Reef Culture's LPS Tank

zibba

New member
Here are some pictures from last week's FRAG event at Reef Culture.

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Wow! Come here and make all my zoa look that good!

We'll find a time in the near future!

Those are some great pics. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for the compliment & you're welcome.

Man what is this...
Did u play with the pictures what light is that and for sure what camera

Not sure what picture you're referring to.

Yes, I edit all of my pictures to try and get them to look as close to what I remember seeing in person. These pictures were shot late in the evening once the halides turned off so just the blue LEDs were on -- it would have been almost entirely blue without the editing.

They have the Elos e-Light/ePower, I believe; however, I don't think it's in production anymore.

Pictures were taken with a Nikon D600, Nikon 105mm macro lens and an Avast Marine Top-down photobox, then edited in Adobe Lightroom.
 
Stunning. This is actually my favorite tank in their store - it's not too often you see such an amazing LPS display. Usually it's all colored sticks and big swims.
 
Stunning. This is actually my favorite tank in their store - it's not too often you see such an amazing LPS display. Usually it's all colored sticks and big swims.

Mine too. It's a sign I'm becoming more of an LPS addict than an SPS addict. I'd like to get some topdowns of their big SPS display sometime though!

I want the chalice even more now...

It's a sick piece. In my opinion, it's much better than the CC Desert Twyster (which was overpriced at $200/frag) and the AquaSD "King Solomon" (which is around $50/frag) because it has that red in it. Wish the red was more prominent.

The mushrooms are legit too!
 
Stellar pics zibba! I'm thinking I "need" a top down tube...!

The mushrooms in the first post (5th pic) were cut for a customer who had been harassing the guys at reef culture for a while, for a frag. He offered them $400....I was dumbfounded!...I have to believe it is a case of more money than sense.

Curious about your post processing...do you apply sharpening?...if so, what program?...your images are always razor sharp!

Thanks dude!
 
Stellar pics zibba! I'm thinking I "need" a top down tube...!

The mushrooms in the first post (5th pic) were cut for a customer who had been harassing the guys at reef culture for a while, for a frag. He offered them $400....I was dumbfounded!...I have to believe it is a case of more money than sense.

Curious about your post processing...do you apply sharpening?...if so, what program?...your images are always razor sharp!

Thanks dude!

Thanks! And, yes you do!

Those bubble/bounce mushrooms are definitely hot right now and I don't think they frag too often (ever?) from that tank so I guess I'm not entirely surprised. Everyone values things differently, I suppose.

Regarding the post-processing:
When I shoot in JPEG format (rare) I adjust the camera to internally sharpen the images so I don't have to do it during post-processing. When I shoot in RAW format (almost 100% of the time for aquarium photography), I sharpen the images during post-processing because the camera skips that step internally.

In Adobe Lightroom, I typically adjust--among other things--the "clarity" slider to +15 to +30 and the sharpening slider to +75 to +100. Sometimes that makes the image overly sharp, so I just back it down accordingly. The best (i.e., most natural) sharpening tool is the "high pass" filter in Photoshop, but that takes too much time when you have a lot of images. The biggest thing I've found though to make sure you take advantage of the post processing work by hosting the images on Flickr rather than Photobucket because (for some reason, unknown to me) Photobucket degrades the quality. The above pictures were hosted on Photobucket so they aren't nearly as sharp as if they were hosted on Flickr. At some point, I'll make a post comparing the quality -- it's easy to see the difference. I actually don't think the images above are all that sharp after seeing the original images on my computer screen.

Hope that helps!
 
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The mushrooms in the first post (5th pic) were cut for a customer who had been harassing the guys at reef culture for a while, for a frag. He offered them $400....I was dumbfounded!...I have to believe it is a case of more money than sense.

Sounds about right for a quality Bounce Mushroom, maybe a tad pricey but probably because that tank's livestock is NFS.
 
That piece kind of came out of nowhere on me when I was taking pictures. I hadn't seen it or, at least, glossed over it in the past. The "people eater" eyes on it are sweet.
 
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