Need Help With My Nikon D300 And Aquarium Shots

[szhttm]

Hello,

I am hoping you can help me improve my aquarium pictures.

I'm not sure what I am doing wrong, but I can't seem to get good shot of the corals in my aquarium.

I am happy with my other shots, but can't seem to get good color renditions of the corals in my tank.

See sample shots below:

With the first three pictures below of my new ORA Red Plant, I see the pinks much brigher live than in the picture, and the green on the coral is also brigher in person than in the picture...

Non-aquarium related pictures:

Any suggestions you can provide me will be greatly appreciated!!!


Good Luck And Have Fun!!!;
:thumbsup:

 

[precko]

Is this any better?

Took under 2 minutes to do with phot editing software, now obviously it is not the best but you could spend longer on it and get it looking pretty nice, photo software is a DSLR users darkroom dont be afraid to edit.

What settings are you using to take the pics?

The lighting we use on reef tanks makes it pretty tricky to capture accurate pictures.

 

[szhttm]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15006587#post15006587 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by precko
Is this any better?

Took under 2 minutes to do with phot editing software, now obviously it is not the best but you could spend longer on it and get it looking pretty nice, photo software is a DSLR users darkroom dont be afraid to edit.

What settings are you using to take the pics?

The lighting we use on reef tanks makes it pretty tricky to capture accurate pictures.

Precko;

What editting software did you use and what adjustments did you make.

The colors in your version are much darker than what I see with my eyes, but much closer to reality than my photos.

Thank you!!!

Good Luck And Have Fun!!!;
:thumbsup:

 

[precko]

I used Paint Shop Pro there is better out there but this is a decent package for the price.

1. First I adjusted the Colour (white) balance

2. Then adjusted the Brightness and contrast

this brought out the green colour nicely but the red/pink was still missing so i then

3. went into an option called 'channel mixer' which just basically lets you bring out colours, I adjusted it so that any red hues were made more dominant and brought the colour out more.

Obviously you can make fine adjustments and tweak it until you get the desired effect.


With the camera itself though you should be able to get pretty close if not exactly on the correct colours by adjusting some of the settings and shooting in manual mode, what settings did you use to take these pics?

I have the Nikon D60 and I am getting some really nice tank shots.

Other than cropping the picture no other editing was done to this, it was taken with the stock 18-55mm VR lens.

 

[surge19us]

I did this in Lightroom in a couple minutes. It was mostly minor adjustments.

 

[surge19us]

Did a couple minor ones here also. I just started using lightroom about a month ago. But it can do alot.

 

[xtm]

Hello,

most of your shots are overexposed... you need to get out of Program mode and learn to work with proper exposure. I shoot about 90% in Aperture Priority and I find that this works for me best for the most part.

I tried to "fix" your image in LR. Since I am working on a JPG and on Windows laptop, I didn't do much. Basically just HSL-> adjust saturation on the sky, add grad filter, little post crop vignette, and adjustment brush on the building to selectively darken the exposure (to bring out details), also adjusted WB towards "yellow" to make the building pop... that's all. took 3 minutes!

 

[xtm]

For your aquarium shots, I suggest you:

- shoot RAW (NEF)
- get out of Program Mode (try AP instead)
- start with f/4 and ISO 200. Look at your meter on the top LCD and gauge your exposure. You NEED to learn how to meter properly rather than relying on post processing to fix images.
- increase your shutter speed (1/80th is not gonna cut it)
- on static objects like corals, set your AF mode to "S" (single servo)
- set your AF points to 51 for more coverage

and above all... use a tripod! :lol:

have fun