Taking pictures with LED's

[oonycxwilloo]

I can't seem to get a normal picture with the leds on. Any suggestions. It is either too bright or too dark. I've been playing with the settings and nothing seems to work. Can't get the true color of the coral.

Any suggestions?

 

[JARRETT SHARK]

lets see the pics

 

[oonycxwilloo]

 

[JARRETT SHARK]

Not bad, a little blue, do you have a flash on

 

[oonycxwilloo]

no flash.. It comes out different with different shutter speed. I just can't get it right.. with MH I kinda started to get the hang of taking "alright" pictures, but now led's seem like a whole new ball game.

 

[Deep Dive Coral]

ive heard alot of people sing a uv filter if your camera can use filters.

 

[Widdy]

Shoot it in RAW mode if your camera supports it. It'll bypass the camera's white balancing, you can tweak/correct during post processing. Can still tweak in .JPG, but limited. Here's my attempt in correcting 2 of the photos. Not sure if any better, might be over saturated.

 

[Alex]

will try bracketing. If your not sure what I'm talking about I'll show you when we get together.

 

[PeterD]

yeah i only use raw it helps a lot and if you have Photoshop you can fix almost anything you did wrong with it.

 

[ellebelle]

I second the suggestion to try taking it in RAW and play with the balance and exposure. Otherwise you will want to try different white balances until you find one that takes out the blue.

 

[PeterD]

The white balance that is made for led takes lots of blue out, it will look like and brick with lines around it, while the lightbulb is for halide and more red and yellow lights, which will add lots of blue to the photo.

 

[ellebelle]

On most cameras you can manually adjust the white balance from there. I actually usually use the "cloudy day" white balance preset and then make color adjustments from there when I am not shooting RAW. I find my tank with the lighting in the room very green though.

 

[oonycxwilloo]

RAW? is that the M setting? You guys are speaking another language!!

 

[Deep Dive Coral]

what is RAW. i have a cannon rebel xti and have no clue what that is..

 

[Widdy]

Without knowing what make/model camera you have, I can only speak for Nikons as that is what I shoot with... On Nikons, hold the QUAL button down while turning the rear dial until it says RAW... or I prefer RAW + FINE, that'll give me a RAW copy and a JPG copy that I can email/post, if needed, immediately without any conversion. More on RAW:

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/raw.htm

or the thousands of links you can go through by Googling "RAW Mode"

 

[PeterD]

Ok the m setting is for Manuel and i only use that it helps a lot if you know how to use it, while raw is how the photo is saved like jpeg. To change the way your photos are saved on a canon go to the menu, then probably in the first section of the menu you'll have a choice of quality and it'll probably say jpeg next to it for you click on it and change it to raw.

 

[ellebelle]

I use a pentax and there is a handy button on the front that changes the image to raw.

A word of warning - raw photos are much, much larger than jpgs, so you will burn through your space much quicker. I can only get 32 raw photos on a 2gb card. I get 137 high quality jpgs.

 

[PeterD]

yeah i had a 2gb also it was fine for jpeg but when i started to use raw i got a 8gb card and it barley holds more raw photos.

 

[Deep Dive Coral]

So it is easier to make changes to the photo in raw or it takes a better quality picture.

 

[ellebelle]

A raw photograph captures more information. It is the raw, uncompressed image taken by your camera's sensor. You can think of a raw file like a negative and a jpg like a print. A raw image cannot be printed directly - you must manipulate it and save it as a jpg before you can print or post it. Because it is an uncompressed image, there is more data so you can adjust the white balance and the highlights/shadows without image degradation more easily than with a jpg.

Of course, the closer you get it correct in camera the better off you will be.