Actinic photos

[RacingTiger03]

I have always had a problem with taking photos of my tank with just the actinics on.. Everything is blue/brown in the pictures. I just got a D3000 that does a MUCH better job than my old kodak p&s (even though i always used it in manual). And I STILL can not get the true colors of my brain coral or stylopora! What's the trick? Most everything else shows up its true colors in my tank even on auto pilot for the d3000. Will shooting in raw and doing PP help? I havent taken in shots in raw mode yet as of yet. I can post up some examples tonight if that will help. I have tried the different lighting modes and none seem to have helped, the flash of course only makes things look even worse in actinic. I end up with browned out or blued out photos either way =/.. though on a sidenote it took an amazing shot of my sunflower zoas under actinic only lol.
I am using the stock 18-55mm VR lens.

 

[gparr]

The light under which you shoot is really not relevant, other than more light allows you to use faster shutter speeds. The reason it's irrelevant is that white balance correction should remove all of the blue and give you the true colors. Your best solution for accomplishing that is to shoot in RAW and do a white balance correction in the RAW converter that came with your camera or in Photoshop, or whatever photo-processing software you use.

If you want actinic shots, i.e., you want blue shots that show the fluorescence/"black light" effect, you need not do anything. Just simply turn off the "white" lights, take your picture, and don't do any white-balance adjustment.

Gary

 

[RacingTiger03]

Thanks gary.. ill try some different things on that brain coral and stylo, I can capture the flourescence of everything else. Ill post a shot of the brain to show you what I mean. It doesn't flourese strongly and I think I may just need a longer exposure to catch it if that's the case

 

[RacingTiger03]

my camera didnt come with any editing software.. and gimp won't work on .NEF files (raw for my camera). Do you have any suggestions for that?

Aside from that, here is the brain coral and what I mean I am getting out of it...

Here are my zoas I mentioned on the same settings IIRC... (please excuse the blurriness, I was still learning my way around the camera and was using auto-focus lol)

both are un-touched as far as pp goes.

 

[gparr]

There has to be a CD that came with your camera that contains a program for converting RAW files. You need to either find that program and shoot in RAW or set a custom white balance. RAW would be preferred and easier.

Your meter is also being fooled and overexposing your shots. Try a bracket of three shots--one that is one stop overexposed, according to what your camera meter says is the proper exposure; one that is at the proper setting, according to your camera's meter; and one that is one stop underexposed. You'll see the difference and probably end up using the "underexposed" shot. When shooting, it's a good practice to do that three-shot bracket and then choose the image that works best.

Gary

 

[RacingTiger03]

there is a cd that came with it that had a program called viewnx, it will convert my raws to jpeg for editing in another program. It looses some of the original color that way though, I converted 30 over and could tell the difference easily on most of them. No editing software other than what is on the camera itself that I saw, but I will look through the manual. I did take a few variations of that shot, and couldn't find any that had the correct color.. just darker of the same thing (and lighter of course). Thank you for your help again!

 

[BeakerBob]

RacdingTiger,
The D30000 has a custom white balance option, read about how to set it up from your manual and do it for your actinic tank lighting. Once that is done, the blue cast will disappear and the shots will look more balanced.

 

[gparr]

there is a cd that came with it that had a program called viewnx, it will convert my raws to jpeg for editing in another program.

I did a quick search and it looks like ViewNX is the program that works for Nikon cameras. You'll have to do some research to make sure it works for your camera. According to what I read, ViewNX is free and will convert RAW files to jpg or tif. It'll also correct the white balance and allow you to make some other basic image adjustments. There seems to be plenty of help available on the Internet. Once you learn to correct that white balance, you'll be amazed at the difference.

Bob, Agreed that custom white balance is an option, but correcting white balance in a RAW file is a much more versatile and accurate way of getting the correct colors. The general problem I have with setting a custom white balance is finding something that is truly white in a reef aquarium.

Gary

 

[RacingTiger03]

Yeah, I played around with the white balance options on camera and didn't really have any luck. I'll have to play around with viewnx some to figure out how to make its white balance option work then. Thanks guys!

 

[RacingTiger03]

I found out how to adjust the white balance in view nx.. This is with the gray point adjustment using a 5x5 average sample. This is the same shot from above, just edited the raw and converted to jpeg

not exactly what I was looking for but much better than the original!
Thanks!!