Shooting under blue (LED) lighting

[thewackyreefer]

So I saw a pic of Jason Fox's tank in a thread today with everything glowing and the pic was still very clear.

Every time I shoot under my blue LED's the pic comes out, well...terrible. Any tips on shooting under this lighting condition? I'm using a Canon T1i.

Thx!

 

[revhtree]

I have found that you have to shoot in raw as well as play with your settings pre-shoot to get those to come out well. Now what the settings are, not sure. LOL!

 

[pumarjr]

I've tried different cameras, settings, formats. I cannot ever seem to shoot under my blue LEDs. The only time I ever shot under my blues, was when I built my DIY fixture and had both the cool blue and royal blues turned on. The image sensor hates that wavelength, I still have yet to try adjusting the exposure and temp in Photoshop. I will tomorrow.

 

[jledon4]

i don't know if you can tell in the picture, bit there is a lot of yellow tint to it... you could tell be the lamp on the background and also by the convict tang on the bottom right, he is yellow like a golden jack (pilotfish). what do you think?

 

[gatelord26]

Hi guys

I took some pic's recently under blue leds, and after fighting with the camera for a long time I finally figured out my canon rebel. You need a tripod, set your white balance using a gray card(dont use white) and set the F stops to around f8. Dont give up it just takes a bit of practice to figure it out.

 

[Neptune Aquatics]

Try custom WB on your Cannon. With a look down viewer, use something white and take an image of it under the same light (under water of course) and use that as your WB reference image. You should be able to properly WB with this method with any light, even LED. Good luck.

 

[jarred1]

can someone post where the picture of his tank is?

 

[returnofsid]

Post some of your photos, so we can see what's going on. Chances are, setting a custom white balance will solve a lot of the problem. Also, set your aperture slightly to the left of center, or slightly under exposed. Shooting in manual mode will allow you to set your aperture and shutter speed, along with everything else, manually.

 

[KLR]

I have a Canon powershot s90, Point and Shoot I have found that the best things to do are
1. Custom WB
2. Set ISO to 80
3. Go to you 4 color chart under display on Custom WB(if your camera has one, mine does) and put the cursor on the farthest you can on red and up 1 on green,this helps cancel out a large amount of the blue and still keeps your colors true

Ive never tried shooting in RAW but I will give it a shot!

 

[returnofsid]

If you have the ability to set a Custom White Balance, USE IT! The best way to do this is to use something completely white. I use a styrofoam picnic plate. Put it inside your tank, and take a photo of it. Try to completely fill the image with the plate and make sure it's very well focused. Save this photo, you'll need it.

Now, go to your custom white balance settings, it will ask you for a photo, to use, to set the custom white balance. Use the photo you took. This tells the camera "This is White." Now, the camera will automatically make the changes needed, to adjust for "white."

Our eyes are very capable of filtering out odd colors, to see true colors. In a room lit with fluorescents, we still see true color, instead of green. In our aquariums, we still see true color, instead of blue.

On the other hand, cameras are horrible at this, though higher end cameras are better. We have to tell our cameras what "white" looks like. The reason I say higher end cameras are better is this:

I used to shoot with a Rebel Xt and had to set a custom white balance for each of my aquariums, differently, or aquariums that I visited. I also had to set a custom white balance, when taking graduation photos, of my kids, in a gym, or they turned out yellow.

Now I shoot with a Canon 7D and haven't had to set a custom white balance one single time, taking many photos of many tanks, as well as photos in the same gym. It's "smarter," and better capable of interpreting "white."