whats with the neon colors?

[smitten with ocean life]

could someone clue me in on how you get those amazing bright neon colors on your corals? is it the lights? or maybe i just dont have the right kind of corals! but some pics that i see on this forum, the corals are just a beautiful eye popping color.

 

[jermzisurmom]

It's the orange lense or glasses...

 

[jermzisurmom]

With said lense

 

[jermzisurmom]

Without

 

[Outlaw Corals]

It’s mostly the lighting the more blue and less white really make them pop, there are also filter set’s you can buy for your camera the orange filter work’s the best, and there is alway’s the orange reef glasses you can get for around $12

 

[smitten with ocean life]

oh ok. so the corals dont look like that all the time the lights are on? just when you wear the glasses?

 

[exnisstech]

Those are not real colors.

 

[Readywriter]

Huh. I was wondering what everyone meant when they said orange filters. Would orange window film accomplish the same thing?

 

[19Mateo83]

My colors are pretty dang bright without filters or lenses.
Without

But they are stupid bright with the filters and lenses.
With

 

[smitten with ocean life]

ahh. ok got it

 

[djf91]

Huh. I was wondering what everyone meant when they said orange filters. Would orange window film accomplish the same thing?

Lol I hope the hobby isn’t coming to this point.

 

[djf91]

Those are not real colors.

Yep. Like nothing you would ever see in the ocean. Maybe at the arcade.

 

[Reefing102]

Also just to add, not all corals have the bright flourescent proteins that you see in some tanks. Obviously they’re less popular than those that do but some look great under white light and terrible under blue light

 

[Naekuh]

Very tough to get the colors in pictures, which is why people tell you make sure the seller shows you the coral in white light always, or see the coral in person.

Even then, unscruplious sellers will photoshop bomb the hell out of the coral to make it look better.

But its like the Orange Torch.... Its a unicorn in our hobby.
Some say they had one, 99% of the rest say its a rainbow princess unicorn.

But even blasting the blue's and UV i have not been able to reproduce some of the colors ive seen, and i have XR30 G6 Blue's and a a 48inch OR3 knockoff lightbar, on top to light saturate that spectrum.

 

[djf91]

Very tough to get the colors in pictures, which is why people tell you make sure the seller shows you the coral in white light always, or see the coral in person.

Yep, I recently asked an LFS owner to turn up the white spectrum on the LEDs over an SPS frag tank they have. Every coral was a pale brown color.

20 years ago I would go to the local shop and the SPS had deep vivid colors under bright 10k lighting.

 

[Biokabe]

It's a combination of three things:

First, healthy corals that are the right color morph and species. Not all corals have a really bright neon pop to them. Some do.

Second, lights that put out light in the right wavelength to excite the fluorescent pigments in corals. Most of these pigments are in the orange or green segment, so when things are really popping, they're usually one of those two shades. There are some other shades that fluoresce (pinks/reds/yellows), but they're not nearly as common. But regardless of the fluorescent pigment, you need lights that put out light at the right wavelength to get those pops. Deep blue / UV lights usually provide the kind of light you need to bring out those colors. That's also why many of those kinds of photos are taken through an orange filter. LED fixtures (which are what most people use these days) produce tons of light in very discrete wavelengths, and it's difficult for cameras to cope with that kind of single-wavelength light - they tend to get overwhelmed by the blue light. One way to get around that is to introduce a filter, which restores the image to something close to real life. So an (honestly taken) orange-filtered image can actually be more true to life than a straight picture taken under heavy blue light.

Third... some people are unscrupulous and use photo editing to exaggerate the natural colors, usually because the exaggerated image can fetch a higher price.

The neon colors you sometimes see in pictures are real - if you were standing in front of the tank with the normal lights on, you would see them in the tank (though usually not as bright, because the non-fluorescent pigments would cover up some of the fluorescence). But since we have to edit the photos anyhow in order to bring them closer to real life, it opens the door for unscrupulous people to exaggerate or fabricate colors that aren't there or aren't as extreme as the photo suggests.

 

[landlubber]

photoshop to sell corals.
there are very bright corals out there that don't need photo refinishing but unfortunately the vast majority are duller in person than the internet leads you to believe

 

[Readywriter]

Lol I hope the hobby isn’t coming to this point.

Starfire glass? Get with the times old man we use stained glass church windows now.

 

[smitten with ocean life]

thanks for all the answers!