Too early for Christmas?

[amashun1]

as title, is it too early?



any critiques to help improve is welcome and appreciated.

Cheers,
Adrian

[surenj]

Wow lovely little things. I love the color scheme and composition. What are they?

[amashun1]

thanks for your kind compliment surenj.

It is one of the live coral in my home aquarium called Montipora sp. i still can not fully capture the true fluorescent green and red colour of it

[Killakoala]

Fascinating piece of water-life. If you can capture the real-life colours, I'd love to see that. The colours you have captured are great as they are.

[Matt. K]

WOW! Glorious colours! Marvellous shot!

[Mr Darcy]

As it is in your home aquarium, you might consider lighting it from both sides, rather than the top to get more even lighting.
While I think you have captured the polyps well, I find the blown toplights distracting

[amashun1]

Fascinating piece of water-life. If you can capture the real-life colours, I'd love to see that. The colours you have captured are great as they are.

WOW! Glorious colours! Marvellous shot!

Cheers guys for your kind compliments, i'm still learning and slowly getting there i hope

As it is in your home aquarium, you might consider lighting it from both sides, rather than the top to get more even lighting.
While I think you have captured the polyps well, I find the blown toplights distracting

Thanks Greg, i didn't lighting up from the top as those are my aquarium light. when you said lighting it from both sides, how would you do that?

It is because i tried to use flash to take pictures and the colour would wash out more. I'm just wondering, would there be any special way to do such a task and would you mind to share please?

Cheers,
A

[Mr Darcy]

Hi Adrian,
The general way to light through glass is to have two lights coming in at 45 degrees from either side. Make sure you and the camera are not lit by them. This way, you avoid reflections as the reflected light bounces away from the camera.
You can get by with one, but two lights minimises shadows. They don't need to be flash. Even desk lights will work.

Colour being washed out just means that you are over exposing the shot. Increase shutter speed if possible (may not be with flash as you need to consider sync speed.) Reduce aperture, decrease ISO or reduce the light output (even if your lights are not adjustable, simply moving them further away will reduce their effective brightness.)

For that matter, even with your existing lighting, you may get a better photo simply by reducing your exposure. I see you are using ISO1250, 1/80s f11, so there is room to move here. You are also using Auto WB, so you may get better colour if you choose your WB yourself. Go to Manual exposure. It will give you more control over what you can do.
Experiment with the different settings & see what works & what doesn't. Start with the above settings, then adjust first one, then another. If you stay with the Auto Settings (A,P, S) the camera will simply compensate for anything you try, so make sure you go to M

Just had another thought re colour fade. If your coral fluoresces, you may need to use fluorescent lights to get it to do so. This may explain the colour fade with flash. Experiment.

[amashun1]

Thanks Greg, will try to attempt this weekend. really appreciated for your time and tips

Many thanks.
Adrian

[Lucifer]

Adrian,

With your D90, you can maunaly set the white balance. I set mine to the maxium 10,000K. Read the manual how to set the manual WB. I do this on my tank and get very close to the colour I see (I am still running the Reeflux 12,000k glob). No photoshopping need.

As Greg suguested shot with lower ISO, faster shutter speed and lower F stop to reduce that blowen out highlights.

You can also use a touch to light up some of the shadows.

Yung

[amashun1]

 LOL Yung how youu been mate?

i just changed the lamp recently and it is too blue to do the manual white balance hence i use auto instead. I use manual Pre-set before with the white and grey card to dip it in tank to get closer colour....

I will see how it goes when then lamp fully burns in and adjust it accordingly with the manual WB. Cheers for the input and hope all is well.

Adrian

[Lucifer]

Been good, but very busy.... Not much time spent on the tank anymore.... Need to rearange the rocks work because the dallas are going crazy....

Going to have lest time soon... Waiting for new family member to join us in 5 weeks!!!!

[amashun1]

Congrades, Yung is multiplying

me been extremely busy as well with my bus and existing job, pretty much the same no times on the tank but still good. at least something to look at after a busy day.