DSLR help with SPS and LED Lit Tank.

[tdb320reef]

Lately I have been criticized for "photo shopping" my photos. Currently I have a Canon T4I with both the stock and macro lenses. I use DPE as the editing software. Typically I will put a piece of White Piece of PVC in the thank and use the WB dropper to level out the intense LED blue. Once I get the photo corrected I take the recipe and apply to all photos. I am taking the pics in AV mode with the aperture at 4 and ISO at 100. I take the Metadata and adjust for WB and use the curve assistant for saturation and will bump up the sharpness about 50%.

One complaint that I hear is that I am adding pink and blue. I am pretty sure the pink is from my magenta stunner strips I have in the front to make the fish glow at night. I am now turning that off. Here are some sample pics. Please provide positive criticism and perhaps a solution.

Thanks.

 

[Palytoxin718]

wow beautiful tank... looks pretty natural in my eyes...

 

[worm5406]

Well first off... Lets move that tank. It is too cold there for what you have.

I have been following your threads for a while and I think they are stunning.

The only way to squash some of the naysayers is to show them.

Maybe make a video where they can see the color's their self. Yeah that will mean setting the WB for the camera for the variant in distance from the lights.

It will show that it can be done, under LED, and this is HOW and WHY others can do it too.

+1 on the tank, I'll PM you my address later.

 

[Reef Bass]

It sounds as though you are relying on a custom white balance to correct your color.

In my experience, shooting in RAW mode and setting the color temperature during post production will provide more accurate color more easily.

It's as simple as moving a software slider control. Or type a number in directly if you want. No messing with pvc or anything white.

Your camera will shoot RAW. I suggest taking advantage of that. You may well find, as I have, that you end up shooting everything in RAW. It's that good. With high color temperature reef lights, I wouldn't even consider a camera which didn't have RAW ability. DSLR or point and shoot.

 

[worm5406]

oot in both jpeg and raw. That gives me the option to share a picture the same day, comapred to going home and exporting them as jpg.

 

[IslandCrow]

It sounds as though you are relying on a custom white balance to correct your color.

In my experience, shooting in RAW mode and setting the color temperature during post production will provide more accurate color more easily.

It's as simple as moving a software slider control. Or type a number in directly if you want. No messing with pvc or anything white.

Your camera will shoot RAW. I suggest taking advantage of that. You may well find, as I have, that you end up shooting everything in RAW. It's that good. With high color temperature reef lights, I wouldn't even consider a camera which didn't have RAW ability. DSLR or point and shoot.

I believe he is adjusting in post (reference the part about using the eye dropper to color correct). This method sometimes requires a little manual tweaking, but usually works very well. You do have to make sure you are not shooting in Auto White Balance (AWB), however. Basically, AWB potentially changes the color balance baseline from shot to shot, so you can't apply a single correction over multiple photos. Using any of the other color balance modes works fine, however. This may not apply to DPP since that's Canon's proprietary software, but I think it still does. I'm guessing you meant DPP (Digital Photo Professional) and not DPE, though I'm certainly not familiar with every photo editing program out there.

Unfortunately, probably the only way you can really prove you didn't unnaturally alter the colors is to invite each and every person who questions you over to your house to look at your tank in person. . .and then, they'll probably just accuse you of slipping them some LSD.

 

[tdb320reef]

I believe he is adjusting in post (reference the part about using the eye dropper to color correct). This method sometimes requires a little manual tweaking, but usually works very well. You do have to make sure you are not shooting in Auto White Balance (AWB), however. Basically, AWB potentially changes the color balance baseline from shot to shot, so you can't apply a single correction over multiple photos. Using any of the other color balance modes works fine, however. This may not apply to DPP since that's Canon's proprietary software, but I think it still does. I'm guessing you meant DPP (Digital Photo Professional) and not DPE, though I'm certainly not familiar with every photo editing program out there.

Unfortunately, probably the only way you can really prove you didn't unnaturally alter the colors is to invite each and every person who questions you over to your house to look at your tank in person. . .and then, they'll probably just accuse you of slipping them some LSD.

LOL - I do think I have AWB on. I will take a few pics tomorrow with it off using my same methods. Yes you are correct It is DPP.

Lol about the in person comments I guess it is human nature.

Thanks again for the valuable tip.

 

[Reef Bass]

Thanks for your input IslandCrow.

White balancing can be as easy as taking the picture, then moving the color temp slider. Done. Spot on results. I guess I don't see any advantages to making the process more complicated and possibly less accurate than that.

Am I missing something?

 

[jm23]

I see nothing that screams "photoshop" to me, in fact I think your tank is probably more vibrant in person then your photos make it appear, so you should probably "photoshop" it to make it more accurate. Beautiful tank, if the colors look right to you then ignore what the others have to say.

 

[tdb320reef]

LOL - I do think I have AWB on. I will take a few pics tomorrow with it off using my same methods. Yes you are correct It is DPP.

Lol about the in person comments I guess it is human nature.

Thanks again for the valuable tip.

Here is a frag pack using the daylight WB and subsequent using the dropper for WB and the pic turned out great. Thanks for the valuable tip.

 

[IslandCrow]

Thanks for your input IslandCrow.

White balancing can be as easy as taking the picture, then moving the color temp slider. Done. Spot on results. I guess I don't see any advantages to making the process more complicated and possibly less accurate than that.

Am I missing something?

I'm not sure why you consider using an actual color balance reference point as less accurate? Now, for the OP's method, you'd have to assume the PVC doesn't have any color cast, but let's say you're using an actual white balance card. That's simply going to be more "accurate" than just eyeballing it with the color balance sliders. As far as more complicated, that's a bit more subjective. For me, I find it to be very quick and painless:

1. place a white balance card (or PVC or 5g bucket lid, etc) in the tank

2. Take a picture (you don't even have to focus if you don't want to)

3. Upload all of your photos into Lightroom (or whatever you want to use)

4. If done in Lightroom, select the picture of the white balance card, <ctrl-A> to highlight the rest of the pictures, select the eyedropper and click on your reference point.

And done. . .all in all, I think I can do this faster than getting the color pretty close manually.

All that said, I put "accurate" in quotes above for a reason. Accurate is not always what you want. The way our eyes interpret color, especially under certain light sources isn't always a faithful representation of those colors. In other words, sometimes the most accurate color just doesn't look quite right. Try taking a picture of a sunset sometime and set a custom white balance. You probably won't like be happy with the colors at all.

 

[tdb320reef]

Thanks for your input IslandCrow.

White balancing can be as easy as taking the picture, then moving the color temp slider. Done. Spot on results. I guess I don't see any advantages to making the process more complicated and possibly less accurate than that.

Am I missing something?

It is not complicated but easier than using a slider for WB. In the Canon DPP settings for a raw image there is a "dropper" tool that allows you to find a White in the picture to correct your WB automatically with out too much blue, yellow, and pink. Once your Recipe is established you can save as file and apply to all images. The purpose of my post is to seek others input on the quality of my photos. Nothing is difficult but just focusing on making the photos more natural without people saying that the photos look "photoshopped".

Edit: BTW I was using the Frag Plug for the WB Reference Point but have done the PVC trick in the past.

 

[tdb320reef]

I see nothing that screams "photoshop" to me, in fact I think your tank is probably more vibrant in person then your photos make it appear, so you should probably "photoshop" it to make it more accurate. Beautiful tank, if the colors look right to you then ignore what the others have to say.

Hey thanks, I am seeing some people posting really bad pictures because of the whole "Photoshop" theory and I don't want to be one of them. You are correct, the tank looks way better but the below picture is pretty good. I might have a little too much yellow but I think that effect if from the LED 6500K Lighting.

 

[Reef Bass]

I'm not sure why you consider using an actual color balance reference point as less accurate?

My experiments with white objects in my tank lit by my 20,000K lights yielded significantly less "what my eyes saw" accuracy than shooting RAW and setting the wb myself.

I appreciate your (and others) explaining why you like to do what you do.

Thanks.

 

[Badkarma88]

That is an awesome tank. I think photography is an art and if that's the way you see your reef then that's all that matters. In my opinion, I think it looks great.

 

[IslandCrow]

OK, I'm finally reading this at home, so I can actually see your pictures (they're blocked on my network at work). Those look like very realistic shots to me. It looks like there might be a slight red color cast in a couple, but with the mixed lighting we tend to use in our tanks, that's certainly not anything unexpected. I think those of us who have actually seen a well maintained, well stocked tank know that corals can indeed look just like yours. I'm guessing the people accusing you of manipulating your photos are only used to looking at algae infested, insufficiently lighted, poorly maintained tanks, which I suppose would make yours look somewhat impossible.

Anyway, gorgeous tank and very nice photographs.

 

[aye89]

this is one MEAN AS setup. goodjob!