Problems with getting pics of my sps tank...

[marine_freak]

I have a Sony 5.3 megapixel cybershot camera....... trying to take pics of my tank and they appear very blue...much more blue than what they appear to the naked eye. I have read the owners manual many times but it does not really help........ I see so many beautiful pics of tanks just wondering what your secret was to get beautiful pics of your sps corals..... I would appreciate any suggestions.......

 

[marine_freak]

Oh I forgot to add that I am running 20k radiums 2 400 watters over a 75 gallon tank with 2 actinic white URI VHO flourecents...hence the really blue color!!!! Is ther anyway to take the blue out and keep the original coral color???

 

[Kip]

you can play with the white balance

 

[Cody Ray]

How do adjust the white balance on sony cameras? I looked through my manual and it wasn't very helpful.

 

[an-sps]

try turing off all pumps/powerheads then try taking the pictures from the top down with the hood just proped up. I seem to get the best color representation from top down pictures.

 

[an-sps]

here is a example top picture. the metal halide is in the picture

 

[an-sps]

also try using the macro setting. It is a little flower on most cameras.

 

[marine_freak]

Thanks guys I will try all these ideas and let you know how they turn out.

 

[SBJim]

You definitely need to reset the white balance if you want to take pics of anything other than the stuff at the very top of the tank. Unfortunately for you, I just checked out a couple of good digital camera review sites (dpreview and dcresource) and it appears that at least some of the Sonys do not have manual white balance.

You can, however, set the white balance to "incandescent", which will tone down the blue considerably. Try hitting the menu button while in picture-taking mode, then select "white balance", then choose "incandescent". If you don't like the look of that, try "cloudy", which will also tone down the blue, but to a lesser degree.

Good luck!

For reference: http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/sony/dsc_t5-review/

 

[thereefgeek]

I've had good luck when I play around with the manual mode settings and take a ton of shots with different F-stops and shutter speeds. Turn off the flash and try using a tripod. Trick the camera by manually setting the W/B to something in the tank that is supposed to be "white" (I do this when I'm shooting pics while SUCBA diving). You may only get 2 or 3 out of 50 pictures that are worth keeping, but that's the beauty of digital photograpy; just delete the bad ones.

If all else fails, get a copy of Adobe Photoshop and you can tweak a decent picture into a fantastic one.

"If you can't take it, make it."

 

[MiddletonMark]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7265328#post7265328 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by thereefgeek
Trick the camera by manually setting the W/B to something in the tank that is supposed to be "white"

I've found PVC or eggcrate works great for setting white balance - a new piece of PVC is not perfect-white, but normally close enough.

FWIW, I've had nothing but problems shooting with radiums + VHO actinic ... just overload on the blue end.