Trying to pull it all together / Your suggestions please

[Reef Bass]

I've been trying to absorb a lot of info, to let it sink in, bounce around and hopefully stick. Here is my latest effort. Please let me know what you think. Anything you would have done differently from composing the shot through saving the final file?

I started at ISO 100. I wanted decent DOF on the open polyp and not from the background, so I stopped down to 7.1. The resulting shutter speed was so slow I had to bump the ISO up to 500 to get even 1/10. Tripod good!

Importing the RAW file I set the color temp and rolled with my camera profile's usual defaults except for exposure -.05, blacks +10, vibrance +2 and saturation +3.

Spot healed some floating debris, cropped, brightness and contrast +/- 1 or 2 after cropping, unsharp masked, resized and converted to final jpg.

 

[TitusvileSurfer]

Well it sounds like you have absorbed a lot of info and put your 50D to good use in real world practice!

 

[Reef Bass]

Thanks TS. I feel like things are beginning to gel.

Here's my Purple Tri Color. I only bumped the saturation +1 on this, really!

 

[Reef Bass]

My ORA Borealis

 

[Letmegrow]

I don't want to be that guy but you have RB's in your Validia.

The pics are stellars tho !

 

[Reef Bass]

Dude! You mean that's not just a few hot pixels on my image sensor? My Tri Color is not morphing into a Quad Color? :lol:

Thanks for the headsup. When I first saw this pic I raised an eyebrow (what is that?...). I've been extremely fortunate to not have had any pests, getting frags only from "reliable sources" and always dipping new arrivals.

Tomorrow it's off to the vet for some Interceptor.

 

[Reef Bass]

A couple more shots...

My Xenia

My ORA Blue Voodoo

 

[IPT]

looks like you have a pretty good handle on things. Nice work.