Learning/rebuilding from my epic fail
- Thread starter reefmutt
- Start date
FloformAustria
New member
Damn Matt I really love your pictures!!!
Keep em coming!
Cheers
Keep em coming!
Cheers
biggles
Premium Member
Crazy pics of crazy colored acros Matt, great to see your reef humming again mate 
Can i ask if you have safety glass covers between your 150W bulbs and the water and if so how thick is it Matt ?
You know i'm always extremely jealous of your good growth and especially the mauve pigments you keep......... that color is rare to see and i sometimes wonder if it looks like crap color wise to the divers in Aus to explain its lack of collection. Anyway i still have dreams about finding a Furiosa..... rude ones Matt :spin2:
Can i ask if you have safety glass covers between your 150W bulbs and the water and if so how thick is it Matt ?
You know i'm always extremely jealous of your good growth and especially the mauve pigments you keep......... that color is rare to see and i sometimes wonder if it looks like crap color wise to the divers in Aus to explain its lack of collection. Anyway i still have dreams about finding a Furiosa..... rude ones Matt :spin2:
reefmutt
Active member
Thanks. It worked out well. Next time, I'll try with a zoom instead of the macro.. see if it makes a difference..
Thanks Flo. I'll see what I can do about more
Hey Andrew, thanks, it's getting there but many corals are still fussy..Crazy pics of crazy colored acros Matt, great to see your reef humming again mate
Can i ask if you have safety glass covers between your 150W bulbs and the water and if so how thick is it Matt ?
You know i'm always extremely jealous of your good growth and especially the mauve pigments you keep......... that color is rare to see and i sometimes wonder if it looks like crap color wise to the divers in Aus to explain its lack of collection. Anyway i still have dreams about finding a Furiosa..... rude ones Matt :spin2:
Definitely have safety glass. The glass that came with the fixtures. Probably 3-4 millimeters.
I would never use mh without the glass. Many years ago I had a 400 ushio bulb crack open while I was away on the weekend. The outer glass just cracked and shifted by about a half inch. That half inch opening cast a wider slice of unfiltered light into the tank. All corals below that 'slice' of light were killed or bleached when I got back..
That bulb was a mogul. My 150s are de, so they don't have that outer protective bulb of glass.
Too bad I can't ship to you, I have a couple of furiosa frags on a rack growing faster than the mother..
Hey Ed, thanks! I am not a seasoned fish shooter.. I'm trying to get better..
Kevin (Acronic) once said, make sure the eye of the fish is in focus, the rest will follow. Good advice when the fish is parallel to you.
If you can change the way your camera focuses, change it to single point focusing instead of area focusing. That way you can really focus on one point like the fish's eye.
I usually set the ISO to between 640 and 1000 so that the camera can use higher shutter speeds.
I also never use the camera on auto mode. I usually put it in program mode which allows me to change the aperture and causes the camera to compensate with shutter speed changes. With a high ISO, the camera will be able to choose higher shutter speeds when the aperture larger.
If you want the effect of having the background blurred, you don't want to have too small an aperture (which translates to a large aperture number) the smaller the aperture (higher the number) the more depth of focus you will have.
You may well know this concept, Ed, but many don't and it is ALWAYS confusing to me so I'm just explaining it fully..
Whereas with coral shots, you might be inclined to close the aperture down very small (high aperture number) to get as much of the coral in focus (especially using a macro lens), for the fish shots above, I didn't want everything in focus so I opened the aperture up a bit (lowered the number).
The lens used however will change the aperture choices somewhat.. macros and zooms tend to give better bokeh (background blur) than fixed lenses.
I'm really giving all of this info because, well, I don't have the actual settings I used! I pulled the images off my camera and promptly erased the images from the card......
But I think I was at an ISO of 640, shutter speed around 1/350-1/500 which isn't particularly fast but the fish were only crusing around. Not in a hurry. Aperture was probably around 5.6-4.5..
I hope that wasn't tooooo long winded..
As for the pink matrix, I have a couple pieces of it. Two were sold to me as pink matrix and the other as rr lady in pink. But they look identical to me..
I can take more, wider shots of the corals- hopefully later today and I'll post them and indicate the different pieces.
The photo above is from what was called lady in Pink..
Here is a pink matrix arm (OOOPS! This is not the pink matrix. THIS IS THE LADY IN PINK)
Here is a full shot of the pink matrix from April 15.
I'll post a recent shot later..
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reefmutt
Active member
Got more... obviously..
I'll come back to the pink matrix documentation
Couple more randoms
Gomezie/ 24 k
My pickachu has decided to push. These two corals are avoiding each other somehow...
Fiji hyacinthus over chalice
24k
Op against the bruise which may be a Red Bull..
Close up op. Artsy fartsy.. gotta have one.
Recent acquisition.. Robin Hood
And finally blueberry wine. Growing well..
Ok. I am spent.
I will work on the pink matrix..
I'll come back to the pink matrix documentation
Couple more randoms
Gomezie/ 24 k
My pickachu has decided to push. These two corals are avoiding each other somehow...
Fiji hyacinthus over chalice
24k
Op against the bruise which may be a Red Bull..
Close up op. Artsy fartsy.. gotta have one.
Recent acquisition.. Robin Hood
And finally blueberry wine. Growing well..
Ok. I am spent.
I will work on the pink matrix..
Pife
Active member
I was just at the lfs and was looking at a hyacinthus. I'm happy I didn't see your beautiful picture before I left there. I would have bought it.Got more... obviously..
I'll come back to the pink matrix documentation
Couple more randoms
Gomezie/ 24 k
My pickachu has decided to push. These two corals are avoiding each other somehow...
Fiji hyacinthus over chalice
24k
Op against the bruise which may be a Red Bull..
Close up op. Artsy fartsy.. gotta have one.
Recent acquisition.. Robin Hood
And finally blueberry wine. Growing well..
Ok. I am spent.
I will work on the pink matrix..
Sent from my SM-N920T using Tapatalk
FloformAustria
New member
haha randoms... thanks for those Matt... love it!!
Cheers
Cheers
reefmutt
Active member
When it comes to hyacinthus, it's tough to go wrong. I find they are so variable in terms of colour and they have a great growth pattern. They seem to be constantly changing. If I were independently wealthy, I'd have a hyacinthus tank. It'd be awesome. They do need a bit of time to grow out to show all of the possible colours.
well... random in terms of the shots I had left over from my most recent shoot.. kinda random..Yeah, a max ISO of 400 will definitely hold back the camera.. can you add a couple more tubes just for shooting? May help a lot..
Gotta go pick up one kid from camp this weekend so it may take a bit of time to do the matrix exposé, but I'm motivated!
I found one last 'random'! Here, Flo
FloformAustria
New member
Matt you are killing me with those random I just point the camera somewhere and still amazing corals shots
I need water :lolspin:
I need water :lolspin:
reefmutt
Active member
thanks Flo.. I guess calling those shots 'random' is a bit conceited on my part because of course, being a photographer yourself, you know that any image that you finally show to people has been well fixed and 'prepared' for viewing before you let it 'out there'Thanks Shih,
Up until last month, N was around 50ppm and P was around .17
It had been there 6-8 months- since last November or so..
One month ago I re started a cheato fuge. That has pulled n down to around 15 and p to .15.
Once I see n stabilize, I will direct my attention to p.
berlin-riff
Berlin SPS-Junky
all looks very heathy:beer: great job !
reefmutt
Active member
Ok, Ed. Took some shots of my pink matrix pieces as well as the so called rr Lady In Pink. You tell me if there is any difference.
Here is my original piece. Current colony shot:
When I had my alk spike last October, a couple arms rtned but then recovered. That is why it is so irregular.
Couple close ups..
This is the centre. The original frag. It never grew from the end of the original frag, only out from the base..
Here's an arm shot..
A new shoot..
Ok here are two other pieces from the same vendor.. the smaller piece is all that is left from a mini colony that all dies during the alk spike except for the small piece. The lower piece, I bought a couple months after the spike to ensure I had a piece because I thought I was going to lose all of the pink matrix colonies..
Closer of the survivor..
Closer of the replacement..
Another angle just because I got it!
I assume that all of these pieces come from the same mother colony.
I must say I am liking my new viewing box. No scratches. Very clear.
Next I'll post shots of the Lady in pink which came from a different vendor..
reefmutt
Active member
Thanks,Pife! I pulled out a good 1/3 of my cheato over the weekend because it was turning brown at the surface where it was getting pushed out of the water. I haven't tested no3. I'll try to do that tonight. I was too busy taking photos yesterday!
I don't anticipate seeing a dramatic change and actually with that salifert test kit, it's pretty difficult to see changes of less than 10 ppm when the numbers are high to begin with. A buddy who is setting up a new tank, and was making some sumps out of acrylic, made me a viweing box from his left overs. It has no fine scratches in it like my old box.
Thanks Ed. Yeah, when only the blue leds are on late at night, it's a different looking coral..
It occurred to me that all three pieces are located at the same height in my tank and are also all located almost directly under a 150w mh. The smaller pair of pieces probably see a bit more par because they are right in the middle of the tank..
but under different lighting, and/or different nutrient/dosing conditions, this coral could look completely different and therefore get given different names..
The little survivor nub- upper piece in this shot:
Looked very different last year..
Here it is against my (now dead-alk shift) Oregon tort:
THIS IS FROM AUG. '16
Maybe under higher light, it would change even more, or under leds, the red polyps could be accentuated..
Anyways... Rainbow tennis is a much more apt name for the coral..
