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The 280 is finally going to get set up.. (1 Viewer)

lol well you're right. I need to take some pictures and post a few updates James was on me the other day about it as well. And I am coming up on the 1 year of the first coral added to the main so it makes sense.

I will say everything is looking good. I think honestly I am pretty much done adding livestock and just watching what is in there grow (except there is this one coral I have to suck it up and pull the trigger on over at SWE). The seahorse tank was converted and the seahorses donated to a member here who I knew would take good care of them. It has been converted to a softy/anemone tank and the 45 is gone. I traded with DG (I gave him back his old coral beauty) for a load of softies and James made a very nice donation as well. So except for a piece here or there that tank is pretty much as stocked as I want it to be for the most part.

Now the only thing left is to change water feed fish add calc and alk and watch it grow. So really it will not look like I want it to for at least another year. But I am captivated by it every time I look at it. I might make a few modifications to the shed. Still debating that. And ya know MN is nice this time of year you can always come visit :)
 
wow this thread really froze last winter, no movement, no inspiration for the tankless

Whelp a couple crappy cell phone shots will have to suffice until I have time to get the camera figured out so far I pretty much hate everything I take with it



 
Looks great, Frank. Getting hard to make out the dragon in your rockwork, if it is still there. I think I can still find the spine of it.
 
lol yeah it is almost gone. or at least full of stony warts :)

So OK I still suck at taking pictures but here are a few more attempts. I am hitting Brian up tomorrow for some pointers!!

Stuff:

























James this one was from you a couple frag swaps back tough to get a good shot it's wayyyy in the back:

 
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Looking good. A couple photo tips right now. Most of the photo's have too shallow of a depth of field (too little in focus). Shooting in A mode and setting the F-Stop higher would resolve this. You may also need to up the ISO to avoid the shutter speed going to slow. The Tang picture looks like the camera focused on the coral in the back. Setting the camera on spot focus works real well for tank photos. That will make it focus on what is in the middle of the picture rather than the camera guessing at what you want to focus on.
 
Thanks for your time to show me your tanks today Frank :).This tank set up is more amazing in person. Just simply incredible.....
 
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lol and thank you a ton for the camera tips I cannot wait to take some shots now that I know a lot more about what I am doing.

Here are a couple shots Brian helped me take today as he was explaining a lot of what Ben was talking about above.




 
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So lets see how these look. I am still having some white balance issues but it is getting better. I will try a few FTS later


























 
Color, Focus, and Shutterspeed all look like they improved. Color and white balance is one of the hardest things. Certain sections of the tank will be more blue than others, have shadows, or light spill from the room lights. Its always a battle to find the right manual setting.
 
For color you might also want to try adjusting the tank LEDs. Dropping down the blue lights can make it easier to get the camera to capture the colors.

Also does your camera have a custom WB setting? With those you can point the camera at something in the tank that is white, and the camera will create a WB for that lighting. I found mine not only adjusted the WB color temp, but also added in a filter.

Color is alway a problem in LED tanks. The strong blue confuses the camera. I also have the fun of being partially color blind so manually setting it usually involve me asking my wife if I got it right.
 
Thanks Chris, I think it is the best one I have taken so far with this camera (I like the one of the Bam bams better but Brian took that one lol)
 
OK I could really use some help with these full tank shots they're all so crappy. I figured I would post them and you guys could give me a couple pointer on settings.










 
To me they look a bit under exposed. Look for the EV+- adjustment on the camera and try a few with it set to the + side. Maybe +0.7. Shutting off the powerheads before taking the picture helps some in the clarity. Some of the shots have a bit of blurring in them. Using a tripod and the time delay shutter is a great way to clear up a still object (like corals). Otherwise you could increase the ISO so the shutter would be faster. Unfortunately Photobucket does not display the EXIF (settings) of the photo. Knowing what the camera was set to may help in the recommendations.
 
So I hosted a pretty cool photography workshop at my place last weekend. Awesome group of guys (and an awesome gal) took part in it. Three of the group are amazing photographers So most of these pics were taken by them and others who attended. Special thanks to Ben Nicholls, Chris Kriens and Eric Schulist for all of their valuable time and insight.


The tank is doing well, I did have one of my corals RTN saved most of it by fragging it. but still unsure what the problem was. Alc was 10.9 calc 500 so that was way out of spec and might be the culprit.


anyhow here are some of the shots:


The crew!!





a few FTS














Some really cool underwater pics taken by Ben Nicholls with his brand new Olympus TG-3 (lol we learned that the wireless signal does not do so well underwater :) but the camera is awesome! )










 
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Thought this comic might be appropriate to your tank room.

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