Light, shutter speed, macro, and focus.

[Oplis]

So I've been doing most of my photography indoors lately, and the biggest consistent problem I'm finding is that my photographs don't come out as sharp and focused as I feel they could be, especially compared to others I'm seeing. And I'm having especially lower rates of good photos with a macro lens I've been trying out.

My feeling is that the shutter speed just isn't fast enough and so camera shake is having more of an impact, despite using vibration reduction.

I find myself shooting with my aperture wide open and shutter speeds of around 1/40, max, if I'm lucky and getting really good light (for indoors).

The lens is about as focused as I can get it, I've tried both auto and manual focus to see what difference it made (which was none).

I've used tripods and gotten some excellent shots, but my tripod isn't exactly top end and is hard to set to hold the camera on a particular subject, and I don't have a remote for the camera, so I still get some shake even with a tripod.

Any input or opinions on this? Or ideas of what else may be the problem?

There's some books I've been meaning to read, I just haven't had the opportunity to acquire them and read through them yet, so for now I've just been lurking here and experimenting. If you have any books that I should throw on my list, let me know. I'm particularly interested in macro photography.

Examples:

The last one is what I would consider good for what I've been getting otherwise.

 

[tirediron]

You've already identified your problems; lack of light and poor/missing equipment. Macro photography is a specialized discipline, and almost all of the truly spectacular macro photographs you see are the result of a lot time, effort and money. I don't like to trumpet the "You have to buy more gear to get better pictures" tune, but in this case it's true. You really do need a remote release, a GOOD tripod, and lots of light.

Having said that, I think that a lot of your problems could be improved with more light. Since your images seem to be mostly of aquarium fish (ie moving subjects) you really need to get your speed up to 1/125 or higher. Try bringing in more light, even a couple of worklights or similar to shine down and across the tank. You also need to get your aperture to somewhere in the middle if possible, f8 - f11 as that is generally the sharpest part of the range.

 

[Overread]

Even with a rock steady tripod and remote release shooting any living moving subject will require that you have one of two key things:

either:
1) A very fast shutter speed to ensure that motion blur is not a concern
or
2) A setup dominated with a fast instant light source - ie flash. This latter method works by having the splitsecond flash light being the majority lighting in the exposure (so that without the flash the same settings would give a black - under exposed - shot.)

You might also look to making a light tent type setup around the fish tank; depending how big the fishtank is. That would help give you a more even lighting as you add more lights to the setup

 

[NateS]

I won't argue with needing more gear. You need to decide something first before making a purchase. Do you want to do primarily natural light macros or do you want to do macros with flash. Natural light and you will want a good tripod as your next purchase. Flash, well....you will want to get a good flash, bracket, sync cord, and diffuser. Both will probably cost you the same amount of money. .....but with flash you can handhold your setup instead of being restricted to a tripod.

You really can handhold at 1:1 and even beyond with proper lighting. Look at my website in my sig. 99% of my shots were using flash, and were handheld (probably 100%). Not only that, I was told by many that it was impractical to think I could handhold a 180mm macro and get good shots. I handhold my 180mm macro + tubes and tc's at 2:1 to nearly 3:1. You just need to get some better lighting and then practice, practice, practice your technique.

 

[Oplis]

Alright, good to know I'm on the right track of identifying my problems.

That's what I figured but part of me kept saying "it might not be the equipment's fault". As that seems to be a general theme I've picked up in regards to good advice for beginner's

Maybe if I get a fairly mild day I'll take the camera outside in broad daylight and see what sort of difference that makes.

I think I'm going to do some more reading before I decide exactly how I want to approach this (natural vs. flash). I don't intend to do all of my photography indoors. It just happens to be ungodly freezing and miserable outside this time of year.

Thanks for the info.

For now (since this is just hobby and not professional), I'm thinking I might look into enhancing dark photos with photoshop, and seeing if I can't just make due with digitally enhancing photos that are a bit dark, but more focused. That way I could at least lower the aperture and use a quicker shutter.