divecj5 Posted June 16, 2008 Share Posted June 16, 2008 What a cool little fish Boris. It looks like it is quite the character. Great captures as well. What settings (ISO/Ap/Shutter) are you using? They look nice and crisp. Quote Link to comment
klarion Posted June 16, 2008 Author Share Posted June 16, 2008 (edited) What a cool little fish Boris. It looks like it is quite the character. Great captures as well. What settings (ISO/Ap/Shutter) are you using? They look nice and crisp. He's very active and likes to host different corals. I'm happy about that because initially I read that YCG can be very timid if there aren't a lot of places to host. I was using custom white balance and I'm still searching for the most accurate settings. Fortunatelly, Sonay alpha 700 offers an incredible amount of custom white balance options. For the last pic I was using Adobe RGB color mode and a custom white balance set to 6000K with a Magenta 8 digital filter setting (cuts down green? not sure yet). Exposure: 1/45s at F8. ISO 800 Exposure compensation -0.5EV Edited June 16, 2008 by klarion Quote Link to comment
klarion Posted June 17, 2008 Author Share Posted June 17, 2008 Sixline Photos Several pix of the sixline foraging for buggies. Free Swimming (was tough to shoot-thanks to the new camera it all came out). Quote Link to comment
klarion Posted June 17, 2008 Author Share Posted June 17, 2008 FTS with all corals open Quote Link to comment
ibanezgfx Posted June 17, 2008 Share Posted June 17, 2008 this is a great thread! i just saw it and looked through the whole thing. awesome pictures too! what kind of camera setup do you have? Quote Link to comment
Weetabix7 Posted June 17, 2008 Share Posted June 17, 2008 Awesome pics of the sixline!!! I've tried to take pics of one, and I know how difficult it can be!! The tank is looking really beautiful, as always. Quote Link to comment
klarion Posted June 17, 2008 Author Share Posted June 17, 2008 (edited) this is a great thread! i just saw it and looked through the whole thing. awesome pictures too! what kind of camera setup do you have? Thanks for looking. I'm using Sony Alpha 700 DSLR with a line of Konica-Minolta lenses, particularly a 50mm macro lens for close up pictures. Awesome pics of the sixline!!!I've tried to take pics of one, and I know how difficult it can be!! The tank is looking really beautiful, as always. Thanks Weetie, I'm glad that my other obsession brings people joy . Always glad to see you post here. Cute YCG. Thanks Lalani, What do you think of the new settings and cam..? How do they look to your photographic eye? PS; I wanted to post more photos from a different series, but for some reason I can't get through to the my hosting website. They will have to wait a little bit. Edited June 17, 2008 by klarion Quote Link to comment
klarion Posted June 17, 2008 Author Share Posted June 17, 2008 (edited) Here we go again, Edited June 17, 2008 by klarion Quote Link to comment
divecj5 Posted June 17, 2008 Share Posted June 17, 2008 (edited) Alright Boris....enough is enough You're going to have to stop with all the nice clean and crisp pictures. You're going to make me have to dust off the camera and take some shots of my tank today Great job. Are you taking these hand held or with a tripod? Also, do you use Photoshop for the color balancing? I use CS2 and utilize the Camera RAW software that is built in. That way I can adjust the K balance and tint to my pictures. For my 14k Phoenix bulb, seems like about 5900 - 6100k matches just about right to me. When in doubt, I just use the white balance tool and meter off a nice color neutral grey piece of live rock. If you are using CS2, where are you grabbing the magenta 8 filter from? The filters dialog? Edited June 17, 2008 by divecj5 Quote Link to comment
klarion Posted June 17, 2008 Author Share Posted June 17, 2008 (edited) Alright Boris....enough is enough You're going to have to stop with all the nice clean and crisp pictures. You're going to make me have to dust off the camera and take some shots of my tank today Great job. Are you taking these hand held or with a tripod? Also, do you use Photoshop for the color balancing? I use CS2 and utilize the Camera RAW software that is built in. That way I can adjust the K balance and tint to my pictures. For my 14k Phoenix bulb, seems like about 5900 - 6100k matches just about right to me. When in doubt, I just use the white balance tool and meter off a nice color neutral grey piece of live rock. If you are using CS2, where are you grabbing the magenta 8 filter from? The filters dialog? Ok, ok...I'll take a little break from picture taking. I was just stocking up on eye candy for the month that I'll be away I use ACDsee photo manager to work on the tank pictures and try to get them as accurate as I can "in camera" so it wouldn't take too much time. Also, I import, crop and resize all the pics in the same program. Most of the white balance problems I try to resolve in-camera too, to save time on post-processing. The Alpha 700 offers a wide range of options, including custom white balance and virtual filters. That's where I get the M8 filter setting. It's good that you're using custom white balance and meter off the tank. That's what I did as well. Once I established the best settings for my tank, I commit them to "custom memory recall" so I don't have to fiddle with settings every time I shoot. It's nice to talk photos, Thanks. PS: Yes, all of those are hand-held shots taken at high ISO (1600). Alpha 700 (can I mention it more...sorry) is great at high sensitivity. Hardly any noise. Edited June 17, 2008 by klarion Quote Link to comment
divecj5 Posted June 17, 2008 Share Posted June 17, 2008 I also have ACDsee photo as well I have just gotten used to using photoshop but ACD is really a nice program and has some great organizational functionality. I also try and do as much as I can in-camera since it really does help cut down on post-processing. It is way too easy nowadays to just make sure that you underexpose and then bring everything back out in some program. I like the challenge of trying to get the exposure down pat while taking the pictures that way all i have to do is some minor tweaking, sharpening, and saving. What are you resizing your photos to before loading them up? Sometimes mine come out a little pixelated once I load them up to Photobucket. The in camera white balance of the more recent cameras is something that I miss with the Canon 300d I have now. All of the newer dSLRs have this functionality and it sounds like a sweet feature. I think I will get a macro lens before I upgrade though. Most of the time its more about the quality of lens and photographer than the camera. I enjoy talking photography as well....just another one of my expensive hobbies Quote Link to comment
klarion Posted June 17, 2008 Author Share Posted June 17, 2008 (edited) I also have ACDsee photo as well I have just gotten used to using photoshop but ACD is really a nice program and has some great organizational functionality. I also try and do as much as I can in-camera since it really does help cut down on post-processing. It is way too easy nowadays to just make sure that you underexpose and then bring everything back out in some program. I like the challenge of trying to get the exposure down pat while taking the pictures that way all i have to do is some minor tweaking, sharpening, and saving. What are you resizing your photos to before loading them up? Sometimes mine come out a little pixelated once I load them up to Photobucket. The in camera white balance of the more recent cameras is something that I miss with the Canon 300d I have now. All of the newer dSLRs have this functionality and it sounds like a sweet feature. I think I will get a macro lens before I upgrade though. Most of the time its more about the quality of lens and photographer than the camera. I enjoy talking photography as well....just another one of my expensive hobbies You nailed it with ACDsee. I've tried other file management programs like Adobe Lightroom etc. and I find that although it's a great program with many advanced features, I prefer to use ACDsee because it doesn't create a separate database and uses my existing Windows file tree. So, even If I move files around (which I do often) ACDsee always "sees" them unlike Lightroom and all other managers that create a separate database thus forcing me to "find and import" those files. I re-size the photos using "actual print size option" with the length no more than 9 inches at 72dpi while checking the "keep original ratio" option. This insures a small file that fits well on this forum. If the file is longer (in pixels) the forum software will re-size it automatically causing further loss of resolution. Also, Photobucket automatically chooses to re-size photos to a smaller "standard" resolution, so when I import my already re-sized photos, I change that setting to "up to 1mb" option to make sure that the entire file will be unchanged. Canon 300D is a beautiful piece of technology. Honestly, If I had the wealth to completely change systems or add another, it would be Canon. Your photos, in part, were an inspiration for me to upgrade because konica-minolta was giving me great pictures, but they were more like paintings with "artificial" colors and none of the tonal range of your camera. Now, that's changed for the better. PS: for the last FTS, I did more adjustment than usual. Increased saturation to bring out the corals (since I don't have as many yet) and increased contrast to darken the back, which is the least attractive part of my tank since the coralline are so splotchy. They're having a difficulty expanding because the Urchin keeps eating it. Edited June 17, 2008 by klarion Quote Link to comment
Needreefunds Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 OK, you said a break from picture taking, but is it me, or are your pics MIA??? Quote Link to comment
klarion Posted June 18, 2008 Author Share Posted June 18, 2008 OK, you said a break from picture taking, but is it me, or are your pics MIA??? Are you saying that you can't see my pictures on this page? I hope not. That's what my thread is all about anyway. I was having trouble with photobucket this morning......maybe it's the host or something. It can also be your firewall. I was looking through the threads this afternoon at work and some people's avatars and pictures were missing (substituted with a big red X). That would mean that a spam blocker or firewall/antivirus software was involved. In that case, lowering security settings to medium on most software would take care of the problem. Quote Link to comment
divecj5 Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 All pictures are showing up for me Boris. Might have just been some issue with Photobucket updating their servers or taking them offline for a second. Quote Link to comment
klarion Posted June 18, 2008 Author Share Posted June 18, 2008 All pictures are showing up for me Boris. Might have just been some issue with Photobucket updating their servers or taking them offline for a second. Ok, great. Once in a while it happens that someone can't view my images and I get worried. Good to know you can still see them. Quote Link to comment
SeeDemTails Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 Great shots, sixlines, or any fish for that matter, are very hard to photograph that well, I see you like you A 700. Quote Link to comment
klarion Posted June 18, 2008 Author Share Posted June 18, 2008 Great shots, sixlines, or any fish for that matter, are very hard to photograph that well, I see you like you A 700. Love the alpha700 so far. It's a great tool. Also nice to see you post here too. I feel proud when Nano-reef stalwarts post on my thread.....Some sort of validation, I suppose. Quote Link to comment
SeeDemTails Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 LOL your tank looks great, and you got photog skills. I know amazing tanks that no one ever sees because the owner can take a photo if his life depended on it! Quote Link to comment
klarion Posted June 18, 2008 Author Share Posted June 18, 2008 (edited) LOL your tank looks great, and you got photog skills. I know amazing tanks that no one ever sees because the owner can take a photo if his life depended on it! Thank you! It's true. And, I'm happy that more people are coming out of the woodwork and posting tank threads regardless of their photo skills. We can always help with that . PS: I'm trying to work on an HDR image of my FTS. That's some hard stuff........ Edited June 18, 2008 by klarion Quote Link to comment
klarion Posted June 18, 2008 Author Share Posted June 18, 2008 (edited) My first crude attempt at High Dynamic Range photos (HDR) Here is a regular FTS for comparison that I took yesterday. I did adjust Saturation on it, but exposure-not so much. Edited June 18, 2008 by klarion Quote Link to comment
Needreefunds Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 YAY! I can see them again! Sorry to leave you hanging there B. Perhaps a photobucket issue like Dive said. Great shots! Quote Link to comment
klarion Posted June 18, 2008 Author Share Posted June 18, 2008 YAY!I can see them again! Sorry to leave you hanging there B. Perhaps a photobucket issue like Dive said. Great shots! Great. Happy to see you're back and viewing Talk about Firewall/antivirus issues: I always thought your avatar was just a picture, but the moment I stopped my firewall, I saw that it's an animation Quote Link to comment
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