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All shots Nikon D300 with Nikkor 60mm f/2.8D, SB-800 and DIY collapsible soft box.

Andrew
Some tough subjects in a tough environment. Image # 3 really captures the subject beautifully. Some of the others cry out for a little more depth of field....perhaps it's time to get that lightweight carbon fibre tripod and retire that elusive monopod?

Thanks for the comments, Matt. All but the last image were shot at f/16 so I probably couldn't have got much more depth of field. The last one was at f/8 and I should have taken one at f/11 and f/16. I'm not sure how a tripod would help me get more DOF seeing I was using flash for lighting.

cry out for a little more depth of field

I agree, then I looked at the exif - f16! that first one has a very narrow focus band there! I have plenty where there are several dots/hairs in focus and the rest is OOF composition is really key for macros...

My favorite is teh third image, when I saw these fungi my first thought was the sails on the opera house and tried to capture that in my images, however I think you have done it better here Andrew. Also your WB is spot on, the colour of the fungi is correctly represented.

With that last image, how about framing it so teh big fungi is in the bottom right and the little weener fungi is in teh OOF in the top left ? basically move the frame to the left. Easy to say in hindsight

biggerry wrote:that first one has a very narrow focus band there!

Yeah... the fungus was quite small so magnification is high.

biggerry wrote:Also your WB is spot on, the colour of the fungi is correctly represented.

Made easy with the soft box and Lightroom. I have white balance presets for all my soft boxes so I just have to select the appropriate one. The presets were made by shooting my gray card and using the WB dropper in Lightroom.

biggerry wrote:With that last image, how about framing it so teh big fungi is in the bottom right and the little weener fungi is in teh OOF in the top left ? basically move the frame to the left. Easy to say in hindsight

I didn't even notice the little one at the time. In hindsight, I should have gone for f/16 and moved in a little close to eliminate the smaller one.