close-up of tropical fish shot with macro lens

Photo Close-up Tropical Fish

I recently splashed out on a new Tamron 90mm macro lens which cost an arm and a leg but the quality is quite stunning. I just had to try it out and the weather was too miserable for any outings so I took some shots of my tropical fish, something I have been meaning to do for years.

I used a couple of small studio flash heads borrowed from work and positioned them above the tank as close as I could get. This gave me a shooting aperture of f32 and so plenty of depth of field. When shooting close-ups keeping everything in focus from front to back is always a problem so you need lots of light, either direct sunlight or a big flash.

There is a very handy gadget called a ring flash which screws on to the front of your lens like a filter. These can be very useful if you want to take a lot of macro shots in poor light.

As the fish don't take posing directions very well I had to take a lot of shots in order to get a few pleasing compositions. I particularly like this one as viewing angle is quite dynamic and it reminds me vaguely of the 'Charlie's Angels' posters. (Yes I know there were three of them)