HOW TO SHOOT PICS

[Snaz]

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?





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!

[Seriak]

Originally Posted by Snaz

FYI the camera is my Galaxy Nexus cellphone. I love it!

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

[Snaz]

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.

[Snaz]

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.

[Lampshade]

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.

[acepumping]

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

[acepumping]

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

[Jakegr]

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.

[mohammadali]

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