Neptune Aquatics

Photography Forum?

kinetic

Supporting Member
Well, I know I like photography, maybe we can put a photography forum together and we can share pix of our tanks/livestocks and other random things?

photography seems to tie all hobbies/professions together, so shall we!? hehe =) Just a suggestion. I'd love to see one come up.
 
Since very few people have enterred the photo contests, I think the forum would only be serving a couple of us (You, me and a couple others :D )
 
a photography forum sounds like a good idea - as long as people like me can learn from the expert. May be have a meeting about learning how to take a macro.
 
maybe with a photography forum people will be more exposed to it, and eventually the photo contest will be HUGE!

I think there are a few barriers keeping a lot of us from posting pictures for the contest, one is just not knowing where to start or how to do it. Constant exposure through the photography forum may start a trend and soon the whole forum will be rich with photos everywhere.

I love photos with posts, makes a huge difference in how interesting a post is. Maybe we can jump start everyone's interest in photography and posting pictures with this forum.

I'm sure post-creation of said forum, we'll get more participation in the contest.

Barriers would include:
"how the heck do I make the most of the camera I have?"
- uploading them to specific computers and what to do next
- how to save them online
- how to link them

I mean we could have a "step by step guide", but also people should be able to ask questions in their own terms if they're not following the technical guides.

I think it would be fun.
 
Well, we'd been talking about doing a photography topic for one of our meetings.

Sounds like you'd be a good one to give that presentation!

That must be why your parents named you ART :D
 
That would be cool to learn from the "pro" ;D ..

* I have a friend who is Chinese and his name is also Arthur. He likes photography too :D ..
 
We can start a few discussions on the various topics, and eventually we can consolidate the information into a FAQ.

I can do that once we have a forum going if BOD decide to go through with it.

It's much easier to read threads like:
How to take clear pictures in low light
How to transfer and post pictures on the site for free

rather than just a:
Photo FAQ

We should eventually have a thread called FAQ or something similar, and have a link to each section. I'm no technical writer, so I think a person looking for information may find it more helpful reading people's discussions (real life questions and answers) than just a straight technical writeup by me =P

And also, I'm not even close to pro =P It's just another one of my hobbies, that maybe you guys will all pickup soon too!
 
That would be great since I brought a Nikon D50 but still not able to take good picture of my tank with the thing.
-Anyone know why the picture I take does not look like what I get? Color seem off but moving it to Photoshop and use the fix option/auto color it seem closer to what I see. Is this then what's call photoshoping ???
 
nash: I believe the problem is white balancing. White balancing in laymen terms is basically adjusting to the kelvin temperature of the light source. In most cases we want to adjust such that all our pictures look like they would in sunlight. I believe sun kelvin temp is around 5300K or something.

I'm not sure if the D50 can manually set the kelvin temp, but in my D80 I can set the exact rating and then start shooting. It makes everything come out perfectly.

Our cameras also have AUTO white balancing, but they are really just guidelines and are never exactly accurate. In reef tanks they are greaty skewed because everything is lit in a certain kelvin by our lighting systems.

Another thing to do is research on how to use "grey cards". I'm sure there are tons of resources right off of a google search of "how to use grey cards".

Look for directions specifically for your D50. Learning how to search camera techniques is a great tool =)

Just a note: Photoshop can be thought of as a tool to correct mistakes made during taking a photograph, such as white balance, and such. Given that knowledge, our cameras have the ability to take the perfect shot, just takes some getting used to the settings to know how to make the perfect shot. But that doesn't mean you have to take a perfect shot, which is nearly impossible, and that's where photoshop can help you. But try not to rely on photoshop to correct everything, correct things on your camera first. Of course photoshop is also used to enhance and manipulate photos out of reality, so there are a lot of functions.

Sorry for being so abstract, shoot some questions here if you have more and I can give your more details. research first on white balance / grey card usage also, I think you'll find that to be amazingly helpful in our reef tank shooting and every other situation =)
 
the Photo Forum would be great if we can get a "hands-on" workshop.
Maybe we could set a small tank, couple corals and PC/Halide lighting for the next meeting and teach people how to make pics.

p.s. Anyone has 50mm 1.4 or 1.8 for loan? With reverse ring?
Or maybe 60mm Micro?

I want to try it with my D50 to make macro pics.
In return I'll provide couple of beginners corals for DBTC maybe?

Thank you!
 
You can preset the white balance with the D50 but I prefer to do it in Adobe Camera Raw. Makes it much easier. Finally got a 60mm macro lens now if I can only talk the wife into a tripod I might be in business. Guess my hand shaking has gotten worse with age.
 
For what it's worth, TalkingReef had a fabulous* interview on how to do aquarium photography with an SLR.

*fabulous is a relative term; if you've ever listened to this guy, you know what I mean.
 
I also bought the D50 with the 2 lens Costco package. I've been getting better at taking and handling pictures. I still haven't tried to take many tank shots. Which Nikon lens would you recommend for close ups of Zoos etc?

Regards,

Roy
 
Roy,

I bought the same package. I find the two lenses that came with it pretty well useless for most of my photography. I bought a 1.8 50mm lens for my everyday type photos (cheap and very versitile) and a 60mm micro lens for shooting my tank. Still learning to use the 60mm lens correctly, but getting there.

In the city there are a couple of places you can rent a lens for a day or even a week (Calumet and Adolph Gasser in the city) to see how it fits what you are looking for. Some of them are very expensive so this may be a good route.

Here are a couple of shots I just took while messing around last night. As you can see I still need a lot of work, but you can get some really nice detail of the polyps etc:

DSC_0020.jpg


Hoeksemai-1.jpg


DSC_0015.jpg


Now if I can only master taking things further back in my tank.
 
[quote author=gsengel link=topic=1643.msg16200#msg16200 date=1171777614]
For what it's worth, TalkingReef had a fabulous* interview on how to do aquarium photography with an SLR.

*fabulous is a relative term; if you've ever listened to this guy, you know what I mean.
[/quote]

LOL :D
 
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