Photographing Corals in Frag Tank

[jharding08]

Does anyone know what tricks coral seller websites use to isolate on one coral, but also have the light showing off the fluorescence?

I'm guessing they keep the coral in the tank, but move it to an empty area that still gets good light and then they use alot of blue light and not alot of white?

I saw some use black sand to take the pictures. Ever heard of a picture taking tank, where the setup is for one coral/frag to get a good picture?

[Misled]

Tank lighting, external flashes, filters, all can do this, but most likely, most is done in Photoshop.

[ahmed_iAM]

Originally Posted by jharding08

Does anyone know what tricks coral seller websites use to isolate on one coral, but also have the light showing off the fluorescence?

I'm guessing they keep the coral in the tank, but move it to an empty area that still gets good light and then they use alot of blue light and not alot of white?

I saw some use black sand to take the pictures. Ever heard of a picture taking tank, where the setup is for one coral/frag to get a good picture?

Sometimes they put something dark behind an individual frag to give the feel of strong contrast. Using Lightroom or Photoshop for more saturation or color helps too (shoot raw if you do). If you shoot under LEDs, they'll change the white balance on your photos making the color appear off.

[noy]

Originally Posted by jharding08

Does anyone know what tricks coral seller websites use to isolate on one coral, but also have the light showing off the fluorescence?

I'm guessing they keep the coral in the tank, but move it to an empty area that still gets good light and then they use alot of blue light and not alot of white?

I saw some use black sand to take the pictures. Ever heard of a picture taking tank, where the setup is for one coral/frag to get a good picture?

I know quite a few sellers that use a small (< 5 gallons) staging tank for photos. This is especially true if you want top down photos easily and control lighting. As long as there is some actinic content in the lighting it will bring out the "florescence." The rest is photoshop. You don't need black sand - too much maintenance - just get a piece of black acrylic cut.

In the design of my current tank - I used magnets to affix colonies and had a stage (rack with a magnet) in the back with a black background i could remove colonies and put them to be photographed in isolation. It sort of worked but the magnets i was using was too strong (kept coming off rockwork) so i scrapped the idea.

You can make your photoshop easier through exposure control and focus isolation. Use single point focus to get the exposure for the area you are most interested in and then bracket the shot (1 f-stop). You can then start with the shot that has the best exposure for what you have in mind.

The other thing you can do is focus stack your shot with a large aperture (like 2.8). You might find you won't need to do a lot of heavy photoshop because of the focus isolation effect of focus stacking.

This is an example of one i did at request for a magazine cover (they ended using a different shot). Mostly exposure control and photoshop.

suncoralcover

Here is another showing frags on a rack - if you haven't guessed its a stitched together shot.

Stich2

This is one where there is a ton going on behind the coral but the close focus isolates it out.

IMG_1552