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I have questions in regards to photographing subjects like the one below. What is the best setup ex.. lense focal length for taking pictures of pets to show off the detail and gather color quality? I currently have a tamron 300mm macro zoom that will get close but all around is not working well as you can see. Any help is appreciated.
-John
Shooting an animal with a 300 macro while standing in front of it doesn't always work because of the focal distance required to shoot with that big of a lens in the first place. If you're in a position to photograph your pets up close, I always recommend the 50 fixed with the biggest aperture you can find. You can do one of two things. Set your aperture down to about 11, back up, get the whole animal to focus, then crop out later so you have the entire subject focused, or you can hike your aperture WAY up to 2.8 or even 1.8 get close up, and make a dramatic statement with only part of the frame being completely focused, the rest of the animal will "stop out" and blur. It's all a matter of what you like. As for the color, if you can shoot in raw great, if not, you can always put the saturation back into your photos once they are online to compensate for the jpeg compression. If you are still getting blurred images, try to use a tripod, or faster shutter speed if your pet will not sit still ( i have to photograph my asian ratsnakes on the move at 1/800 lol). I hope this helps. Let us see some new photos. 
Thank you for the info. I will give it a try and your pics/animals look great!
-John
What are you using for a flash? A fairly powerful external flash will allow you to use a smaller aperture for a better depth of field (if that's one of your concerns). Better yet, I like to use a remote flash to give me a little shadow and some texture. With my D40 I also set the color balance to "flash" (rather than "auto"
which seems to give me the best color results (and also avoids the extra flash that tends to make the animal move just as you shoot).
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