SPS Addiction

watchguy123

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Great coloration! Great sticks and pictures. & look at that polyp extension, very nice.
We learn and aspire from each other. It is hard to know sitting in your home what anyone else has achieved or even how they did it. I love these forums for sharing and exploring. I started out years ago getting advice from the LFS. Well if you have done that then you know how those recommendations generally turn out. I have spent a lot of time over many years, reading and observing what others have done and tried. Even the equipment reviews are so darn helpful and informative. Its nice having a community of reefers willing to exchange ideas, suggestions and results.
 

watchguy123

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Nice pics Watchguy, I may have already missed it but what camera, lens and settings. Your corals are beautiful, alive and healthy.
I use a Sony nex camera. It's a mirror-less dslr. I like it but may have been better off choosing a Nikon or Canon. I use the kit lens, an 18-55mm. It's not a macro but it works out ok. I use shutter priority and set the shutter typically to 1/60 sec. I hand hold routinely because I primarily take top down pictures. In Lightroom, I increase exposure to 1.65, change the temperature to 20k and that's it for the most part. If I take blue led pictures I add an orange filter, I don't know any other way to do that. I have friends that use their Samsung phones to get great photos under virtually any lighting but I can't get my iPhone to handle my reef photos very well so I almost never try with it anymore
 

Fishnugget

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Yeah, all my pics are under t5 + led. If I use led lights only, I get very blue pics as well with the iPhone and Sony a7 camera. The more of a 10k spectrum I have in the tank, the better the pics come out. Thanks for sharing your settings, I will try them when I take some shots the next time.
 

watchguy123

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So here are some t'5 lighting only photos from my display.



A very cool monti, it came to me as pink body color but it is taking on a much more orange tint.



Reef Raft Canada Shazam I have taken a gazillion photos of this colony. It is interesting to me how sometimes under the same lighting, the coral seems to look different. Today is a happy day.

 

watchguy123

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Nobody seems to love or care about this coral but I think once it is happy, it is amazing. A slow grower for sure. I put this piece in my frag tank some time ago and it appears to be pretty happy. It looks more fake than real right now but indeed it is real and very pretty. Not sure why the darn color is so good and I wish I could take credit for it looking good but I can't, just got lucky how this piece responded in my frag tank. It was in my display and started to get too close to some sps sticks so I cut out what I could (this piece) and epoxied over the rest. It looked pretty good in my display but never this vivid.

Darth Maul Porites
 
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Nobody seems to love or care about this coral but I think once it is happy, it is amazing. A slow grower for sure. I put this piece in my frag tank some time ago and it appears to be pretty happy. It looks more fake than real right now but indeed it is real and very pretty. Not sure why the darn color is so good and I wish I could take credit for it looking good but I can't, just got lucky how this piece responded in my frag tank. It was in my display and started to get too close to some sps sticks so I cut out what I could (this piece) and epoxied over the rest. It looked pretty good in my display but never this vivid.

Darth Maul Porites
That looks spot on to all the pictures I've seen. I can't get mine to even come close to that. Great job!!!
 

watchguy123

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I had a really pretty colony of Purple Monster that I lost two or three years ago. I was able to get a frag back from [MENTION=3725]solitude127[/MENTION]. He had gotten a frag of my colony and grown it out beautifully. Actually, I got a frag twice from him because the first frag fell behind the rocks after a couple weeks.

My colony is now prospering. I just moved it today from behind a large colony obstructing the view of it. Now hopefully, I can get better pictures of it. Its a little bruised from yanking and pulling on it but it should be fine. The last time I saw Mike's colony it was much lighter colored than either the my original mother colony or this granddaughter colony. It is so interesting how different tanks lead to different colors. I am not sure which is prettier but I am happy with the way mine looks.

Purple Monster
 

watchguy123

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I have taken lots of pictures of this coral but they generally come out poorly. I am not sure why but I got my best picture of it in a while. This is metal halides and t5's without leds. At the bottom of the picture, you can see my rock work and corralling algae to get some color reference. It is a pretty cool looking acro. I named it a while back as Z1


Z1

 
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