Curved glass and royal blue led's...miserable pictures

[E-A-G-L-E-S]

I am looking for some advice on taking pictures of my reef.
It is a 46g bowfront, so the front pane is curved.
I run Cree led's.(12-CW/12-RB)
The royal blue led's destroy my camera, or at least without a knowledgeable guy usiing it.
I have a Canon ELPH 300HS.
Here are two examples of my issues. Both are post shot tweaked with the canon adjustments...one for as neutral as I could get(even though it makes the image much less blue than it is in person and one as natural as I could make it as compared to the eye)
However the blue one is way too blue, just like all of my pics now.

The below hairy mushroom is electric blue with fire red/orange....can't get that on camera to save my life.

Any ideas?

TIA!

 

[Brett9917]

Well the curved glass, there is no real way to get around that... Just get as close as you can to the glass and shoot as straight on to the subject as possible.

As far as the blueish goes your camera doesn't shoot in RAW (I don't believe) but it comes down to your white balance. If you can adjust your white balance with your software, give that a shot and see if you can get it a little closer to what you want.

 

[E-A-G-L-E-S]

Thanks, I will run through the software now...and good tip on the straight on to the glass panes' curve shooting.

 

[dendronepthya]

Canon sensors hate blue LED's. Shooting in RAW won't help, neither will post processing. In those blue blotches, there is seemingly no other data to manipulate.

 

[E-A-G-L-E-S]

I thought I had a little skill....this is going to be next to impossible but tomorrow I'll try again.

 

[Brett9917]

Canon sensors hate blue LED's. Shooting in RAW won't help, neither will post processing. In those blue blotches, there is seemingly no other data to manipulate.

Haha, well being a Nikon guy, I wouldn't know if they hate the LED's or not. I always seem to get decent pics that just need a bit of tweaking.

 

[Ouscazz]

Canon sensors hate blue LED's. Shooting in RAW won't help, neither will post processing. In those blue blotches, there is seemingly no other data to manipulate.

Well.. I would say that's not correct.
This photo was shot under Royal Blue LEDs from my Maxspect 160W just a couple of minutes ago.

Example 1: RAW file straight out of Canon 5D in PS Camera Raw. Note, preview box is not ticked.

Example 2: the exact same RAW file adjusted in PS Camera Raw. Note, preview box is ticked.

 

[IslandCrow]

Yeah, Canon's don't necessarily hate blue LEDs. It's just that it can be difficult not to clip one or more of your colors. . .generally, either your blue highlights or your red shadows. The latter isn't as big of a deal, except for the fact that the photo will always look blue because you don't have all of your red data to balance it. If you take a look at the histogram in Ouscazz's post, you'll see that he ended up clipping most of his red channel shadows (almost all of it after his raw adjustment). Not a big deal, though, because he was going for a blue photo with green midtones.

Now, when you're shooting with a camera like the Elph (not a bad camera, mind you, I own an older version myself), you have two things working against you. First, without the ability to shoot in RAW, you lose a lot of that color information, so making large adjustments in post processing generally does not give you the results you're looking for. Second, the camera decides too much for you automatically, so it's very easy to clip your color channels in a way you don't want to, thus making adjustments even more difficult. Unfortunately, I don't know any good way around it. The camera does great with your typical light temperatures, but if you start going too blue or too red, it can have issues.

 

[Jamesant]

I would agree with islandcrows comments and I had an Elph for a long time. Great cameras, but the automation can work against you. You could try playing around with different modes if you have them like night time shots.
The curved glass is a real killer. I can't shoot of about 10 degrees into straight glass without distortion. Try thought the side of the tank if you have flat glass there. Not always the best view though.
Here is a photo from a Canon sensor post white balance adjustment.