New RBTA

[Brisc0]

Well, its not new. Its about two weeks old, but its finally settled in at this point.

[reefrunner69]

Having a new cam to take pictures of it with doesn't hurt either

Nice shot!

[Brisc0]

Thanks Kevin, I am having a blast with this camera. I just borrowed a 28-200mm lens from the photo store to try out as I have to really work to get good shots out of the stock lens 18-55. I lose a little on the wide angle, but its a lot more versitile. I know its not a macro lens, however I haven't broke down to spend the 500 bucks for a 100mm 1:1 yet LoL

[reefrunner69]

LOL, I don't think I've ever needed to go wider than 28mm and I rarely go 35

[Brisc0]

Yea, its strange having to stand 5 feet away from the tank to get my close ups, but im adjusting hehe. Getting the correct exposure and white balance is still bogging me down, I need to find a place around town that does an "intro to" or something.

[reefrunner69]

White balance is gonna be a bear, being 5 ft from the tank, I would do a manual white balance on the sandbed. On exposure...your in a lowlight situation, you'll need a tripod, you'll want a mid to small aperture and then trial and error should help with the shutterspeed. I used to cheat, I'd check what the cam said on auto and then adjust in manual, till I got a feel for it.

[Brisc0]

Man, I never even thought to use the sandbed for custom white balance. I just took another slew of 100 pics, about 25 for four different settings im interested to see what the custom WB looks like now that I have a good reference for it. What angle would you shoot the sandbed at for CWB?

In about 10 min I can start to try out the dreaded 03 only shooting.

[reefrunner69]

Tell ya what, this will be easier.

Get a white coffee filter (I usually use 2 or 3 of the cone filters), put them over the lens, from where your shooting from and take a pic, set that pic as your WB reference

[Brisc0]

Awesome idea, thanks again Kevin. One more thing since we have turned this New arrival post into camera 101 anyhow, do you think my inability to capture a good green is due to the lack of red spectrum in my lighting? I can't catch good green at all.

[reefrunner69]

If the green looks good in the tank...it should look good on the cam with a proper WB setting. You can test it though...take a picture of a plant, how does the green look? More than likely it is the lighting, 20K + actinics is going to wash out the green a bit, but you should see that without the cam

[madasafish]

That's really quite gorgeous...

[Brisc0]

Kevin, man you hit the nail on the head with that coffee filter thing man. I got a bunch of really high quality pics using that method. Check this out, its dead on accurate color rep. with no editing on my part at all.

[Brisc0]

Kevin, man you hit the nail on the head with that coffee filter thing man. I got a bunch of really high quality pics using that method. Check this out, its dead on accurate color rep. with no editing on my part at all.

[reefrunner69]

cool, I'm glad it works for you as well as it works for me, I'm suprised I didn't mention it first...that's how I set my whte balance.