Cellphone tips and tricks

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ca2or

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I know not all but a majority of us use our phones to take pics of our tanks. Curious what you guys do to get good pics.

Please post a pic, what type of phone you used, and anything "special" you did.

Here is mine as an example.

Motorola Nexus 6
I use snapseed for editing....here is a before and after.

Before
2015-08-27 20.10.56.jpg


After
IMG_20150827_211253257-01.jpeg
 
Interesting. That tank looks awesome. So rather than mess with the camera you adjust lights. I take it you switch back after pics?
 
Following. I've been wondering if people use a certain IOS or Android camera app.
 
Interesting. That tank looks awesome. So rather than mess with the camera you adjust lights. I take it you switch back after pics?
Yep! I've learned its much easier to just switch the light real quick before shooting photos than to have to post-process each individual photo afterward. I have a Maxspect Razor LED fixture which has 3 main settings: 1) Custom program (this is my custom light program and what the light is normally set to); 2) Factory program (generic light program); and 3) Manual, which isn't a program but is where you can just set the white and blue channels as you'd like and they don't ramp up or down or anything. I just set up the manual channel as the white to blue balance that works for my photos. Now whenever I want to take photos, I just push one button on the side of my fixture to switch to manual mode and shoot away!
 
Yep! I've learned its much easier to just switch the light real quick before shooting photos than to have to post-process each individual photo afterward. I have a Maxspect Razor LED fixture which has 3 main settings: 1) Custom program (this is my custom light program and what the light is normally set to); 2) Factory program (generic light program); and 3) Manual, which isn't a program but is where you can just set the white and blue channels as you'd like and they don't ramp up or down or anything. I just set up the manual channel as the white to blue balance that works for my photos. Now whenever I want to take photos, I just push one button on the side of my fixture to switch to manual mode and shoot away!
Great! i have a Razor as well, what do you have your "Manual settings" set to for each channel? I wanna try this.
 
Here's an example also using the same app, Snapseed. This was a half before half after of my tank with T5 (4 Blue +, 2 Purple +)


What a difference that made. From washed out blue to color pop.
 
Galaxy S4 here. I use low ISO (the lowest possible, the better), no flash, no post processing at all most of the time (and if I do use it it's always something in the PC, not an app), but when there's a little more blue or another hue I fix it with levels in Photoshop. Sometimes I use the "sports" setup just to take a pic of a fast fish but not very often. If the ISO is set to low levels (below 400 I think) the camera stabilization feature (anti-shaking or something) is disabled, but I never used it anyway. The light setup of the camera is always on "auto". If you set it to fluorescent, it will make it even more blue, the auto is what gets me the more natural results. The zoom works great as well as seen in this pic and I've been using it a lot lately (4x, contrast fixed in Photoshop as it tend to get a little washed). The contrast is what I find to be the most complicated part, also the saturation. My lights at the moment are all T5 and more towards white than blue. If you use too much actinic, it's very hard to get accurate colours. I try to take pictures with the room lights off and at night, somehow it is a little better.

4AJmoCg.jpg
 
Cool thread! I use an iPhone 5. The iPhone makes all the photos look WAY more blue than how the tank appears in person, so I just adjust my LED fixture more white until the photos match what I normally see with my eyes.

IMG_8656.jpg
Look at those beautiful clams!!!
 
In Snapseed I turn down the saturation and increase the warmth to reduce the blue and fix the colors. Sometimes I adjust the sharpness as well.
 
I use yellow safety glasses in front of lens when I shoot. Without
42e17f03774782ed9ca3c8ef754a828c.jpg
with
f99a3c376ece8ad2d64ba3c2ff5d0656.jpg
 
Galaxy S4 I don't do anything special but it looks more blue than in person
 

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