picture perfect photos

[hashbaz]

This is a photography question, but one related specifically to the appearance of a planted tank.

I think i have a good grasp on all of the basics: lighting, exposure, distances etc. But I am looking for suggestions on perfecting the photos. To some degree, I have started to modify my plant choice to improve photo quality, and I am looking for more suggestions on perfecting photos.

Here are a few examples of what I have found that helps photos come out better:

Picture 1:

I will use this photo as an example of poor exposure. Notice how the driftwood is under-exposed while the dwarf sag (front right) is over-exposed. The bright green plants make it hard to get everything exposed properly, so I took out the dwarf sag.

Picture 2:

(this is my most current picture)
I don't like how the green myrio (upper right) looks in this pic. It is a very beautiful plant, but does not look very good in my photos. You can see how it looks like a green cloud instead of the really cool plant that it is. I don't like the way it looks but have not yet found a solution. Perhaps the leaves are too fine to be photographed from that distance.

Does anyone else have any suggestions for "fine tuning" their photos?

 

[GlitcH]

Oh your just getting way to picky now hash

No really though......I think it's all personal preference cuz I think both the photos are great.
Not that I don't see what your talkin about.
The first photo is really the only of the two that I think has any real flaws.
And like you say....it's probably the sag that's causing the problem. But.......you could always photochop it.

I did quick dodge and burn job on this one.

 

[hashbaz]

GlitcH, yes I am being VERY picky - but I look at tanks by Travis Simonson and Steve Hampton and other "award winning" caliber tanks and wonder what I could do differently.

I know that plant health and aquascaping skills play a huge part (and I am working on these), but so does the camera/photographer.

I consider photoshop cheating.

But who ever said cheating was a bad thing?

 

[Jchillin]

FWIW, I'm quite sure that a bit of pic enhancement is done on a regular basis. It's not "cheating" per se (cropping in stuff from multiple sources is one example), it is your enhancing the natural beauty of the tank that the camera refuses to show.

I agree with Glitch...we are our own worst enemies when it comes to critiquing our hard work.

 

[travis simonson]

If anything, underexpose your pictures; you can always bring out the contrast in post-processing. But over-exposed pics are unfixable. Everything gets bleached white and the color values are shot.

 

[hashbaz]

Thanks for the tip Travis.

What kinds of stuff do people like to do in "post-processing?"

I am about to experiment with raw format (no compression), and white balance settings to see what happens.

 

[reefrunner69]

I consider photoshop cheating.

If you work for a news source and your providing news photos...I agree, photoshop isn't wise. But it's not cheating in the Art of photography. Ansel Adam (shot fim, maybe you've heard of him) created most of the "cheating techniques" for the darkroom that have been adapted to photoshop and are still used today.

Dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes God made in establishing tonal relationships.

Photography is more than a medium for factual communication of ideas. It is a creative art.

There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.

You don't take a photograph, you make it.

All words of the Master himself So don't hold yourself back by not using photoshop, it's there for the limitations of the media with which you are trying to capture your tank, and unfortunately you have reached them. Your tank contains more dynamic range than you can capture with the digital sensor of your camera. The range of light is too great for your camera to capture. This leaves you two options.
1) Expose for the highlights (brightest areas) to properly expose them and fix the shadows (dark areas) in an editing program, in both of your first two photos the highlights are blown and you've lost detail, the tops of the plants are all over exposed.
2) Expose two identical photos, one for the highlights, one for the shadows and blend them in photoshop (or other editing program)
3) You can add more light to your set up for fill in the shadows and expose for the highlights. IMO, the last will yield the best results, but it will also cost you the money to buy the lights, unless you know someone that has some or you can make a DIY setup.

 

[travis simonson]

Folks, this is the man you should all be listening to. His pictures are among the best you will ever see One day us freshies may figure out how to rival the salties, but we've got a long way to go

 

[travis simonson]

btw My avatar was not post-processed - I actually have square pupils

 

[DeFeKt]

so mum was right about watching to much tv makes your eyes go square...

hmmmmm.

 

[hashbaz]

3) You can add more light to your set up for fill in the shadows and expose for the highlights.

I have 220 watts (over 75gal) would you suggest more? (I've been considering it.) I have two rows of lights - the ones in the back face straight down. The ones in the front sit a little lower and are angled towards the back - so that there is light coming from the front (to some degree), and not just from the top. I hoped that this would help fill in the shadows. But there is not much "angle" to it and it did not work out as well as I had hoped.

I fiddled with the camera settings and here is what I learned (or at least what I think I learned):

Raw format (no compression) did not seem to make any difference.

White balance made a HUGE difference in the color. My camera does not offer full control over the white balance, but gives you a few choices: incandescent, warm fluorescent, daylight etc. I found that auto white balance mode took the best pictures (by far). I think that white balance settings could be the reason that lots of planted tank photos seem "all green" even if there are lots of healthy red plants.

I also tried a little "post processing." I really like Travis' idea of underexposing, and then brightening it up with software.

I experimented a lot with brightness, contrast, hue, and saturation and found that it was very easy to screw up photos, but took a delicate touch to actually improve them. I need a lot of practice in this neighborhood - and I doubt there is any other way to master this technique.

I will have to see if I can find photoshop (or something similar) to try the "cut and paste" techniques.

I found something on my camera that will make the "cut and paste" really nice. The camera has an auto bracket mode (for those who don't know: in this mode, the camera takes 3 photos (in rapid succession) - one is correctly exposed, one is over exposed and one is underexposed. This will make it very easy to get the same shot in multiple exposures.

I'm excited to try some of these ideas. Thanks for the all the help - this is the kind of stuff I was hoping for.

 

[reefrunner69]

I have 220 watts (over 75gal) would you suggest more?

Yes, it's not that you don't have enough light (it's still a low light situation), it's that the range from bright to dark is too great. So you need light to fill the shadows under the plants. Even with some of the light pointed towards the back, the tank is still lit from the top. You need some light coming from the bottom and sides to fill in the shadows.

Raw format (no compression) did not seem to make any difference.

What utility were you using to convert the photos? You should have been able to do a custom white balance with the raw converter which should have at least helped there. You should also be able to adjust exposure in the converter and adjust shadows add fill light etc.

Auto bracketing is great, especially if your going to try and blend photos. If you want to do this check out this link for instructions.
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/blended_exposures.shtml

 

[hashbaz]

That is a sweet article. Thanks!

I at work now and don't remember the name of the software I've been using. Its just the software that came with the camera. Its capabilities are very limited.

I'll have to search later for some downloadable/free software, unless someone can point me in the right direction.

edit: I found some free photo software called "The GIMP" I will have to try it out.

 

[cowman345]

it's not cheating in the Art of photography....

So don't hold yourself back by not using photoshop, it's there for the limitations of the media with which you are trying to capture your tank

Well said, reefrunner! As a professional photographer let me just chime in and say that of the photos delivered to my clients, be it a wedding, or a commercial product shoot, none, i said NONE of them haven't been through photoshop for careful tweaking and adjusting!

As digital photographers, we don't have darkrooms, and a RAW digital image usually has NO additional processing out of camera. In fact, even negatives you have developed at a lab are adjusted by the film processor to render proper color/contrast balance. So don't be shy with the PS!

-dave-

 

[mr funktastic]

just as a quick example... here is a pic before photoshop

and here is a pic after. all i did was correct tint, focus and brightness/contrast. i fixed it to the point where it looks like i see the fish. i didnt make it look fake.

what do u think? this is a very basic and quick fix i am sure it could be better.

 

[cowman345]

Yeah that's a perfect example, funk... illustrates the innate shortcomings of the digital sensor, and photoshop fix to restore what our eye sees!

-dave-

 

[cabezon]

thre is a process called HDR that you might want to look into. http://www.hdrsoft.com has a free trial, and then there is always photoshop. it involves splicing together a group of photos that are at different exposures. pretty much digitally dodging and burning.

 

[kaz]

answer to exposure,
always expose for the darkest point, in development you will you filters to bring down the over expose parts, if you like some details in over expose parts, expose for the darks and then crank the camera to one or max two stops, if not use a filter to bring the oe down like nd.

 

[reefrunner69]

answer to exposure,
always expose for the darkest point, in development you will you filters to bring down the over expose parts, if you like some details in over expose parts, expose for the darks and then crank the camera to one or max two stops, if not use a filter to bring the oe down like nd.

This is true of film, Ansel Adams used to say, "expose for the shadows, develop for the highlights". This is not true of digital, typically with digital, you want to expose for the highlights and process for the shadows. It is much easier to regain shadow detail in a photo than highlight detail. In digital once you blow the highlights, their gone, film was much more forgiving and would retain the highlight detail.

 

[Purrbox]

I've had a copy of GIMP installed on my PC for awhile now, and decided to see about playing with it to try and figure out what I actually could accomplish. Up until now I've found it rather intimidating and not very intuitive. A quick search yeilded the following tutorial. As it turns on many of the topics covered are the very techniques that have been discussed in this thread. There's even a Layer Perspective tool that you can use to correct the slant of the top/bottom/sides of the aquarium. I think that with a little bit of practice, GIMP may be the tool I need for my photo editing and best of all it's free!