decent Tripod this is a must for crisp clear shots.
If you find a wild reptile willing to sit still long enough for me to take out my tripod, set it up, attach the camera, focus and take the shot, then by all means direct me to said reptile.
These shots are good. I agree with a mix of what has been said and different people raise different good points. My take one the whole aperture pref/Manual is that aperture preference is a good setting especially for learning. This mode still gives great control over you shooting but you don't quite have to do everything. I've only more recently been moving to full manual, and only for landscapes or when I'm not using a flash. Don't get me wrong, you should understand F-stop, ISO and Shutter Speed, it's just not necessary to be utilizing full control of them at all times.
Joe your advice about starting at say F8 and moving up to about max F11 is sort of good, however it very much depends on the kind of shots you want. I photograph shots with the intention that from them you can gain a good understanding of the appearance of a reptile from an ID perspective. (That is I'd like to use my pictures in an ID book/site in the future). To be doing this you need your aperture at least up at F13 or F16 or the animal will go to soft around the edges. Extremities like the tail are always going to go soft no matter what, but the more of the animal in focus the better.
I'm not suggesting this is Nicks intention but it is fairly clear he wants to get nice clear shots with the majority of the animal in focus especially when he is shooting centipedes and starting at F8 seems a little low for this to me. I only drop to F8 for things like head shots where I want to have a very sharp centre of focus that rapidly drops out.
Now I admit my advice here has one very major problem, I photograph with a flash, in fact generally I shade any animal I am photographing so that the lighting is more even from the flash. I have found that as a tool to get good pictures of frogs or reptiles a flash is an absolute must have, certainly before any tripod and before any other accessories like extension tubes.
You earlier recommended a 50mm prime macro lens. While I can say I've used these with great success and they are good lenses, I much much prefer a fixed length 90mm or 100mm macro lens and would even love to add larger, perhaps 180mm to my collection. The reason for this are these lenses are still dedicated macro lenses, they are great for close up work, they are great in low light, the 100mm Canon F2.8 USM (and its IS counterpart) is probably one of the best lower level lenses out there. So they have no real disadvantage compared to a 50mm F/2. However they do have one big advantage, that advantage being the distance from which you can use them, if you want to photograph a snake, especially a venomous one, getting close is not always preferred, however getting a close shot from a 100mm lens removes you further from the animal. I find this not just with snakes and such but with lizards especially skinks and dragons and even with frogs the working distance of this lens makes them just that bit less likely to spook and allows you to get nice close shots often without disturbing the animal.
This is just my take. I'm not a professional photographer, I am an experienced amateur in photographing reptiles and Amphibians.
This photo is to show how quickly focus drops out for me at F8
Ctenophorus caudicinctus by
Stephen Mahony, on Flickr
?, is so just the standard 18-55mm
