Camera is the Canon XSi w/ Kit lens. I'm on a tripod, ISO100, F/32, 1/10 sec, and moved my exposure down a click or two, but I CAN NOT get the green colors to pop the way they do in real life.
It would be very helpful to know the settings that others have used and compare. I'm under LED lighting.

Michael

get a mac

I have an imac and my colors aren't washed out

hth

from what I've heard from others LEDs can be tough to photograph under, but until someone donates a setup to me I can't really offer any advice, except that greens in corals tend to fade the closer you get to the coral's horizontal plane - that is, they are more colorful from above than from the side. best you can do is tweak the white balance till you find a good fit.

Photoshop

because you are metering for the whole scene and the light is hitting the top of the star polyp and since the rest of the stuff in scene is dark the metering is balancing out for more of a darker subject blowing out the light green color. Try spot metering or center weighted metering on the green polyps and see how that works for you and play with other settings or try manual mode to dial in the shutter speed and aperture that balances out the scene how you like. why are you shooting at f32 anyway?
I wouldnt go above f8 going to f32 is not going to make things better..you get refraction at around f16 and image starts to soften up then.

lol 1/10 of a sec? get real.

Only had the moonlights, with some incandescent side lighting on this one. MUCH better.
ISO 800
1.00 sec
f/8
55.00mm

Shrimp left a molted skin on the rock this morning....

that shutter speed is waaaay too high

As someone already mentioned, use center weighted, or spot metering. You could also shut your pump off, drop your ISO to 100, and once things are really still, try again. You might see better quality shots. You could also try shooting in RAW and editing the exposure compensation and WB in post.

i would say make sure that your cameras color settings match that of your computer (RGB this is the setting that is the best or so i have been told!)

Basically there is a set of colors that is just for the internet (sRGB) and then there are colors that are primarily for everything else (RGB) and the two dont play well with each other.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RGB_color_model

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRGB

not saying it is your issue but it is worth looking at

ISO 400
1/80sec
f/7
Spot metered
WB set to 7000K

Photoshop to adjust levels, but NOT curves. Not shot in RAW because I didn't have that much energy. I also didn't tun off the pumps, or scrape the glass for ultimate clarity since this is an exercise about color, not about getting Tack-sharp.

This is a little cropped, but without a macro lens, I realize that I won't get much closer detail.

you do realize with DSLR almost all the pics are going to need some post process.
if you took that pic there and spent a few mins editing it in the Digital Pro software that came with the camera you could get it to look exactly how you want.

I agree with 05x. A little adjustment of the contrast and color levels would produce much more desirable results.