Ouch!! I love the Pink Lemonade in your yellow selection. Easy to keep is up my alley.
All your Corals are spectacular. I also really like the No-name.
I'm on the hunt for anything Yellow (hard to find lately).
In my Frag World I have some blue/purples. All the Corraline Covered Rock is plenty of purple/red to look at, but untill frags become colonies, they don't stand out.
Yellows really stands out for some contrast.
I would really like to find a YELLOW "Turbinaria". I had one and it was one of my favorites. Something about it always memorized me with the complimentary Polyps.
For a plating coral it didn't grow too fast to take up space like a plating Montipora can.
Interesting. I shoot with Canon Rebel SL1. 18-55mm standard lense.
Thought macro is the way to go, but never got one yet.
But I do have a Zoom 55-250mm Lense. Never taken out of box. Must try it.
I won't get into photograph questions here, so I'll PM you what setting you use on Canon. I've played with Auto, P, M. Various White Balances, including Auto. Got into Raw vs Jpeg.
Trying to figure out ideal setting for Depth of Field, ISO, etc.
Tripod and shutting off Circulation probably a must to get shots like you have.
I always wonder if folks wait for Night Time when PE is highest, and then briefly turn on light for a quick photo.
Or maybe your Corals are Always Happy to show off like that.
Hey Wally, thanks!
Your 18-55 should be good to shoot with top down but I'm not sure the bigger zoom will be able to focus close enough for top downs. For front shots where you can stand back a bit, it'll be good.
The idea of switching on the lights after dark is a damn good one! The pe would be fantastic!! But I'm too busy sleeping when the lights are off and the pe is huge. Maybe one day I'll try that... hm..
I figured I'd post your pm question and my response on my thread because I pretty much get the same amount of satisfaction and pleasure out of photography as I do out of reef keeping and since my thread is so filled with photos, why not answer a photography question here..
Your post above covers most of your questions, so no need to post your pm..
I've covered a lot of this here and there but like everything in life, it's buried somewhere in some long lost page of this thread.
For starters, yes, all pumps off and ideally, all lights on (unless you're going for wild and wacky coloured shots for sales reasons!!
then you just turn on your blue t5 and/or LEDs.)
I think a top down viewing box is pretty essential as well. If you are shooting through the glass, my preferred method is to have the end of the lens pressed right up against the glass of the tank- this allows for steadiness when shooting with low shutter speeds but more importantly (for clarity) it puts your lens exactly perpendicular to the glass of the tank. When the lens isn't perfectly perpendicular, you get distortions in the image. The thicker the glass of your tank, the worse it is.
Next best thing is a tripod, but again, images will be most clear when you get as perpendicular to the glass as possible.
Now, if you have a zoom lens and you can stand way back from the tank, this perpendicular rule is not as strict.
I took a bunch of fish pics a couple months ago with with my zoom, while standing back a bit (on angles) and they came out pretty well..
Here..
As for top down shots. Viewing box, I'd say is essential- again lens pressed against the bottom of the box. For two reasons: reduced refraction (like when shooting from front of tank) and also to remove reflections from the overhead lights into lens.
As for white balance settings, my camera has a few preset options, as well as a choice of Kelvin temp- all the way up to 10k.
If your camera has this, put it up as high as you can.
If you only have preset options for type of lighting, put it on 'cloudy day' setting. I think this is about 8k.
Yes, in program mode, the camera is pretty useless for shooting your tank.
Because I do a lot of sports photography (of my kids - soccer, hockey, lacrosse) I always leave my camera in shutter speed priority. The camera then adjusts the aperture depending on the ISO setting and the ambient lighting. You could just as easily put it in aperture priority but I'll get to that in a minute...
For the lighting on my tank, I seem to need to use an ISO of about 800-1000 to achieve the apertures I want within the shutter speeds that give clear photos (1/10th-1/200th) my lens has some anti shake features which come in handy when shooting still subjects like coral. If your lens doesn't have anti shake, don't shoot below about 1/50th unless you have a real steady hand. 1/30th would be the lowest I'd suggest.
High shutter speeds really don't give you any advantage for shooting corals (fish are different, they need higher shutter speeds) unless there is flow in the tank and you want to capture still polyps.
Of flow is off, lower shutter speeds are fine.
And lower shutter speeds allow you to have more latitude with good ol' depth of field.
Depth of field- the higher the aperture number (smaller aperture) the greater the depth of field, the more of the image will be in focus.
The smaller the aperture numbers, (larger aperture) the tighter the depth of field, so very little will be in focus.
The choice of aperture is a creative thing, mostly.. sometimes it's cool to get one single polyp in focus with lots of background blur (so, lower aperture numbers) and sometimes you want to see more of the coral in focus (so, higher aperture numbers) As I mentioned earlier, I put my camera in shutter priority and let the camera choose the aperture only because I am used to changing the shutter speed for shooting sports stuff.
I am always watching the aperture, that the camera chooses and if I want greater or less depth of field, I adjust the shutter speed to make the camera change aperture to my liking.. lower shutter speeds to get more in focus because it allows for smaller aperture (higher aperture number) and vice versa for higher shutter speeds.
One thing to keep in mind is that when you really close down the aperture (high number for greater depth) you begin to lose clarity or crispness and detail in the image so, going beyond 16 or 22 you start to notice some degradation of the image.
You could always use aperture priority to get the depth of field you want but you have to keep an eye on the shutter speed so that it doesn't get too slow.
So that was the long answer to your questions.
The short answer is that I'd say the camera setting sweet spot would be the following.
ISO: between 400-800
Lighting type: cloudy or 10k or higher if your camera goes higher..
Shutter speed: between 1/60th and 1/200th of a sec.
aperture: between 8-11.
Viewing box with lens perpendicular to bottom of box or front glass.
Obviously these setting will depend on the available light you have.. if you have less blue, you may not need to go for such a high k setting but most of us, these days have blue heavy light sources- especially as far as the camera sees it.
This only gives you the best possible image from the camera. It still may be blue-ish. Using an app like Snapseed, you can warm the photo up and it can also be cropped and sharpened to make it look more sexy!
As for jpeg vs raw, if you have the option to shoot raw and you want to download the photos to a computer for editing in photoshop or some other program, raw is essential. If just has so much more information than a jpeg file.
Inshoot in raw but when the photos get transferred to my camera, they are converted automatically to jpeg.. but I don't keep my photos in my computer.. they are just in my phone and backed up to the computer in jpeg..
I really should start downloading the shots to photoshop in raw format.. just to have the original large files..
Any and every photographer will tell you to keep them as raw, if you can.
Hope his helps! Feel free to ask any more questions!
Here's a last shot from yesterday.. an arm of my JF Flame.
And a random no name..
) are one of my favourite reef inverts! I've always had and always will have them in my tank!
