12K Reeflux Bulb Photo Opportunity

[bubbletip2]

I wanted to start a new thread to share my experience with taking photos of Mike Leonard's TOTM for September yesterday afternoon. I have been making photos of reef tanks for five years now and have been extremely frustrated with any tank I had shot. I don't feel that way anymore after shooting Mike's tank under 12K Reeflux bulbs.

The qoute below was taken from one of my posts from this thread:

http://archive.reefcentral.com/forum...&pagenumber=11

"I think the area in tank photography that effects your success the most is the types of lights that are used. Without good lighting, photographs can look as unnatural as the Simpsons. Light is everything. I have never felt shooting under variuos 10K bulbs and especially 14K(what I have at home now) and 20K bulbs ever produced natural photos right out of the camera. You really have to work heavily with white balance and color channels to get anything close to natural. The coral, the rock, the corraline, and the fish just don't look like what you see when you are there in front of the tank. That is not the tanks fault. You know how it looks in front of your tank, but your camera has a s**t load of trouble trying to figure it out. Most 10K's will blow out highlights in your shots and blues look so unnatural that the majority of the shots I just throw away."

I have never before been able to get near accurate photos right out of the camera with any other bulb but the Reeflux 12K. I would like to go into more detail about this later because depending upon the content of the photo in regards to contrast of colors, where the bulb is in respect to the camera, and the range of highlight to shadow, it is still possible to get strange color effects even from this 12K bulb.

However, as I stated previously I have never been able to get such accurate color for the majority of any session with any tank up until now.

I am going to add a little teaser of a top down shot to give you an idea of where I am coming from. In the middle of this photo you will recognize a lime green monti cap. Mike had pointed this coral out to me explaining that this color can sometimes be hard to find. It is so lime green in person you would not beleive it. Most green monti's I have encountered have a darker hue and I think Mike will agree with me that he feels the same. The point here is that when you look at this photo there are other green and blu-green corals that would look pretty awkward if I were to turn the lime green channel up to show off this monti. It is just not possible to do without effecting the majority of the rest of the photo being the green and blue-green stags.

Another thing to be understood is that when taking pictures of tanks it is unlikely to shoot any shots with anything but ISO400 or higher. Most of what I had to shoot was ISO 800 in order to get a fast enough shutter speed to keep from camera shake. This is without flash of course. I just feel that flash shots lose the natural look of what was seen in the tank. In shooting higher sensitivities, it is very likely that you will introduce color noise effects and chromatic abberations especially in the darker areas of a photo. This is something everyone deals with when trying to make a picture brighter than the original exposure. This is not the greatest shot I took yesterday but simply a good example of what I am trying to explain.

Again, the excitement I felt when I started taking pictures was how much easier it was for me to get great pictures out of the camera with minimal correction of exposure, sharpness, and highlight/shadow tools to mimic exactly what I saw when I looked down into Mike's tank under 12K Reeflux bulbs.

I will have a few more pics to come. This one should get us started to understanding the relationship between the light of our bulbs and the impact on digital cameras that we use today.

[dvanacker]

oh wow....that is a great pic !

[michika]

Very nice photos.

I liked your write up. Is there anywhere else I can go to view more of your photography?

[talon4x4]

WOW!!! Simply an amazing shot!!!

[bubbletip2]

Thanks guys for the kind words. I have some shots to show. i really like taking landscapes and nature photos. I am not trying to plug myself as I do not currently make a living shooting photos. I do side jobs for family photos and such but nothing to support myself on. Here are some shots I took last March in Mexico that I like. I use polarizing filters whenever the clouds pop like you see here. The clown shot is of Alice my 11 year old tank raised percula clown. The bubble is my mother bubble that has split a dozen time in the last year and a half.

And of course another teaser from Mike's tank:



I love this shot because you can see two of the five yellow tangs along with a purple tang. beautiful section of the tank.









You will notice that this bubble looks a bit yellow. Right out of the camera the green in this shot is just not there. In order to make it look like I see it in the tank as best I can, it enhances the yellow because yellow is opposite of cyan. Under a 14K bulb in order to cut out the blue I have to compromise with a yellowish green bubble. I could probably do a bit better but it is really tough when taking shots under 14K bulbs. I use the EVC 14K. I am sure someone will ask eventually.

If you look at the Clownfish shot w/ bubble you will notice a difference. Now that was under 10K Power Compact lighting with actinic as well. It took me a long time to get that shot there. Many variations before I ended with that.

Well hope you guys like the pics. More to come...

[danfrith]

I have a new background!!!

[acropora nut]

Jim I love the shot with the VW bug. The orange is insane........


Mike

[michika]

Your photos are just fantastic!

For your anenome and clown & anemone photos were they done with an acrylic box underwater, or straight through glass?

[bubbletip2]

Beleive it or not those are straight through the glass. I get a 5-10% keeper rate under my 14K and the PC's on my old tank. The PC's were not bright enough to get shots with a fast enough shutter speed.. Many of them came out blurry. What I had to do if I really wanted some fresh pics is to take like 200-400 shots and just hope I get something in focus.

Here is another good bubbletip pic:



This shot is right out of the camera with some exposure adjustment and sharpness bossted. This is not what the bubbletip looked like. Because of the blue light I have a blue tinge to the bubble where it really was more neon green. Again color accuracy is tough under 14K and 20K lighting. If I was to make it more neon green it woudl look more like the bubbletip above.

[bubbletip2]

Hey Michika,

I forgot to add that I have not gotten around to putting a portfolio together online for viewing. I have started putting aportfolio of prints together as I recently purchased an archival printer. Prints just seem more real to me than viewing on a screen. It also smooths out alot of the atrifact(noise) that we see on our monitors. I really should get a website going with more of my work.

Thanks for the kind words.

Originally posted by michika
Very nice photos.

I liked your write up. Is there anywhere else I can go to view more of your photography?

[Oldude]

nice pictures

[michika]

Should you get around to posting an online portfolio I would love ot see it.

Is the clown and anemone in your own tank or from AcroporaNut's tank?

[bubbletip2]

The clown and anenome are actually my own. That is my motherbubble that has split a dozen times. Kind of weird but right now she is joined by two pico bubbletips. One is a 1/2" wide with 7 tentacles and the 1" pico has about 12 tentacles.

I have given many away and now have two little ones that will go to some local reefers I am sure. It was splitting so often(every two months), especially when I fed more often, that I was starting to think I should grow them out and have a bubbletip tank. I told myself, Nah shortly after. They were literally on top of each other not causing each other any problems at all. I had three bubbletips at one time and could have easily kept going. I did not have anythign else at the time except a small poci frag that has grown out pretty well since then. This was aroudn the same time last year. Can you imagine 12 bubbletips in one tank?

Her is a pic of 3 of the big bubbletips in one shot. I think it could have been cool to see just bubbletips in a tank. the clowns would be in heaven

The BTA in the middle is the mother. She is the only one I have witnessed splitting. And I have watched the majority of them. These pico bubbles are so small that I have to wonder if they are splits or spawn.

[neyugn0w01]

Those all look like LE pieces. Nice shots.

[bubbletip2]

Thanks neyugn!

May I ask what you mean by LE pieces?

I went over to Mike L.'s to get some more shots of the tank. Here are a few extras not submitted for TOTM.

[michika]

Which camera were you using for the last few shots?

LE = limited edition.

[Kinetic]

did you consider it may be your camera is able to white balance better under those lamps?

I find white balancing easily correctable under any lamp. Just shoot a grey card inside the tank, set the white balance, and it looks natural and not artificial. It comes right out of the camera looking great if you're able to set up your white balance correctly. Perhaps your specific camera just adjusted much better to the 12K. I don't think it's enough to say it can't be done with other types of lamps.

I have no problems shooting under any type of lamp / actinic setup, as long as I properly setup my white balance and metering.

20K AB Lamp:

[bubbletip2]

Those are great pics Kinetic. Please share your experiences. If I use a grey card or Whibal on my 14K lights it does not turn out right. I shoot RAW so I convert white balance in post processing. I do not custom white balance with jpegs. My DSLR's only go up to 10000K so I don't think it is the camera. What I do is use Lightroom and from there I can adjust to 14K, 12K or 20K. I notice more color artifact when doing a conversion from the 14K and 20K bulbs. Even at 12K I still have to make a slight adjustment in white balance from the camera but it is better than I have ever seen from a bulb. Can you explain for everyone what exactly you do, camera use(as a reference) to adjust for white balance? I think this woudl help a lot of people including myself.

Where are you placing the grey card in relation to the light? Interestingly you use a grey card which is specifically for neutral grey exposure readings. I use a whibal (white balance reference card) for white balance in the field.

What metering mode do you use? I mostly use spot metering or partial.

[bubbletip2]

I guess no response.

Mike gave me a 250w 12K Reeflux to try out on my tank. For the last year almost to the day I was using the 250w EVC 14K with a 250w EVC Electronic ballast. I like the look of the 14K bulb but could never take color accurate pics.

These two pics were taken only after 14 hours of burn in. They are definitely less blue than the 14K but still have a really nice blue. I swear this thing at least right now looks like a perfect 50/50 metal halide bulb or maybe what I woudl expect when I get a bulb that says actinic white.

Mike assured me it would get whiter as I am approaching 100 hours on the bulb. Also, these bulbs were made to fire on a Coralvue ballast so color may be slightly different on a different ballast as well as differences between the 400w and 250w bulbs. The color definitely looks bluer than what I have seen out of the 400w bulbs on Mike's tank. Again, could be the ballast or 250w vs 400w.

Anyway, here are a couple pics of some of my coral. The colors are definitely truer to me from the 14K bulb. The improvement is signifacnt and I can't wait til this thing burns in so I can test it then. The major differnece in this bulb from my 14K is how much brighter it is. This is a pretty small tank so my pics have blown out some of the highlights and the shadow cast is pretty strong.



Mike does this really look like a Mille to you. Cool if it is? You can also see a huge frag Mike gave me from that huge Seriatapora at the top of his tank. The Mille? has only really grown an inch in one year under the 250w EVC 14K.

[katchupoy]

BUBBLETIP,

do you have any pics of your tank with the evc 14k? for comparison... specially the one without corrections on it.

I wanted to try evc 14k because they have more par than 12k reeflux but since you mentioned that this 12k is brighter than your evc 14k... please show us some pic.

This will help me decide on what bulb to use.


Thank you.

[Kinetic]

sorry, I didn't notice this thread continuation until today. I'd highly suggest looking for people on aquatic-photography.com and other such resources for better information on it in the meantime. I'll come back and post my workflow soon.

[bubbletip2]

Hey katchupoy,

I have looked at the numbers as well and noticed the EVC14K was pretty high for a 250w MH bulb. That is why I grabbed one. I had not gotten the growth I would expect. The color is great though just not so much in the photos.

The 12K Reeflux is pretty sweet. So far it still retains some blue but you get a bright white as well. Perfect combination bulb in my opinion.

If you look at the pic with the 3 bubbletips, you can get an idea of what the EVC 14K is like. Not quite as bright. In a couple months I will be able to tell if the PAR is that important by the growth. If I get noticeable growth in that length of time I am sure the bulb will be responsible because I am not really doing anything different.

You have to remember too, Sanjay's test is on one bulb on multiple ballasts. Not all bulbs will test exactly the same and I have not seen a test on the 250w with an actual Coralvue ballast.

Also, what do you think of shooting under the 12K bulb? I saw some of your pics on your my reef webpage and can tell also that the color is pretty true. Great shots too...

[katchupoy]

Right now I dont have 12k but I used a 10k reeflux before. I have a previous generation of 10k's so its a pinkish bulb. I really like the colors of corals under 10k but was just wondering about the 12k's.

I also noticed that the 14k EVC is almost identical to XM20k's. The reason I wanted to go to the blue side is because most of the tanks that I saw that are jaw dropping uses 20k xms....

Just wondering, thats why Im so interested with 14k EVC specially with its price.

[Skipper]

[moved]

[KurtsReef]

Originally posted by acropora nut
Jim I love the shot with the VW bug. The orange is insane........


Mike

Thats your tank right Mike, Bubbletip did a good job of capturing it.