of the D600, I can do the cropping myself and still have more pixels left.

So I repeated the set up with two SB-600 flashes on either side of the aquarium fired remotely by the built-in flash, both hitting the side glass, not the front, both sloping down a little, and both manually zoomed to 50 mm. And both set to manual exposure and dialed to 1/8th of power. Manual is the only way to go, otherwise the pre-flashes guarantee a missed moment.

Then, the D600 + Nikkor 80-400mm + 36mm Kenko extension tube to allow for closer focusing, mounted on a Manfrotto monopod. The camera was also on manual, as the flashes. The maximum flash sync. of the D600 is 1/200 sec, unlike the 1/250 sec. of the D200. But at 1/8 power the flash duration should be enough to freeze even the motion of an erratically moving clownfish. I varied the f-stop to balance enough depth of field for the fish and not enough to get the back glass in focus.

For focusing, I used the single point 3D focus tracking today, unlike the last aquarium shoot when I focused manually. While it was a bit of a challenge to watch the focus point jump around trying to follow the erratic fish, the camera did great for the most part and it was somewhat easy to tell when it lost the fish and I needed to aim and start over.

Aquarium Clown Fish - Close Up

By the way, despite having cleaned the aquarium just couple days ago, it's unreal how much detailed photographs like this pick up! Thanks to cloning, I was able to clean most of it up but it may have been more work than scrubbing the glass one more time.

The first photo is about 90% of the original frame down-sampled for posting here. The second photo is a crop at 100% of the size. I think it all worked pretty well given I have not even used a macro lens.

More photos coming once I "clean the glass" :-)

Have fun shooting no matter what the weather brings!

Equipment used:

• Nikon D600 manual exposure, continuous single-point 3d focus tracking
• Nikkor 80 - 400mm zoom
• Kenko extension tube (36mm)
• 2 x Nikon SB-600 (now replaced with the newer and cheaper Nikon SB-700) flash on either side of the aquarium at 1/8 manual power
• Manfrotto monopod
• Manfrotto Swiwel Tilt Head (replaced with 234RC)

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