Olympus E500 and Photoshop CS4 questions (1 Viewer)

[UoH_Chibi]

Since setting up my tank I pulled my E500 out of the bag. I havent used it since I got out of the Navy about 2 1/2 years ago. I went ahead and reset it to factory defaults.

I normally shoot in Raw + a copy of jpeg but I am now just using RAW.
I try to always use ISO 100 with Natural coloring. WB I will either use auto or change it between 6800-10000k. Sometimes I use a tripod but I would prefer to go free hand on all shots. Depending on the shot I will change the Focus area to r/m/l, when taking FTS I set it to auto. I'm not very clear on the difference between the S/C-AF or S/C-AF+MF and which is best to use.

One thing I really don't like in my shots is the background always seems to be matted or very blended. Nothing really seems to come in sharp. In the example photo this can be seen on the wall behind my tank and the coloring between objects.

When using photoshop I mostly do auto corrections and go back and tweak things that I find off, mostly with coloring. Leveling, you basically want all the color waves to be on top of one another evenly correct?

Ive started reading some articles on taking tank/fish shots but even following the basic guidelines I cant get my pics to come in a clear as other users.

Thanks for any suggestions and/or links.

 

[d2mini]

C-AF is continuos autofocus which can be helpful when shooting faster moving fish. You can lock focus on the fish by pressing the shutter halfway and as the fish moves, the lens will continue to focus on it. Some lenses/cameras let you grab the focus ring and focus manually even when the lens is focusing automatically. This would be MF+AF.

ISO set to 100 is best if you can get your shutter speed fast enough. But I don't think I've ever been able to shoot my tank at iso 100. You have to raise it, which will allow you to use a fast enough shutter speed so you don't get motion blur or camera shake. I usually try to keep my shutter speed around 1/100 to 1/200, adjusting iso accordingly. Of course you know that the higher your iso the higher your noise levels, but that's just how it is. Some cameras are way better at higher iso. My D700 can get noise free shots at iso 1000 easily. This is all assuming you are hand holding your camera. If you are doing a FTS or a hard coral shot where there isn't much/any movement, you can use a tripod with a low iso and low shutterspeed.

Your f/stop will also control how much light you let into the lens but it also controls your depth of focus. So the larger the aperture (smaller f-stop number) the more light that's let in and the shallower the plane of focus meaning you really have to be spot on because anything in front or behind your subject will be very soft. You can buy yourself some focus front to back if you close up that aperture to a higher f-stop number but then you are going to need a higher shutter speed and/or a higher iso. It's a balance game.