Shooting with smart phones? How To thread?

[chaostactics]

Is there a how to thread on using smartphones to shoot our little boxes of water?

[Withers]

You point it at the tank and hit the shutter button. What else is there for smartphone cameras? There are a large variety of apps to try to help with editing them.

[natalia_la_loca]

I get good results when I open a curtain and let in natural light. I know some people adjust the lights over their tanks to shift the white balance. Or as Withers said, there is always post-production

[Withers]

Oh, well if you're talking about prep work, you can pull a table over to set the phone on to act as a makeshift tripod. You can also try to adjust the spectrum of the lights (if you're using LEDs) to pull some of the blue out. There might be an app to make a shutter delay timer which would be a huge help with reducing camera shake (especially if using a tripod).

 

The nice thing about most camera phones is that they have a very small minimum focus distance so you can use your tank itself as a prop to help you steady the phone when taking the pic.

[Javious]

I use a Samsung Galaxy Note 2, not all phone cameras will have these settings. I adjust my white balance to the "Cloudy Day" setting and change my exposure value to -1. This will take the blue out of pictures of a LED lit tank. It unfortunately degrades the colors of the corals a bit too, I haven't figured a way around that yet. Turning off the pumps will reduce distortion and blurring from moving water. Focusing is a pain in the butt, especially if the glass is curved.

 

Standard camera settings

 

Adjusted white balance and exposure

[chaostactics]

I've received a few bits of feed back on apps and such for the galaxy series to optimize tank shots. I'll post if I get anything radically better than what I normally get

I use a Samsung Galaxy Note 2, not all phone cameras will have these settings. I adjust my white balance to the "Cloudy Day" setting and change my exposure value to -1. This will take the blue out of pictures of a LED lit tank. It unfortunately degrades the colors of the corals a bit too, I haven't figured a way around that yet. Turning off the pumps will reduce distortion and blurring from moving water. Focusing is a pain in the butt, especially if the glass is curved.

 

Standard camera settings

 

Adjusted white balance and exposure

I feel like the "standard camera settings" has better looking colors.

[Formula462]

I dunno, but I'm about to take a bunch of pics with mine so check my thread and see what they turn out like lol. I haven't been home when my halide is on in a while.

[Angel<3Nanos]

I do the same with my note 2 as said above.

 

But I don't get good colors. I might go ahead and try with whites only.

[khriistian]

If you have an iPhone download Snapseed, in my opinion is the best app to try and fix white balance with your phone.
I think is also available for android but I am not 100% sure.

[Formula462]

not too well lol.

 

 

[Withers]

It's an inherently difficult situation. Phone cameras are specifically designed to give you the best outcome for day to day conditions, yet you guys are trying to use them to take pictures of something radically different.

 

I'll try to explain.

 

The camera on your phone is set permanently to auto mode (most at least), it automatically chooses an ISO, shutter speed and aperture to get what it thinks is the best it can do. The problem is that you would never shoot an aquarium in auto mode. The light from a reef tank is extremely bright and focused, causing the tank to be lit up with a sharp drop off of light outside of the tank. The camera thinks it needs to make the entire picture show detail, so it is going to lower the shutter speed until the background starts to show detail. This causes the tank itself to be extremely overexposed, and the sand / rocks will be completely blown out.

 

What you need to do is force the camera to lower the exposure if you can. Javious mentioned that the Note 2 has exposure compensation, that's exactly what you need. Try to get it to lower the exposure by 3 stops if possible, that will likely get the tank to be exposed a little more correctly.

 

If you can't do that, try to frame the shot so that you don't have some areas that are brightly lit and some that are deep in shadow. This will make the cameras job a lot easier to expose correctly. If you have to, turn on all your lights in the room to try and even out the balance between what is lit and what isn't. That won't make the most ideal shot but it might help.