Finally bought a "Real" camera

[rob6405]

I bought a used DSLR camera to try to take better photos. Most of these are acros from Battlecorals.

Any tips or tricks to editing that anyone has?

 

[Ron Reefman]

I bought a used DSLR camera to try to take better photos. Most of these are acros from Battlecorals.

Any tips or tricks to editing that anyone has?

Your photos look pretty good.

What is the focal length of the lens? Are you using a macro setting on the camera?

Are you using any filter (i.e yellow for use with blue lighting)?

I'm a pretty avid photographer, but I don't shoot many photos of my tank. I'm mostly nature/wildlife, race cars, sun & moon setting or rising. Here is my old tank and a photo I had to work on for over 2 years to get.



The photo below is from the full moon setting behind the Sanibel Lighthouse in SW Florida. I'm well over 3 miles away from the lighthouse on a beach just before sunrise (so the sky has just enough light so you can tell the water from the island and the sky isn't black. This shot is only possible the morning of the full moon. The day before, the sun isn't close to lighting up the sky. The day after and the sun has been up for an hour and the moon is washed out. Then there is the alignment issue. The moon moves a lot along the horizon and I can only line it up 7 to 9 months out of the year. And finally there is the weather. Winter months in SW Florida have fairly clear skies, but June thru October the western horizon is always cloudy out over the Gulf of Mexico. Over the past 2+ years I've had more than a few occasions where the sky looked super clear and the moon was bright as it heading down. I'd drive 30 minutes to a beach and set up in the dark (it's before sunrise). As the moon gets lower and only 5 or 10 minutes from setting at the horizon... it disappears behind a wall of clouds, fog or hazy out over the Gulf of Mexico. Extremely frustrating! But just last month, everything finally worked out perfect and I got this shot. I was using a Nikon Coolpix P1000 with the telephoto set at about 1400mm. I used the manual setting so I could stop down the lens for a better depth of field (f8 and an ISO of 400). Believe it or not, on some other moon shots I've done with a wide open lens, I can get the moon sharp and the foreground is fuzzy, or I can get the foreground sharp and the moon is fuzzy. The shutter for this shot was 4 seconds. And you don't get to many shots that long before the moon disappears below the horizon.



If you want to talk photography, I'm happy to try and help.

Ron

 

[rob6405]

Wow that is an incredible photo! Something to aspire to.

In the beginning I was using an orange light filter but seemed to be getting better shots with no filter then adjust the blues down while editing. Is there a correct way to adjust for the blues in a tank?

I bought a used D3500 that came with what I assume is a stock lense. Reading other articles i was in Aperture mode and went as low as the lens could go at 55mm (F/5.6).

 

[Ron Reefman]

Thanks, I'm really happy with that photo.

Consider looking into yellow filters rather than the orange. I found a thick pack of filter samples online and that helps a lot. In fact, I can use the samples as filters for my cell phone camera!

You can probably play with the white balance in the camera which should make the starting photo data better.