Macro Photography

August Full tank shot

melev — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 22:26:59 +0000

August Full tank shot melev Thu, 08/11/2022 - 01:26

The reef has been running 8 years 9 months. Picked up a new acropora from Aquashella over the weekend called Master Yoda.

Reef Blog

New Macro pictures

melev — Tue, 02 Aug 2022 16:30:22 +0000

New Macro pictures melev Tue, 08/02/2022 - 19:30

Over the weekend, I picked up a new lens and a couple of attachments, and yesterday I got a chance to try them out. I'll be posting more images soon.

I purchased a 15mm wide lens for my Nikon D500, and a couple of Raynox magnifiers that fit most of my lenses.

Lens: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01A9V8ZOC/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Raynox 150: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0007KS7D0/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Raynox 250: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000A1SZ2Y/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I got some tips from Michael Vargas, who takes stunning images daily. One of my irritating issues that bothered me was when I'd upload an edited image, it looked so dark on social media. I use a 27" iMac to edit, and set my screen brightness at 50% before I edit. Since it's a 5k monitor, he pointed out I needed to lower the brightness to about 25%, then edit the pictures. Hopefully I won't be uploading darker images any longer.

Another habit I have is watching the scale at the bottom of the Nikon's viewer. I adjust f-stop first, then rotate the shutter speed so the tick-mark is as close to centered as possible. Michael suggested I stop worrying about that, and just shoot what works. (It's like working with a cook that never uses measuring tools!)

ISO is another one I stick to, but he suggested I expand my imagination. I've always considered 100 ISO to be best for fixed objects, 400 ISO for darker settings, and 800 ISO for moving fish. He encouraged me to use much higher ISO settings, and not worry about the pixelations I'm seeing on my monitor. After all, what I'm editing is a huge file on a bigger monitor, but what I share is for web-viewing. If I was printing images, that would be different. Higher ISO will allow more light in, again helping with my 'darker' image issue.

In the coming weeks, I'll be trying out new settings, as well as my new purchases.

Reef Blog

A few macros from the reef

melev — Fri, 21 Jan 2022 04:15:29 +0000

A few macros from the reef

Shot with a Nikon D500 with a Nikkor 105mm macro lens

melev Fri, 01/21/2022 - 07:15

With all the flow turned off in the tank - something I never do - I decided to take some pictures of the SPS corals. I was hoping to capture those tiny polyps, in focus. The flow was off about 30 minutes, then restarted.

Reef Blog

How about a few new pictures?

melev — Thu, 30 Aug 2018 20:40:12 +0000

How about a few new pictures? melev Thu, 08/30/2018 - 23:40

I haven't blogged on my own website in what feels like "much too long" and tonight after getting back from dropping off shipments for my customers, I decided it was time to insert the walkboard, climb up upon it and take a few pictures of some corals from above. My reef is looking so pretty day after day, and most of my updates seem to take place mostly on my youtube channel. Feel free to remind me to update things here, as there are times when it's nice to just read a quick update on the latest. Right? Biggest recent change - I stopped dosing vodka this week because I was seeing a couple of areas on three corals turning white, and didn't want to push my luck. While nitrates did not come down, Phosphate did significantly. Weird.

Here are some of the pictures I thought were good enough to share. This first picture shows three different montiporas that are sharing the same rock.

I love these Blastos, which throw just the right color in the midst of a bunch of blue and purple. When I got this originally it was a pretty colony, but my Duncans or an acan decided to eat 80% of them. They took a long long time to recover, but are looking stellar these days. Super nice from above, but visible from the front or back of my reef as well.

This montipora capricornis has blue polyps. You can barely make them out, even when you are looking for them.

Does this help? ;) I have several types of montipora in my aquarium, with blue, orange, red polyps. It really is the tiny stuff that makes me happy.

Below is the Blueberry acropora. It started out as a single twig; this may be a tabling acropora.

Here is my Disney acropora. You can see hints of the famous coloration.

There are two colonies of this next acropora, which I call Drew's Acro. Here are a few pictures. Sooo many polyps!

This acropora is mostly green, with bluish tips.

This colorful A. milleopora is really taking off in all directions, other than up. It's in a shady spot, and is even overgrowing a green tort to the right... I guess I'm going to have to get my arm wet if I want to save it.

At the top of this blog, you saw the Oregon Tort. Here's a close up of some of the polyps, as well as the skin of the coral.

This pretty pink "bubblegum" (if I got that name right) chalice is in the back of my tank, and is a very slow grower.

I really didn't like this picture at all, but I wanted to document the coral's growth as of today. This is another blue tort, but not an Oregon Tort. I cleaned it up as best I could.

The Quad-color acropora has grown into a nice shape, and there's more of it to the lower left encrusted over the rock.

Here's my red acropora, which is only red under 10,000K lighting. It's in the staghorn family.

And we will wrap up with a top down view of the Unknown Acro, which has taken on a vivid blue coloration. It's growing outwards rather than bushy, so it may be a tabling acropora as well. It needs a better spot, since that green montipora is shading it now. It's way down on the sandbed.

All these pictures were taken with a Nikon D90, using one of two different lenses. Post processing was done in Lightroom.

Reef Blog

Corals viewed from above

melev — Fri, 23 Mar 2018 11:14:52 +0000

Corals viewed from above melev Fri, 03/23/2018 - 14:14

I'm behind on blogging - and that's not good. Overall, things are just growing quietly. I took a bunch of pictures, primarily from above. That's because the best view is from that vantage. If you aren't making it a point to look down on your reef from time to time, you're definitely missing out.

All pictures were taken with a Nikon D90 and a 35mm lens with a low f-stop.

They say good things start small. Below are two very small bits of Walt Disney acropora. This is the third time I've had to relocate this fragplug, it keeps getting knocked around. I puttied it into place, and if all goes well it will turn into something big and pretty one day.

Here's a closer look. This is under 10,000K lighting, so not as vivid as those pictures you see on the web.

The Shadowcaster is encrusting wherever it touches rock.

And in the next picture, you can see some of the yellow/green that peeks out of that red acropora. This is only visible from above, especially under blue lighting.

This little acropora came from the club's Fragging Demonstration last January. It's much prettier from above...

This maze coral has been with me for 13 years. It comes and goes, just like the tide. Currently it's happy, and spreading onto a nearby rock to its left, but a lot of its tissue has perished over the years. It's a slow grower, so any losses are more frustrating to me. Above it, the lobo is looking picked at; that's because the Copperband butterfly keeps picking at it. I wish that fish would leave this coral alone.

It's a good thing I glued a frag of the Lime In The Sky acropora to this rock far away from the sebae anemone, because the main colony is really taking a hit from that 'nem.

This coral is named because of the blue hue within the tissue between all those green polyp structures.

Here's the parent colony and its NEMesis.

The purple grape montipora hides behind the rockwork in my reef, visible only from above, or from the backside of the aquarium.

The green and purple looking monti in the bottom of this picture is all that remains of a frag I got from Sea World San Antonio. It may be the Appleberry Monti. I'll need to cut it and relocate it to a safer spot, away from the Sunset Monti.

I'm going to name this shot "Spock and friends"

And finally the unknown tort I got at our club's frag swap recently, under 10,000K and 20,000K lighting.

Reef Blog

When you take pictures with a DSLR

melev — Fri, 19 Jan 2018 22:27:31 +0000

When you take pictures with a DSLR melev Sat, 01/20/2018 - 01:27

I wanted to discuss that feeling that you get when you take a picture of your aquarium. Everything looks perfect to your eye, but the camera gives you a blue picture that seems less focused, slightly rounded, and overall it seems rather meh. Nothing that makes you want to share those images with others, at least not with any sense of pride. I can complete a photo session around my tank and think the images look pretty good based on what I saw on the LCD screen on the back of my Nikon, but that's while I'm being bathed in blue light. When I import all the images from the memory card onto my computer, I see dozens of washed out images that look like junk.

A few years ago, my friend told me to shoot all my picture in RAW, so I do. This allows me to make all sorts of color correction in post (post processing), fixing what the data to match what the human eye sees. My camera's white balance is pretty much worthless, it turns out. I googled it years ago, after trying repeatedly to set it to handle my tank's 20000 Kelvin spectrum. It can't do it, it doesn't even come close. With all the data contained in every RAW image, I can change the spectrum with a slider, pulling out the blue and providing a nice clean image that is closer to reality. Of course, if you want pure vivid colors in a blue image, that's your perogative.

In addition, I use something called Lens Correction that takes away the slight bulge of every image, making things square and straight. When I look at pictures now, I can immediately see how the lens distorted the shape of an aquarium or sump I've photographed, but Lightroom corrects this with the click of a mouse.

I sharpened the image, try to reduce any areas that appear blown out since some areas are very bright (sand, light green corals) while others are less intense (rocks, brown corals), and crop if necessary to focus on the subject.

tl/dr version: Here's a before and after pasted together to compare side by side. Top image, notice the black trim is a little bowed upward in the middle above the Shadowcaster? It's fixed in the lower image. And the greens are far more vivid in the lower picture as well.

If you take a bunch of pictures and don't like the results, it's very likely because you need to clean them up in Photoshop or some other software. This is also the case for SCUBA photography. Those incredible pictures we see via NatGeo? Every one of them was carefully edited for maximum visual effect.

Reef Blog

Actinic pictures - Part 2

melev — Tue, 16 Jan 2018 10:33:19 +0000

Actinic pictures - Part 2 melev Tue, 01/16/2018 - 13:33

Continuing from the previous blog, here are a few more actinic shots. I really wanted to capture a decent reflection shot, but the blue lighting doesn't help make it easy.

Of all the SPS corals, I just adore the polyps on a montipora species. I can never get enough of them. And if you look really closely at this image below, some polyps are green while others have a yellow-orange hue. That's kinda interesting, actually. I have several areas of Sunset Montipora in my reef.

This Acan echinata was in the far right corner of the 400g for years, but about six months ago I moved it to a more open area. To my eye, it's really a light orange color, but this was the best I could do in post-processing. It looks too reddish in this image.

The lower half of the above image is a chalice that is being overtaken by Sunset Montipora. I need to pull this piece and run it through the wet bandsaw because that chalice is actually pretty unique. The grey-blue area looks almost white under daylight spectrum, and the pink & green areas contrast nicely.

My Drew's Acro is colored up and looking great. Lots of new growth bursting out at the tips, and in the second shot you can see how it is puddling (encrusting) onto the rockwork (around 6 o'clock). This coral is near the Shadowcaster, but growing in the opposite direction fortunately.

And finally this very drab coral that doesn't look good in actinics. Why did I include it? Because it's an example of a coral that may not be a gem in 20,000K lighting, yet looks great in 10,000K lighting. Also, this was a little nugget for about two years in the Anemone Cube, but I decided to move it into the 400g so it could spread out. And it's doing just that.

Reef Blog

Actinic pictures - Part 1

melev — Sun, 14 Jan 2018 21:29:56 +0000

Actinic pictures - Part 1 melev Mon, 01/15/2018 - 00:29

Taking pictures when all you've got are blue LEDs shining can be frustrating. Bottom line, it's unlikely you can take and share them instantly. The best method is to load them into some photo-editing software, and do some color correction to share something pretty others would appreciate. I took about 100 pictures over the past 24 hours, and these were the ones that I felt were the most worthy. I used Lightroom for post-processing.

Anything that is green or orange will pop. Orange, pinks and reds are good too. Blue and brown will fade into darkness. In this next picture, by adjusting green to make that little acro visible, the pink of the monti in the lower left looks faded and unhealthy. That's part of the challenge of choosing your subject, and how you edit your pictures. If you masked the image and worked on different areas within a single shot, you could color correct everything but odds are the entire image would look overly fake, which I personally don't recommend. Try to showcase your corals the way they look to your own eyes, and people will appreciate your integrity. The best compliment I ever get is "Your corals look just like your pictures."

That's it for tonight. More to come in 24 hours.

Reef Blog

Look really closely

melev — Mon, 25 Dec 2017 17:03:43 +0000

Look really closely melev Mon, 12/25/2017 - 20:03

I've been observing this one area of my reef for a while, which is pretty much in the center of the 400g. The sunset montipora of course is vivid and beautiful, but the leading edge of the rock -- what's going on there?

What are all those tiny white worm things? They aren't vermetids. I'm still waiting for a new pair of prescription glasses to arrive, but I have other ways. I took the Nikon out, added a handy lens and captured a better view for my monitor. It turns out they were a bunch of tiny tube worms or feather duster like creatures. See that Asterina with three arms? That gives you a little perspective:

I'm surprised the Copperband Butterfly doesn't snack on these filter feeders. Not that I want him to, I think they are pretty. The yellow stuff is sponge, another filter feeder in my reef.

Reef Blog

Clean glass results in a few new pictures

melev — Mon, 18 Dec 2017 23:44:41 +0000

Clean glass results in a few new pictures melev Tue, 12/19/2017 - 02:44

For the past few days, I've been watching the film algae grow on the glass of all my tanks and just wasn't motivated to clean it off. My guilt grew worse as I imagined the fish were disgusted with these conditions and I swiped all the panes clean today. Within a couple of hours, my beautiful corals were visible again and of course the urge to take some pictures struck again.

Using a 50mm lens with the Nikon D90, I took a couple dozen shots and these were the ones I liked best. Once done, they were run through Lightroom for color correction and to remove the particulates speckling the images.

I did my water testing yesterday, and shared them to instagram from ReefTrace. Here's a screenshot. As you'll notice, nitrates continue to be high but I'm hoping the Xport brick will kick in in a few weeks and start bringing them down. That's the test, to see if it works.

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