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Iphone 11 Pro Help


dannyk35

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I've been having issues taking pictures of my Nuvo 10 with my 11 Pro. I'm trying the AquariumCam app, and the quality there seems low. What are ya'll using/doing to get pictures of your reef with your iphones? Also, how are you uploading photos? I'm going through Imgur and posting the link into my thread, but the quality seems to be pretty rough.

 

Thanks!

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18 minutes ago, dannyk35 said:

I've been having issues taking pictures of my Nuvo 10 with my 11 Pro. I'm trying the AquariumCam app, and the quality there seems low. What are ya'll using/doing to get pictures of your reef with your iphones? Also, how are you uploading photos? I'm going through Imgur and posting the link into my thread, but the quality seems to be pretty rough.

 

Thanks!

This biggest issue for anyone using very blue LEDs is going to be White Balance. Most phones can only adjust up to around 8,000K when in reality your tank is likely somewhere between 18,000 and 24,000+K. By far the easiest thing would be to shoot in RAW, transfer those RAW photos to your computer and use Lightroom or Photoshop (or your editing software of choice) to set the White Balance.

 

If that's not an option, you can buy a physical lens filter which will drastically reduce the blue. If that's not an option, you can also just use Photoshop (or some other editing software) to reduce the brightness of the blue channel by 30-50% and increase the Red channel by 5-10%. This is the worst option though since you are reducing an already compressed photo. Another option is just adjusting your lights temporarily to fit within what your camera is capable of shooting nicely - setting your lights to 10,000-12,000K will normally be close enough to not need to do anything.

 

For photo quality, just host your images here on Nano Reef and they won't be massively compressed.

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1 minute ago, jservedio said:

This biggest issue for anyone using very blue LEDs is going to be White Balance. Most phones can only adjust up to around 8,000K when in reality your tank is likely somewhere between 18,000 and 24,000+K. By far the easiest thing would be to shoot in RAW, transfer those RAW photos to your computer and use Lightroom or Photoshop (or your editing software of choice) to set the White Balance.

 

If that's not an option, you can buy a physical lens filter which will drastically reduce the blue. If that's not an option, you can also just use Photoshop (or some other editing software) to reduce the brightness of the blue channel by 30-50% and increase the Red channel by 5-10%. This is the worst option though since you are reducing an already compressed photo.

 

For photo quality, just host your images here on Nano Reef and they won't be massively compressed.

I'll have to look into shooting RAW. I've tried using my T6i, and even those shots have been rough. I'll look into importing them into lightroom.

 

Thanks for the advice!

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Just now, dannyk35 said:

I'll have to look into shooting RAW. I've tried using my T6i, and even those shots have been rough. I'll look into importing them into lightroom.

 

Thanks for the advice!

With your DSLR, try to shoot in full manual mode and turn off Auto ISO since your built-in light meter isn't going to work well with really blue-heavy LEDs. Turn off the pumps. set up a tripod (and use the timer or remote if you have a crappy tripod like I do), and you'll get better shots. Shooting in RAW and using Lightroom to adjust the White Balance and Tint is going to be night/day difference. I have a really old DSLR (13 year old D40x), so it's a production to get a decent shot under those, but I would imagine a new, modern DSLR may work decently well not in manual mode.

 

Under heavy blue I normally use ISO 200 with exposure times from 1/4 to 1/15s depending on where my aperture is at - with more white I can get away with ISO 100. With the Radion at 20,000k it's usually something like f/8, 1/4-1/5s. But keep in mind I've only got 10MP to work with, so noise is a huge issue. A newer 24 MP camera isn't going to have those issues.

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IMO the real work is in post. Play around with the editor in the Photos app on your iPhone, and get a feel for how different setting effect your photos. Once you have that knowledge built up you can try out a beefier program like Lightroom 

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Christopher Marks
On 2/11/2020 at 9:58 AM, dannyk35 said:

I've been having issues taking pictures of my Nuvo 10 with my 11 Pro. I'm trying the AquariumCam app, and the quality there seems low. What are ya'll using/doing to get pictures of your reef with your iphones? Also, how are you uploading photos? I'm going through Imgur and posting the link into my thread, but the quality seems to be pretty rough.

 

Thanks!

Adobe Lightroom for iOS is free and allows you to easily shoot RAW photos with your iPhone 11 through the app. There's a toggle in the settings to shoot in RAW format. It's also a powerful photo editor, so you can shoot RAW photos right in the app and then edit them individually, adjusting the white balance to remove the saturated blues, most critically. It has lots of other toggles for sharpness, brightness, highlights and shadows, making it easier to take photos closer to what you see in person.

 

It takes a little practice and experimentation at first, along with some patience for editing, but once you get the hang of the process it's easy to reproduce results on future photos.

 

You can share photos here on Nano-Reef by uploading them directly to the site. You can drag and drop photos from a desktop computer into the post editor, or tap 'Click to choose files' at the bottom of the editor (by the paperclip icon) when posting photos from your Phone.

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39 minutes ago, Christopher Marks said:

Adobe Lightroom for iOS is free and allows you to easily shoot RAW photos with your iPhone 11 through the app. There's a toggle in the settings to shoot in RAW format. It's also a powerful photo editor, so you can shoot RAW photos right in the app and then edit them individually, adjusting the white balance to remove the saturated blues, most critically. It has lots of other toggles for sharpness, brightness, highlights and shadows, making it easier to take photos closer to what you see in person.

 

It takes a little practice and experimentation at first, along with some patience for editing, but once you get the hang of the process it's easy to reproduce results on future photos.

 

You can share photos here on Nano-Reef by uploading them directly to the site. You can drag and drop photos from a desktop computer into the post editor, or tap 'Click to choose files' at the bottom of the editor (by the paperclip icon) when posting photos from your Phone.

@Christopher Marks, I've always been curious, does Nano Reef resize or compress images that are uploaded?

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Christopher Marks
2 minutes ago, jservedio said:

@Christopher Marks, I've always been curious, does Nano Reef resize or compress images that are uploaded?

Photos uploaded to our site are reduced to 1600 pixels on their longest side, this is what you see when you click or tap on a photo to enlarge it. A second smaller version is posted at 1000 pixels wide, and it's more compressed to help keep the site fast on all devices. Clicking or tapping posted photos will always show a shaper version.

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