How to photograph a frag table?

jrp1588 · Mar 16, 2022

Hey all, I'm a long time reefer and graphic designer that recently got a job at my local reef store to do design/marketing/photography (basically living the dream (though the money could be better

)). I took a couple photography classes in school, and used to be quite the shutter bug, but I've never worked with a DSLR before. I know the basics of aperture, shutter speed, ISO, RAW, etc and I'm pretty familiar with post processing from my previous design experience, but I've got a few things to learn.

I'm working with a Canon EOS 6D, and I've got a 100mm Canon Macro lens with IS and a top down viewing box lens cover thing. It does great with fish shots in specimen containers, and even better with in-tank shots of my corals, but the dang thing is USELESS with the frag tables, which is to be expected since the frag tables are about a foot deep, and the lens's minimum focus distance is about 12".

The owner is willing to shell out a bit for the RIGHT equipment, and I've been trying to figure that out, but I'm fully in the weeds shopping for this stuff. The article up top about extension tubes looked promising, but this lens seems to have pretty narrow depth of field as is, and I gather extension tubes will only exacerbate that.

What equipment would YOU recommend for this task? Also, here are some pictures I've taken in the 2 weeks I've worked here, just for funsies.

blaxsun · Mar 17, 2022

What's a frag table?

jrp1588 · Mar 17, 2022

blaxsun said:
What's a frag table?

A frag tank. Just a wide shallow tank.

jrp1588 · Mar 18, 2022

Well, we're taking the shotgun approach and renting a bunch of different macro lenses and an extension tube set to see if any of that helps. One of them has a ~5" minimum focus and claims to have a wide field of view, so hopefully one of them does the job.

maroun.c · Mar 21, 2022

Extension tubes will allow you to focus closer but depth of field will be too limited except maybe for small frags, and you do want a lot more of the Coral in focus.
mother lenses like the 60mm macro will allow you to focus closer.
it might be best to have a deeper tank and maybe a tripod or slider that supports your camera above that tank. You’d have to place the corals you want to take pics of couple days before in that tank to have the polyps open and the frags to look nice….

jrp1588 · Mar 21, 2022

maroun.c said:
Extension tubes will allow you to focus closer but depth of field will be too limited except maybe for small frags, and you do want a lot more of the Coral in focus.
mother lenses like the 60mm macro will allow you to focus closer.
it might be best to have a deeper tank and maybe a tripod or slider that supports your camera above that tank. You’d have to place the corals you want to take pics of couple days before in that tank to have the polyps open and the frags to look nice….

Yeah, that sounds about right from what I've read. We rented a handful of lenses which should be coming in today. Hopefully one of them will do what I want since deeper tanks aren't really in the cards. He's already got like 6 of these custom super shallow tanks.