Hi All,
What a discussion about a frag that I thought was cool but not THAT COOL.

It is a beautiful piece and I have been growing this particular frag out for over 6 months. I have taken a few frags off of it over the past few months but they haven't "matured" to the point of gaining those reddish corallites.
Two things to consider about our corals and how we represent them. First is that we prepare our photos on a CRT monitor and not a Lap Top or a LCD. We do this for two reasons, first is that a CRT lmonitor looks the same no matter what angle you are viewing the coral at, and because they have an average brightness/contrast output range the photos look reasonable on most monitors. But.... with these new and incredible CRT monitors coming out I am seeing problems with our photos. They look nuked, like we own stock in Photoshop! I am thinking that I have to remove saturation rather than leaving at zero in Photoshop. I just purchased a Samsung 931B and it is insane. I turned down the brightness and contrast by 30 percent because my website looked like a cartoon.
SO... What do you all think about me taking a poll and seeing how many folks use the new high contrast (like over 1:700 ratio) LCD's. This would help me out plus many other vendors... I could therefore judge how to present my corals. This is a very touchy subject with folks and it has been for years (photoshop)... What folks have to understand is that in no way are we trying to misrepresent out photos. We set the white balance to what they look like in our system and we photoshop them to take out the blue. WE ARE NOT ADDING COLOR! Our bulbs are located out 2 to 3 FEET above our corals. Yes they are 1000 watt 20k's but at 3 feet away they have as much intensity as a 400 watter at 10 inches.
What is unfortunate about what I see in this thread (and others)is that they are alot of folks that rip us, but they have never ordered from us, or they have ordered from us and something has gone wrong (Fedex delay, tough species, loss of color because of shipping, etc) I hope that this feeling about us is in the minority because that if folks have problem I would hope that they would communicate with us so that we can make things right. We will always make it right, if given that chance.
I am not sure I answered any of the questions or doubts that have been brought about by this thread, but I am trying to be as honest and straightforward as possible. Please let me know what you think about my idea of that poll (LCD Monitors).
Have a great evening and weekend,
Chris @ RM