Help with color in pictures

Dkuhlmann

Dkuhlmann

New member
I'm needing some help in taking pictures either with my phone camera or my regular digital, I can't get colors to show properly they are always washed out.

What settings do I need to use when taking pictures of my tank, here is an example. The centers of my Duncan are a Beautiful green with purplish tentacles and the sponge below the Duncan is a bright pink, the Hammer is purple base with green tips, there is also a good bit of purple coralline on the rocks

20150909_143918[1].jpg
 
I can't answer for others but most of my pics are made through editing in Adobe Lightroom.
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I know this sounds like a little overkill, but i use a tripod as well. For some reason tempered glass + underwater tends to smear edges if you don't have just the right angle. Making the camera as stable as possible helps.

Unfortunately under white lights my Duncans don't show their true green centers. It's only after the moonlight settings come into play that the green fluorescent centers glow. If you take a photo then, then you will get a lot of blue hue in your photo. You can counter it with an orange filter but it pretty much just neutralizes the colors again.
 
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So there really isn't a way to just take the picture and get the best color out of it? It's a shame, my pictures show up better on my phone than they do online or on my PC. Its like they get washed out. Thanks for your answer anyway.
 
sometimes there is a big difference in light and darkness called dynamic range. Monitors and screens may show them differently. Furthermore, sometimes a single frame cannot capture accurate colors or brightness/darkness in the same frame. You may have to sacrifice details in the dark/shadows to properly expose lighter areas or vise versa. Generally speaking most under expose to keep highlights. I'd say your image is slightly over exposed (sand is bright white with no details and center of duncans lost details). You'll need to manually under expose a little to keep that detail.

That said if using a tripod one could get two images (same shot) and expose one for brights, one for darks. Then merge them (basically HDR). A little more advanced but something that might need your needs. I do it often myself.
 
If you can turn off automatic white balance and mess with it manually you might get where you want to be
 
Thank you I'll play with that tomorrow. I know there is an anti shake option that I can turn on since not using a tripod.
 
In photography the basic rule is to try to shoot with a low ISO as possible but lighting can effect your shutter speed as well. In some cases with our lighting although it appears bright to us, depending on your background it might (like in my picture above) appear dark and mess with your shutter speed. The longer your shutter stays open the blurrier your lines are going to be from movement in your tank. If you have the ability you can up the ISO speed. This will cause the shutter to open and close faster reducing blurry lines. The downside is that the pictures tend to be a little grainy the higher the ISO. Lightroom has the capabilities of taking the grains out though as do most photo editing software programs. The idea is to find the right balance setting for as low of ISO as possible without effecting the time duration your shutter stays open. When you find that, you get great dynamic colors and lighting.
 
I need to work on it some more but that last one is so much better. Guess I'll be taking pictures tomorrow. My Cherub Angel is named Flash because he is always off in a flash :D

Thank you so much for the pointers, I found a whole bunch of adjustments in my cell phone camera.
 
Just messed around a little with Lightroom with your pictures.





Just some quick adjustments the pics were a little blurry to begin with but you can see what a little post photo tweeking can do. :)
I may have used a little too much grain blur but yeah you get the idea.
 
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WOW! I think the adjustments I made on the camera improved the Duncan picture 10 fold and you just hit it another 10. Outstanding :thumbsup: :dance:
 
I'm going to get some pictures tomorrow of my clowns and my Cherub Angel. If you don't mind, I'd like to have you tweak a few of those, would like a couple very nice ones. My Duncan looks bigger than that from a different position so you can see all of its heads. They open to about 2" diameter on all of the big ones. Can't tell from the picture.

Dave
 
lol! not a problem. just fyi the bigger the resolution the better the out come after tweaking. also when taking the picture try to find something to sit the camera/phone on to stabilize it. like a book or something like that. no matter how still you think you hold the camera when taking low light pictures they always have a little blur to them because your hands are never stable.
 
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I'll get creative with some of the corals and holding still, Flash is where I'll have my problems LOL I'll also change the camera to max resolution, it's a 5mg camera I believe. Do you want me to just post the pictures in this thread?
 
Can if you want. Are you hosting them somewhere like photobucket or flickr? If you are then you can send me the link of the full size.
 
You know you can transfer your images off your phone to your computer right? All you need is a USB cable. Most phones come with one.

Just plug in, connect to USB port on your PC and a window will pop up asking you what you want to do. You want to "view files". Btw this window will only pop up as long as you have your phone's PW unlocked. If you do not have your phone passworded just make sure you have woken/accessed your phone within the last couple of seconds. Anyway, back to viewing files. Now not knowing what kind of phone you have I can't really direct you any further. Your just going to have to look around till you find them. Hopefully they are located in a folder that says "photos" or "pictures". An easier way to find your pictures is to make sure you see your files in a thumbnail view and not a list view.

Even if this all sounds complicated I'd recommend you do this just to explore the insides of your phone anyway. Just don't delete anything. It's OK to delete photo's but only after you have confirmed that you have transfered them to your pc. This is how you free up space on your phone and possibly make it operate faster.

Hopefully you don't have an iPhone. I'm not sure what kind of crappy barriers they have on their phones to isolate them from being compatible with any other piece of electronic device that isn't Apple, but Samsung's don't have this issue, they pretty much connect to anything. Can you tell I don't like Apple? :)

Anyway, if all this is too much for you just email me the photos trenchtoast77@gmail.com

Btw, how long have you had your Duncan? Mine is still fairly young. It has two large heads and two med/small heads. I'm not quiet sure how old it is because it came with my tank and the former owners didn't have it attached to anything and it was free floating around in the tank. (I'm surprised it survived while they had it) Anyway, just trying to figure out the possible growth rate of my Duncan.
 
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Yes I am aware of that LOL I'm a MCSE :D So certified computer geek :dance:

Never would I own an I phone JUNK, I've got a Samsung Galaxy 3 Android

PS I don't like Apple either :uzi:
 
I got my big Duncan three weeks ago. It came from a guy that had it about a year and a half bought it as two small head frag.

Feeding Duncan's is key to their growth as well as good water parameters and proper placement for flow and good lighting low in the tank.
 
LoL! Ok. I went and took schooling on mcp,mcsa, and mcse about ten years ago. Never passed the test but thats mainly because of my adhd. I don't do tests well. (Hard to explain) anyway, i went into the corperate IT world and found i didnt like it. I belong outside... so i took up horticulture. So.. I got plenty of technical smarts but also not afraid to get down and dirty either heh. My Duncans are about mid level and have good flow. I direct feed them squid. Mine love that over brine or mysis shrimp for some reason. The Nuvo24 is a pretty shallow tank anyway so im not too worried about light intensity. My light is a Current Orbit Marine (white/blue)
 
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