Please critique

lookout888

Member
This is in raw format and would love for someone to tell me good and bad (I have not cropped or anything). I dont have Photoshop on the computer infront of me right now.
Any info would be great.
I think it would also be neet if i had 2 or 3 people fix it up and see what each one looks like.
Thanks

http://www.lookout888.com/fish/IMG_0847.JPG

Mike
 
IMG_0847b.jpg


I hope I don't sound too harsh. You asked for some critiques. Aquarium photography is really difficult to master, with the odd lighting and coloring, distortion, etc. This is a nice start. Here are the things I'd put on my personal "try to correct next time" list. :)

First, it's overexposed, and this is extremely common in aquarium photos. Try dropping the exposure a little, perhaps -2/3EV. You may have noticed all the mouths are blasted out solid white. Bringing down the exposure should help this.

Second, you cut off it's head!! Poor coral!

The most effective way to make nice coral shots the quickest is to successfully isolate the coral as the subject in the photo. In this photo, there are two distractions in the background, the wall on the left and the green rock on the right. If you can find a way to change the angle or some other way to remove them from the photo, the better. In an aquarium, you MUST always shoot perpendicular to the glass, so different angles are sort of difficult. Perhaps if you moved the camera up just a couple inches and cheated by tilting the camera down JUST A LITTLE BIT, you may be able to get a more complete shot of the top of the coral, where it's better lit, and the gurth of the coral itself may hide the background.

For the photo above, I played mostly in the channels. I brought RGB down as a whole, and blue up slightly. Then I selected just the coral area and brought up saturation a little. Then I selected the opposite (all except the coral area) and brought up the brightness to make the lighting appear more even. I finished it all off with a simple border.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7174307#post7174307 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by jwedehase
IMG_0847b.jpg


I hope I don't sound too harsh. You asked for some critiques. Aquarium photography is really difficult to master, with the odd lighting and coloring, distortion, etc. This is a nice start. Here are the things I'd put on my personal "try to correct next time" list. :)

First, it's overexposed, and this is extremely common in aquarium photos. Try dropping the exposure a little, perhaps -2/3EV. You may have noticed all the mouths are blasted out solid white. Bringing down the exposure should help this.

Second, you cut off it's head!! Poor coral!

The most effective way to make nice coral shots the quickest is to successfully isolate the coral as the subject in the photo. In this photo, there are two distractions in the background, the wall on the left and the green rock on the right. If you can find a way to change the angle or some other way to remove them from the photo, the better. In an aquarium, you MUST always shoot perpendicular to the glass, so different angles are sort of difficult. Perhaps if you moved the camera up just a couple inches and cheated by tilting the camera down JUST A LITTLE BIT, you may be able to get a more complete shot of the top of the coral, where it's better lit, and the gurth of the coral itself may hide the background.

For the photo above, I played mostly in the channels. I brought RGB down as a whole, and blue up slightly. Then I selected just the coral area and brought up saturation a little. Then I selected the opposite (all except the coral area) and brought up the brightness to make the lighting appear more even. I finished it all off with a simple border.


;) Enough Said.
 
AWSOME, I realty appreciate you taking the time. That is exactly what I wanted to hear. "I hope I don't sound too harsh" never the only way to get better is to hear other peoples comment.

Thank you again I will see what I can come up with to night and post.

Mike
 
lookout, I think that pic of the acropora is awesome. I think I may print that and put it in my fish room, if you don't mind.

Also if you could frag that I would be happy to trade or purchase.
 
Wow, I'm really impress of the macro pictures of the acro given that it came from a cannon sd550. No offense to SD550.
If I have the full resolution image, I would crop the first picture to just 5-6 of the cup corals polyps. It would be a very nice macro shot.
 
Thank you. Yes you can print it out. I will work on getting some better ones. That was a quick show. I just got my under water case for the camera and wanted to try it out. All I can say is amazing. I took it in the pool today and I can not believe the quality of the video and pictures under water. The colors on the torch are not the same as I see. I know there is a way to fix that but I am still working on it. Any suggestions are welcome.

( yes I now before I put camera in my tank I am going to soak it for 24 hours in fresh water to get all chemicals off)

Thanks for the comments.

I will post more this week when I get time it really play :)

Here are some shots in raw form **Warning big files**
http://www.lookout888.com/fish/IMG_0953.JPG

http://www.lookout888.com/fish/IMG_0951.JPG
Mike
 
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