HOW TO SHOOT PICS
 

Hey, i was wondering what is a good setting on my canon t3i to shoot pictures in.. i have a ai sol with all colors on. i would like to show the best colors. but when the royal blue is on, every picture is blue. even if there is the whites and reg blues on.
please help

Post processing. Did the camera come with any software to edit the pictures? What is the name of the program please?

Compare these two pictures. Same image but the first one is exactly how my camera captured it, lots of blue light. The 2nd image is two clicks with my photo editor to balance the colours. See the difference?

http://snaz.com/marine/anem2.jpg

http://snaz.com/marine/anem3.jpg

Some will disagree but my philosophy is let the camera do what it does best and that is to capture the light and then use a post process on a computer to balance the colours. FYI the camera is my Galaxy Nexus cellphone. I love it!

hey thanks for the response. but there is a way to shoot the tank with the camera without editing, i jsut dont know how. i have seen un edited pictures and they look amazing, for example ike the people selling corals. some are unedited and look awsome. ill keep trying too but what program are you using to edit these?

What my phone can do that? I want to know what program you are using as well.

I am using Photoshop but most photo editing software includes this simple colour balancing function. Modern cameras are capable of doing colour balance too but I have yet to see one do as good a job as a computer.

Also a word of warning... it is easy to colour correct coral images but it is just as easy to edit an image to make it "unbalanced" so that it looks better than it really is. See the image below as an example and compare with the true colour image above.

Beware some coral sellers make their frags look better than they really are.

http://snaz.com/marine/anem4.jpg

If you're using a t3i, you can adjust your white balance to make blues into white. take a bunch of pics at different WB settings and see what works. Your camera also has an auto WB setting, so you can put a piece of white paper behind your tank, use the auto WB on it, then take your pictures at that. Look through this forum, LOTS of great info on what apature/shutterspeed/ISO to use to get different styles of pictures.

If you're really going to get into it start taking pictures in RAW and use Photoshop or another program to adjust them afterwards. Generally Photoshop will do a better job than the camera adjusting it on-board while it takes pictures, but only if you know what you're doing.

As for the phone pictures, phones use a really small sensor, which makes dark photo's hard to crank up ISO on without noise, but in something as bright as our tanks they can take REALLY good shots. we did a POTM a little bit ago with phone pictures, ther was some very good shots in there.

ok, i am still new with the t3i, where is tthe white balance on it and should i have it on a manual setting or auto pic with white balance?
lol ill goof around

does anybody know where the white balance is on the stupid t3i lol

I'm no expert, but here are a few tips:

1) Shoot straight through the glass. Shooting at angles relative to the glass can cause distortion.

2) Tripods can help.

3) Post processing software. I use Lightroom.

4) Turn off pumps and allow aquarium to settle for a few minutes. This gets rid of micro bubbles and any other small debris in the water column.

read the manual it came with every camera is difference
heck a quick google search works wonders http://vimeo.com/39037912

wooohhh ok lol.. first of all i lost my manual, second of all i hate google and all that crap!!!
thats why im on her lol

perhaps you can download a manual for your camera from the manufacturer's website. If you don't want to put the effort into google or trying to find a manual yourself I would question why you're in this hobby to begin with.

Some people are just not good with computers and the thought of finding something via Google can be scary. I'm not saying this is the case with Ace but I have seen plenty of people who cringe when it comes to using technology.

Here is your manual in PDF format. Click the link below and download the file and it should open fine. If it does not open so you can read it then you will have to download the Acrobat reader which I can help you with.

snaz.com/marine/eosrt3i-eos600d-im2-c-en.pdf

thank snaz!! works great. at least some people understand others... lol molotov, id rather put all my time into work and my tank. ohh yea and MY KIDS!!!!!
thanks again snaz.
im ok with computers. i would also like to have this stuff on this site for future people looking for this too on canreef, as this camera is pretty popular to alot of people.

http://a8.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphot...61006056_n.jpg
http://a3.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphot...02001195_n.jpg

To take these photos, I used Tv mode on the SLR, which means I forced it to use a certain shutter speed and the computer calculates the rest (aperture, auto ISO). Specifically, I used a tripod and forced the shutter to stay open for 1.6 seconds. This meant that the computer would have used the smallest aperture so that the photo wasn't over exposed. Another effect of a small aperture is that the field of depth is wide so most of the subject is in focus.

Exact specs are: Shutter 1.6s, aperture f/16, ISO 100, manual focus
Equipment: Canon 5D mkII, lens EF 50mm f/1.2 L USM, tripod, 20mm Kinko tube to shorten focal length
Editing: shot in RAW, used Canon Digital Professional, increased brightness/contrast/saturation/sharpness, cropped, and exported to 1200 pixel (long side) size

Don't fuss the details too much, most important things were the $30 tripod, shutting off the powerhead, and using Tv mode at 1.6 seconds (lots of light from my 250w metal halide in a 20" deep tank, if your light is dimmer, use a longer shutter speed)

beautiful RBTA will this rbta grow ?
where did you buy this ?

RBTA = rose bubble tip anemone?
This is a close-up of a Euphyllia I believe (LPS). You can see the skeleton of a head that died at the top in the middle of the cluster. Gold Aquarium in Calgary called it a hammer coral... although there's definitely specimens out there with more "hammer-like" tentacle tips.

In fact, I just got it yesterday and took the photo just hours after plugging it in the tank.

Hey thanks Reef_Geek for those settings. I used them successfully to shot a nice shot of my chalice.
http://snaz.com/marine/ap12005.jpg

The Kinko tube seems kind of expensive for what is essentially a hollow tube right? What makes one better than another if there are no optics?

Sorry for the thread hijack Ace. :lol:

Photo looks good!

Kenko tubes... yeah, kinda expensive for hollow tubes. They also relay the electronics from your EF (ie Electronic Focus) lens to your camera body so that everything still works... camera body's computer gets info on focusing distance, aperture, shutter etc. (plus could auto focus).