Jellyfish

[Raymond Packard]

I took this photo at the Atlanta Aquarium too beautiful to pass up, I only hope I can do it justice
Nikon D-70s & Nikkor 75-300 at100mm iso 400 1/8 at f8 hand held.
comments welcome

[Steve Mandel]

Hi Raymond: It is beautiful, they are lovely and wonderful subjects.

The image could use quite a bit of work and I want to give you some feedback on it for the purpose of you improving your skill.
First, it is dark and hard to see much detail in the image. I'm not sure if there was enough available light and flash would reflect off the glass of the tank. The image also appears quite soft and out of focus, hardly any detail there. Also, you see all the space on top of the image but the bottom is cut off. The subject is not placed well in the frame, needs room at the bottom and cropping at the top.

Like I said, they are amazing and lovely animals, keep working on them!

Steve

[David Kennedy]

Raymond,
I would agree with Steve that the image has its flaws. I would suggest that you would have been better served by opening up your aperture to the widest possible (f/8 was simply too small for this kind of indoor photo) and also bumping the ISO one stop to 800 to get a shutter speed faster than 1/8 sec, which is the real culprit for the OOF jelly. (Is this a Sea Nettle?) I spent some time with these guys at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California last July and a constant-aperture f/2.8 lens really helps. I used it wide open in order to get enough light for a motion-freezing shutter speed. Hope this is of some help for future endeavors. Indoor work is tricky!!!

David