Club Zoa tutorial Taking Pics with Cellphone

[joshporksandwich]

Hello Everyone, This is the first of a few simple lessons on taking pictures of your zoas or any other coral with just your cellphone. Please if you have any other tips to add please do so. Post your results when you try it. Credit goes to milesofreef for this steps

1. Clean the glass
2. You will need a jewelery loupe 10x (Cost $5-$10 online)
3. Frag rack
4. Place coral or frag next to the glass on an angle position and make sure the light is hitting it and it's not shaded.
5. Hold the loupe to your phone and zoom in.
6. Most phones have and edit function where you can crop or add filters like white balance, exposure, brightness or if you're going to sell bum up saturation ROFL hahahahah ok ok little joke there.

Here are some samples from my friend milesofreefs. He used instagrams edit feature for this pics

 

[joshporksandwich]

Ok here is my test and I was too lazy to clean the glass or get a loupe so I used a small magnifying glass. Not bad!!!! I used White and blue leds on with only blues it didn't look good at all. Top downs were impossible because you cover the light with the cellphone and almost dropped the cellphone in the water numerous times.

 

[Stomp]

ive taken some nice pics with my cell phone. josh's steps work really well.

 

[joshporksandwich]

Before and after of my baby!!! with a little white balance, exposure, contrast, sharpness and saturation. I'm impressed. This pics took me less than 5 min. I didn't put much effort and still looked ok. I hope this helps a lot of you improve you pic skills for when you need an id or if you have a problem.

 

[joshporksandwich]

Post your results everyone! My friends galaxy s4 takes ridiculous pics and some phones also have a macro feature so the loupe is not needed.

 

[revhtree]

Very cool Josh! Awesome!

 

[Zack420]

iPhone 5 pic. Have to play w angle of lens and flash on flash off and I can get some very nice true colors.

 

[duke4130]

Awesome Josh.... Thanks for starting this thread

 

[Duffam3434]

iPhone 5 pic. Have to play w angle of lens and flash on flash off and I can get some very nice true colors.

Nice Pic, LOVE The Acans!! They Look Great!!

 

[MacKrell]

Josh, have u seen those jewelers loupes that hook on to your phone? Would that work? I think the cheap ones around like 10$ and magnify up to 60x? Wonder if that would work?

 

[Jreed983]

Before and after of my baby!!! with a little white balance, exposure, contrast, sharpness and saturation. I'm impressed. This pics took me less than 5 min. I didn't put much effort and still looked ok. I hope this helps a lot of you improve you pic skills for when you need an id or if you have a problem.

So you said you changed white balance, exposure, contrast, etc., but what did you do? Go up, go down? I'm still pretty new to this hobby and would like to learn how to take better pics.

Sent from Galaxy SIII using Tapatalk

 

[joshporksandwich]

Josh, have u seen those jewelers loupes that hook on to your phone? Would that work? I think the cheap ones around like 10$ and magnify up to 60x? Wonder if that would work?

I'm sure that will work but 60x is too much.
This is a grain of sand at 50x

 

[joshporksandwich]

So you said you changed white balance, exposure, contrast, etc., but what did you do? Go up, go down? I'm still pretty new to this hobby and would like to learn how to take better pics.

Sent from Galaxy SIII using Tapatalk

Take the picture and click on edit, then there's options to add filters. Just play with it till you get what you see in the tank.

 

[IGROZOAS]

Great tutorial.

 

[buddythelion]

For those with androids, if there's a "Cloudy" option under white balance that usually helps a lot to get rid of the blues.

 

[SeymourDuncan]

Great plan! They also sell those cell phone camera lenses really cheap. Same thing pretty much. Free
Great way to sell fake tie dye Xenia haha. Please don't though.

 

[SeahorseKeeper]

Great info!! I'll try this the next time I take some pics of my zoas!! Thanks!!

 

[joshporksandwich]

If you guys can add your own techniques it will be awesome.

 

[Rob in Puyallup]

My unidentified huge zoa colony with resident Tailspot Blenny. A bit oversaturated.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S III using Tapatalk 2

 

[Rob in Puyallup]

The same colony with no adjustments.

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