Funny camera story...

[tjudy]

My brother in law, Mike, who has a hard time mentally grasping the idea that I am a fish-keeping house husband who takes pictures of his fish, went camera shopping the other day. He was looking at the Nikon D40 vs the Nikon D80. I have the D80. When he asked me why I bought the D80 over the D40, I told him I wanted the higher resolution for taking pictures of fish.

So Mike asks the salesman, 'Why should I get the D80 over the D40?" The salesman replied (and this a a quote from my brother in law), "Do you take pictures of fish? If you do you will want to upgrade to the D80."

 

[beleg]

Hehe.. Well D40 is basically a snap and shoot SLR.. I hope to get a D80. Whats the lens you use Ted? I wonder if 18-200VR lens is good for taking fishy pics.

 

[tjudy]

Most of my fish pictures are taken with a Tamron 90mm macro. At a price point $700 less than the Nikon 105mm microVR, I opted for the Tamron. I have not been dissapointed yet. I am about to buy a 2x teleconverter to basically turn it into a 180mm macro. I have a hard time taking images of very small fish because by the time I crop and blow the picture up I lose too much resolution.

 

[Mike Wise]

A 90mm + 2X converter on a DX camera ... that's the equivalent of a 275mm lens on a full frame 35mm film camera. Just how far do you need to be from the fish??:wink:

 

[tjudy]

The problem is that the lens has an 11.5" minimum distance focus, and at that distance a 1/4" fry or even a 1" tetra does not fill even half of the field of view. Normally, hoever, in order to focus on those little fish at all I am further than the minimum, so they are even smaller on the image. Cropping and enlarging then results in a loss of resolution.

I am trying to get pictures of newly free swimming danio fry for the talk I am giving your club in August. And I want you to actually be able to see the fish!

 

[Mike Wise]

August?!! Oh God, does this mean I have to clean up my fish room? Actually, it's in better shape right now than last time.