Tips for FTS?

[t5Nitro]

Anyone know how to get a good FTS on a 6' long tank? I have a cannon 30D and the kit lens is a EF 28-135mm IS USM if that helps. I can't seem to get a good shot even with a tripod. Pics are horrible. Any help appreciated.

Is the lens able to take a FTS or is it me? :lol:

[edwing206]

Here's really great site.
http://www.ximinasphotography.com/lessons/lesson06/techniques_6.html#Full%20Tank%20Photography
http://www.ximinasphotography.com/lessons/lesson06/techniques_7.html#Full%20Reef%20Photography

Good luck.

[jwedehase]

That's the same lens I take all my FTS with. Ximina's photography, linked above, is a great site. A couple quick tips:

1: Lower the ISO as low as it goes.
2: Take the f/stop to about 7 or 8
3: Line up with the top center of the tank, squared up with the glass.
4: Go full wide (28mm) and get in as close as you can while still catching the whole tank.

What problems are you having? Can you share a photo, even if it's bad? Here's my most recent. Again, same lens.

http://www.cvreefers.org/gallery2/d/38227-1/fts_20080124.jpg

[t5Nitro]

Very nice, and that's a 4' long tank? I can just barely get the whole tank in when I stand at the opposite end of the room. I can get a pic up, let me upload one to photobucket.

[t5Nitro]

Ok, I just took this one now with 7.1 F-stop, 100 ISO, and Av so whatever shutter it had. This one is amazing compared to the other ones. I tried the settings you told me above. Still nothing in comparison to yours. Phenominal pic compared to the others I have though :lol:


FTS

http://i112.photobucket.com/albums/n189/t5Nitro/IMG_1522.jpg

By the way, nice tank. I really like those CBBs, I found mine (healthy > eating mysis and bloodworms + aiptasia) sucked to the koralia on the left not too long ago :( Nice sailfin, too. Those are cool!

[jwedehase]

There's some decent working material there. It looks like you need to bring your lights forward, though. The back glass is lit up all nice, as is the overflow, but neither of those two are things you want highlighted. If you brought your lights forward, you'd light up the rock more, and let the background fall into the shadows a little more, which would make them less of a distraction.

It also looks like you need to make sure the camera is level before taking the shot, to get rid of that tilt. And I'd set the camera a few inches higher, it looks like you're about centered here. This helps create a slightly more top-down look, without ruining the shot with distortion. Other than that, it's mostly post processing.

Here are two shots. The first is the original from my FTS up above, so you can see just how much post processing there really is. I'm reshaping the tank into square, "healing" out distractions, color correcting, adding borders, etc. The second shot is yours with about 3 minutes of Photoshop applied. I rotated it square, brought up the shadows, bumped up the color a little, and sharpened it. More work is done in Photoshop than in the camera, in my experience.

http://www.cvreefers.org/gallery2/d/38744-1/200802_unedited.jpg

http://www.cvreefers.org/gallery2/d/38741-1/IMG_1522.jpg

Edit: And yes, that's a 4' tank, standard 120g.

[t5Nitro]

Wow, what a difference! Are you using CS3? I only have elements 5.0 to work with. Yes, you are correct by the way. My lights are basically half over the overflow on each side. It would be hard for me to work in the tank if I brought them any more forward. I think I may see if I can hang the lights from the ceiling and take the canopy off. My canopy is short (13") and halides 4" above the surface doesn't let light spread much. Leaving a few shadowed areas and some corals are losing a little tissue I'm guessing because of that. How is your light fixture sitted on your tank? Is it hanging it appears or no?

[jwedehase]

Yes, mine is hanging from the ceiling. It's an open top tank. On my old setup, I had a second set of eyelets at the back of the canopy area so I could swing the fixtures back and hook them with an S-hook to keep them out of the way for maintenance. When I was done, I just unhooked the lights and brought them back to their proper place up front.

I'm using CS2, in this case. I've never used Elements, but it is my understanding that everything I did could be done in Elements. Brightening up dark areas, increasing saturation and sharpening are all pretty basic tasks. Poke around and see what you can find.

[jnfallon]

heh. thats amazing what you did so quickly.

i've been pulling my hair out trying to get the perfect shot "right out of the box", and see now that I need to learn ps, pronto.

Thanks for the tip.

Justin

[melev]

Jason - you're a whiz at this stuff. Look at the great job you did with the cover of our March magazine!
http://reefkeeping.com/

[TikiDan]

Here are the photos I took for our small tank tour

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1352991

[RokleM]

This seems like as good of a place as any (hopefully no offense taken t5Nitro by hopping into your thread).

I took these yesterday, and they turned out ok. I've always had issues making my pictures too bright, but after seeing jwedehase's post I see a slight hint of dark actually can turn out looking pretty nice.

Any thoughts/suggestions? I know one thing I need to figure out is how to get less blur so I can see the fish...

http://mad-skillz.com/aquarium/03.22.2008-1.jpg

http://mad-skillz.com/aquarium/03.22.2008-2.jpg

http://mad-skillz.com/aquarium/03.22.2008-5.jpg

[BLAKEJOHN]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12122987#post12122987 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by t5Nitro
Anyone know how to get a good FTS on a 6' long tank? I have a cannon 30D and the kit lens is a EF 28-135mm IS USM if that helps. I can't seem to get a good shot even with a tripod. Pics are horrible. Any help appreciated.

Is the lens able to take a FTS or is it me? :lol:

If you bought your camera new you should have bundled software called photostitch. Set you camera on a tripod center of tank. Set you apature at at least 11( a better depth of feild than 7 or 8) Take vertical shots from left to right or visa versa aprox. 5. Bring them into photostitch and line em up. Here is a pic of mine. 5 vertical shots F/11 @ 1 sec, 28mm, Iso 100. You can increase your shutter speed by increasing your ISO. But then you start to get grainy. This tank is 6' long and 24" tall. I did no PS except for Photomerge and crop. It took me a minute to do and personally Im a lazy photographer. Id rather get my shot right without much use of PS
http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll211/BLAKEJOHN2/110%20tank/Untitled_Panorama1.jpg

[BLAKEJOHN]

here is two more first is just a straight shot and the second is 5 shots

http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll211/BLAKEJOHN2/110%20tank/_MG_0048copy.jpg

http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll211/BLAKEJOHN2/110%20tank/Untitled_Panorama1copy.jpg

[edwing206]

Those shots are great Eric! What lens did you shoot those with?

How did you get that shot Jason? Where was it at? It's awesome!

[RokleM]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12178624#post12178624 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by edwing206
Those shots are great Eric! What lens did you shoot those with?


I borrowed a Nikkor 18-70mm 3.5-4.5 from a fellow reefer. It's MUCH better than my cheap Nikkor 28-80mm.

[baloutang]

Ok, here's my first FTS, but I think I'm having problems in pulling in the depth and close proximity that everyone else is able to achieve. Granted this is also a 6' long tank so I don't know how much zoom can be added.
In the editing portion when I resize and zoom, it obviously gets grainier even with a low ISO.
Any suggestions on how to improve? I did my editing using Irfanview.

http://i112.photobucket.com/albums/n178/baloutang/fts.jpg

[jwedehase]

Luis, that shot was taken at the Georgia Aquarium. See more here: http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=739892

Baloutang, there are certainly going to be sacrifices to a longer tank, but in the long run, I'm not feeling sorry for someone who has problems with "too large of a tank." :) What equipment and settings are you using?

[baloutang]

I've got a Nikon D80 with an 18-55mm lense. I took that shot with close to the settings you told t5Nitro to use. Low Iso 100, Fstop set at 7, flash off, far away from tank and squared up on a tripod. I also think I may have used a timer.
The only thing I didn't do was have the camera lined up with the top of the tank for a more "top down" pic.

[jwedehase]

I find it interesting that the shot is so soft. I just took it into Photoshop to work with it a little, and even a decent amount of Smart Sharpening didn't really help. Is there any chance you were on manual focus and missed the focus? I'm surprised even a kit lens would produce such a soft photo. Maybe the camera missed? Are they always this soft?

[edwing206]

Ok, cool. I thought you were diving or something at the time of the photo.

[baloutang]

LOL...yeah, that's my lousy photo editing skills.

I think I resized and then cropped the photo hence the problem with softness. I don't have the original un-edited version, but will to post a new pic shortly.

[baloutang]

ok, here's another take...this time the pic is more washed out IMO...especially the center. I did not enhance it, outside of cropping the orignal and resizing.

Similar settings, although I took the photo from higher up on the tripod for more of a top-down view.

http://i112.photobucket.com/albums/n178/baloutang/fys.jpg

[BLAKEJOHN]

baloutang, In crease your shutterspeed bt 2/3 stop and you should be golden. Or you can set your camera on manual apature at 7 or 8 and then start 1 stop under cameras reflective measurement and then bracket your shots(adjust your shutter speed one click at a time until 1 stop over exposed). To be a bit more advanced you can also take all your bracket shot and put them into PS3 and merge HDR(high density range). Shots must be taken in raw and converted to tiff 16 bit. You can email me at Bret@Blakejohnphotography.com if you need any assistance.

[baloutang]

I will try what you suggested Bret! Thanks for the advise.

[jwedehase]

It has actually been my experience that the best results come from UNDER exposing by 2/3 EV. You can always bring up darkness, but you can't pull back blasted out tips of rocks and corals.

[jwedehase]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12163632#post12163632 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by melev
Jason - you're a whiz at this stuff. Look at the great job you did with the cover of our March magazine!
http://reefkeeping.com/
Thanks, Marc! But now the link changed. :)

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2008-03/index.php