HM3105 Posted October 12, 2015 Share Posted October 12, 2015 Hey all, So I'm venturing into the world of taking pictures of my reef and frags and I need advice. I've got a Nikon D5300 with the Nikor 18-50mm lense. I also have Lightroom. All my of pictures are taken under LED's (Blues at 80%, whites at 10%) which results in a light blue overall tank look. I am interested in knowing what adjustments you would recommend I make in LR to help accurately represent the colors of the corals. I already use white balance of course and then I usually knock down the blue and magenta however this tends to wash out the reds significantly. Blue and magenta are the only two colors which seem to impact the picture. Here is an couple of examples so you can see what I'm talking about. The red on this guy is much more vibrant, here it looks washed out and its almost pink which this coral is NOT. Link to comment
jedimasterben Posted October 12, 2015 Share Posted October 12, 2015 I assume you're shooing in RAW and maximum quality? Turn your lights up as high as they will go during photo sessions. More light is more better in this regard. What mode do you have the camera in, and at what settings are you shooting? Taking any shots with super heavy blue will make it very difficult for the camera no matter what, so just keep that part in mind. Link to comment
HM3105 Posted October 12, 2015 Author Share Posted October 12, 2015 I assume you're shooing in RAW and maximum quality? Turn your lights up as high as they will go during photo sessions. More light is more better in this regard. What mode do you have the camera in, and at what settings are you shooting? Taking any shots with super heavy blue will make it very difficult for the camera no matter what, so just keep that part in mind. Yep I am shooting in RAW, I will double check on the quality not sure there. When you say turn the lights up, do you mean both channels? I wish I had just built an array like the one I have over by DT, its pretty perfect for picture taking and overall look. The LEDs on this tank are burdened with cool white diodes and everything looks like poo with the whites on. Link to comment
jedimasterben Posted October 12, 2015 Share Posted October 12, 2015 Yep I am shooting in RAW, I will double check on the quality not sure there. When you say turn the lights up, do you mean both channels? I wish I had just built an array like the one I have over by DT, its pretty perfect for picture taking and overall look. The LEDs on this tank are burdened with cool white diodes and everything looks like poo with the whites on. Turn the lights up as far as you can while keeping the right color temperature that you're going for in your photos. YUHAZCOOLWHITE I thought you had the evil cluster over this? Link to comment
HM3105 Posted October 12, 2015 Author Share Posted October 12, 2015 Turn the lights up as far as you can while keeping the right color temperature that you're going for in your photos. YUHAZCOOLWHITE I thought you had the evil cluster over this? Nope no evil cluster of greatness =( Its my frag tank, it has some of the Reef Breeder look alikes I bought from a sponsor and didn't realize how much cool white sucks. Washes EVERYTHING OUT! I have the diodes to replace them all with WW but I haven't had a weekend free to do it. Link to comment
Withers Posted October 15, 2015 Share Posted October 15, 2015 The main thing to fix in post is white balance. Aside from that it's just personal preference. But most of the things to work on are before / while you're taking the picture. Like jedi said, turn those lights up as high as they can go. That will allow you to get a faster shutter speed. I would push the white channel a lot higher too (just for pictures), it may look like crap in person but in pictures it can help offset the blue which wreaks havoc on DSLR sensors. If possible you should also turn all the lights off in the room you're taking pictures of. If any lights are on it can cause a reflection in the glass. Other things to try: A tripod should be your best friend for coral shots. Reef tanks don't provide you with enough light to hand hold the camera for anything closer than fish pictures. Use the 2 second timer feature so you can press the shutter release and then take your hands off it to reduce the chance of camera movement. The sand will give you all sorts of grief if its in the pictures. If you're properly exposing for the coral, the sand will be completely blown out. But if you properly expose for the sand your coral will be way too dark. I tend to purposefully overexpose coral pictures (about 1 stop higher than the camera thinks is correct), and underexpose full tank shots (1-2 stops). The camera's sensor and metering are not meant to handle such strange lighting conditions. You'll eventually want to get to know manual mode pretty well to get consistently good shots, but to start with I would focus on aperture priority mode and play with over or underexposing that way until you really get used to the camera. Link to comment
HM3105 Posted October 17, 2015 Author Share Posted October 17, 2015 Thanks for the help, does setting the white balance in the camera itself matter? I've been trying to get it to measure but it keeps telling me it's unable to measure the picture =( Question: if I turn the whites up a bunch which would pretty much wash out moat of the color, is that something I can fix in post or do I lose all the fluorescence? Link to comment
jedimasterben Posted October 17, 2015 Share Posted October 17, 2015 Thanks for the help, does setting the white balance in the camera itself matter? I've been trying to get it to measure but it keeps telling me it's unable to measure the picture =( Question: if I turn the whites up a bunch which would pretty much wash out moat of the color, is that something I can fix in post or do I lose all the fluorescence? If you shoot in RAW, then the white balance isn't burned into the picture like if you shot in JPEG, so don't worry about that. Link to comment
HM3105 Posted October 21, 2015 Author Share Posted October 21, 2015 If you shoot in RAW, then the white balance isn't burned into the picture like if you shot in JPEG, so don't worry about that. If I replace my CW LEDs with NW, do you think that would help with the "washed out" look I'm getting now when I turn the white up? I think more of the problem then I realized is due to the look down tube I'm using. It seems to be blocking a good amount of light. If I just take pictures through the top of the tank with the flow off I get pretty good photos but not the close-ups I was hoping for. Did you all see the pictures Paandemonium posts? So amazing. Link to comment
jedimasterben Posted October 22, 2015 Share Posted October 22, 2015 If I replace my CW LEDs with NW, do you think that would help with the "washed out" look I'm getting now when I turn the white up? I think more of the problem then I realized is due to the look down tube I'm using. It seems to be blocking a good amount of light. If I just take pictures through the top of the tank with the flow off I get pretty good photos but not the close-ups I was hoping for. Did you all see the pictures Paandemonium posts? So amazing. What do you mean in particular by washed out? If you do not use your photo tube, then your camera can grab the light that is bouncing off the waters surface. Link to comment
HM3105 Posted October 22, 2015 Author Share Posted October 22, 2015 What do you mean in particular by washed out? If you do not use your photo tube, then your camera can grab the light that is bouncing off the waters surface. All the colors are washed out (dull, not crisp) to my eyes when I turn up the whites. That being said, the camera does work better with the whites. Link to comment
jedimasterben Posted October 22, 2015 Share Posted October 22, 2015 All the colors are washed out (dull, not crisp) to my eyes when I turn up the whites. That being said, the camera does work better with the whites. And this is for fluorescent colors? If that's the case, then turning any other LEDs than the royals will eliminate most fluorescence. At that point, you pretty much will just have to go into Lightroom or Photoshop and do a lot of changes, or do the following inside your camera like some others do http://www.reef2reef.com/threads/exposing-the-truth-how-to-take-unreal-pics-with-your-dslr-or-you-are-exposed.213126/ Link to comment
HM3105 Posted October 22, 2015 Author Share Posted October 22, 2015 And this is for fluorescent colors? If that's the case, then turning any other LEDs than the royals will eliminate most fluorescence. At that point, you pretty much will just have to go into Lightroom or Photoshop and do a lot of changes, or do the following inside your camera like some others do http://www.reef2reef.com/threads/exposing-the-truth-how-to-take-unreal-pics-with-your-dslr-or-you-are-exposed.213126/ Mostly it's reds and anything along those spectrums which is why I keep blaming the CW. The link was cool but I want to have a true picture under normalish light, not windex. Link to comment
Withers Posted October 22, 2015 Share Posted October 22, 2015 Can we get an example? It'll be a lot easier to discuss if we can see what you're talking about. Link to comment
HM3105 Posted October 22, 2015 Author Share Posted October 22, 2015 Can we get an example? It'll be a lot easier to discuss if we can see what you're talking about. https://www.flickr.com/gp/131246610@N05/qWf2gf Here you go. This is a Christmas favia. It should have (does have) a fairly nice red center. See how dark everything is though and the color just isn't quiet there. Blue was 100 white was 15. Overall look to the tank was light blue, not windex. Link to comment
jedimasterben Posted October 22, 2015 Share Posted October 22, 2015 Yeah, if that red isn't fluorescent then it takes a good amount of amber/red to show up properly, so you're not gonna get that from cool whites. I just posted that link so you'd know how the 'pros' do it Link to comment
HM3105 Posted October 22, 2015 Author Share Posted October 22, 2015 Yeah, if that red isn't fluorescent then it takes a good amount of amber/red to show up properly, so you're not gonna get that from cool whites. I just posted that link so you'd know how the 'pros' do it Does the same thing apply to browns ? Link to comment
jedimasterben Posted October 22, 2015 Share Posted October 22, 2015 Does the same thing apply to browns ? Brown colors are a mix of wavelengths, blue, green, and red, in different amounts depending on the particular shade, so yes, they can definitely not look quite right without enough red or green in the light. Link to comment
Withers Posted October 23, 2015 Share Posted October 23, 2015 Some of that can be fixed by a white balance adjustment in post. In Lightroom you have 2 sliders you can adjust for white balance. One is blue / yellow. The further you push it to the yellow side, the more the reds will come out and the less blue you'll see. That's the main one you want to focus on. The issue is that your eyes are much better at discerning different colors than the camera's sensor is. The blue channel on our LEDs wreaks havoc on the camera's sensor. If you push the white channel to 50% or more it will give you better material to work with in post, even if it looks like crap to your naked eye. The less changes you have to fix in post, the better quality image you'll end up with. It's also underexposed, which can also be fixed in the exposure section. Link to comment
HM3105 Posted December 21, 2015 Author Share Posted December 21, 2015 I did it...finally! I was having a heck of a time getting this... It finally dawned on me what you all were telling me, so I turned up the whites to wear it looked not pretty to my eyes but the camera sensor captured all the color. Link to comment
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