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Nothing too flash but a few pics of critters in my aquarium with interesting textures and colours:

fungia coral (no flash through glass on tripod)

and exhalent and inhalent siphons of a squamosa giant clam (remote SB800 from above taken handheld)

Any suggestions/comments most welcome.

To me ,the first one looks soft and grainy, especially compared to the results of the next one, those fungias really do look alien like that. The squammy mantle looks good though, although i think the last one loses a bit from DOF loss as the mantle disappears. I still have some shrimp living inside one of my clams that I need to get a decent pic of, seems like the 105 lens wil ldo the job nicely.

Hi Finno,

Thanks for the reply.

The graininess is a result of ISO1600.

Unfortunately under 150W metal halides it is necessary to push the ISO up which reults in noise.

I agree with your DOF observation. Unfortunately it was unavoidable as due to the height of the aquarium the clam shots were hand held which in turn necessitated a fairly large aperture (f7 off the top of my head) to obtain a suitably fast shutter speed.

I will try ro reshoot both subjects in the near future to see if I can improve.

I wish I had commensal shrimp they would make for an ultra cool subject.
I do have a few commensal acro crabs but they are very timid and hard to capture due to the density of the colonies. BTW how are you going with your macro lense decision making process? Are you leaning in any particular direction?

FYI the fungia's are 5cm acorss. The area pictured about 2.5cm.

The inhalent siphon is about 4.5 cm across. The squammie is about 35cm long.