5 ft tank 16 weeks + 2 small tanks

[loupgarou]

5ft tank : 16 weeks as of 2005-06-17


SHUTTER SPEED: 1/250s | APERTURE: f/8 | ISO: 100
@ 22mm on a EFS 10-22, Canon 20D + ST-E2 + 3 flash setup bounced off the bottom of my light fixture through a plastic white grid/light diffusor



300+ Boraras

My quarantine tank

[|squee|]

I like your 5ft man.

However, it's kind of "sectioned" (same thing what nicholas told me about my own tank ) as in, there are many straight vertical and horizontal lines that jump out at you.

There's a abundance of vertical lines, so I think a change of the hardscape will help. I've realised in my own tank that driftwood hardly ever looks nice lying on flat on the substrate. But, darn good growth. You're making me get pissed off for BBA in my tank.

The 300 boraras one, turn it into low maintainence? The wood there looks like a good use for a mound setup.

The last tank, I won't comment.

Just my thoughts

[loupgarou]

tips on the 5ft,,, exactly what to change. I'm buying an echino kleiner barr, going to put it either behind or in front of the mound of wood on the left. good? bad?

[ranmasatome]

i agree with Squee... it seems like thet ank has too many horizontal and vertical lines.. the drift wood seems to be positioned straight throughout the centre of the tank effectively sectioning the tank into a front and rear portion... they are also all on one level...the hottonia growth is wonderful..but again qutie sectioned..
personally, as a suggestion...i would arrange the wood so that they come out from one of the rear corners or just off...then probably stack some of them to create height.. the whole structe can end somewhere 3/4 near the front of the tank and that should create some depth.. hmmm...i was also wondering about the use of a textured backgound like that when you're actually covering most of it up with the crypts..
also not considering reds?
just some thoughts..

[loupgarou]

textured background so as not to create reflection if I were indeed using plain black background..

I'm thinking of bunching all the hottonia together, also going to rip out all the potomageston crispus and put them together as wlel. (or at the rear in a line??)

[loupgarou]

Pix update is this an improvement? I'm going to shift the (left two bunches together and more to the left, and in newly created space, add in the echinodorus kleiner barr.

I'm also planning to take out the potomageton crispus. cos putting them in a buch might be too out of place

oh: the hottonia needs to be trimmed, the bunch of hottonia on the right should be trimmed into a ball/bush shaped, so that the entire mass of wood there appears to be a nest.

[|squee|]

Looks much better! I don't know, but the wood looks too centralised for me. Try shifting it to the right a bit after you've trimmed the hottina.

[loupgarou]

hmm: maybe move the center mound of wood back to the left, shift the middle piece of hottonia to merge with the right? then in the gap left, put in the echino.

[loupgarou]

oh: btw: this came up in conversation,

above pix are taken after a diatom filter has been used.

before:


anyway, I got some new plants that day.

so there's one apongeton crispus, bolivianus and some tonina (belem/manaus)...

still waiting for my kleiner barr before I do a proper rescape/trim hottonia.

[wong1979]

A bit off topic here. But I've noticed that these pix were taken by a almost high-end camera, ie canon 20D DSLR. I'm not a pro in photography, but IMNSHO, I feel that the quality pales in comparision to the ones taken by a normal digicam. Perhaps, in terms of color, contrast and sharpness?

As I'm about to embark into photography, with no previous skills, are those pix taken by Chris Low consider good pix? What are the finer points of photography to be taken into account when taking a tank shot.

Pardon my negative comments here and ignorance if any.

[loupgarou]

do you have a pix to compare with ? show us.

as far as color(saturation), contrast and sharpness, all these things are adjusted in post processing, and post processing is a matter of personal taste.

show me the pix you have in mind and I'll adjust accordingly if possible.

[wong1979]

Hi Chris, hope u don't get offended I'm just curious and need to learn more about the basics and fundamentals of photography b4 investing in a DSLR.

You can refer to the thread I started. All the pics were taken from low end cameras, ie 2.1 Meg pixels and below.

http://www.aquaticquotient.com/forum...ad.php?t=13635

Cheers,
Wong

[jja]

OFF TOPIC:

Chris how was the plant u picked up at C328 and the plant u bought from Teo's on saturday? any updates?

[loupgarou]

um, how to have update? haven't rescape yet.

meanwhile, wong, have a look at the fullsize picture. perhaps what you might be complaining off is the lack of detail.

the thing is, you have to specific about what is right or wrong to you, otherwise I do not know what you are addressing.

http://uo.tdsuo.com/gallery/albums/n..._3596_copy.jpg

I suggest you right click and save the file on your desktop first. its 1MB

view it at 100% zoom. make sure you're not using your browser, sometimes browsers autoresize pictures.

[wong1979]

um, how to have update? haven't rescape yet.

meanwhile, wong, have a look at the fullsize picture. perhaps what you might be complaining off is the lack of detail.

the thing is, you have to specific about what is right or wrong to you, otherwise I do not know what you are addressing.

http://uo.tdsuo.com/gallery/albums/t..._3596_copy.jpg

I suggest you right click and save the file on your desktop first. its 1MB

view it at 100% zoom. make sure you're not using your browser, sometimes browsers autoresize pictures.

Errr...30kb leh

[jja]

um, how to have update? haven't rescape yet.

ok will wait for the rescaping...

[loupgarou]

Errr...30kb leh

http://uo.tdsuo.com/gallery/albums/n..._3596_copy.jpg


oops. gave you the link to the thumbnail.


at the same time, what monitor are you using (ie: crt/lcd, bitdepth(18/24) and your screen resolution 800x600, 1025 x 768 or higher?
)

[wong1979]

This is your 1st pic from the top of the thread. (132kb)



This is resized from your 1mb pic at 800 X 257 pixels (69Kb).

To me, it seems that your 1st pic is a bit yellowish and the file size is bigger. The details are also less sharp than the 2nd pic. Why is this so?

[loupgarou]

its all about post processing, I shot in raw, so exposure gives me +- 2 stops of lattitude, I also post process differently (like more constrast, more saturation, more sharpness which is the typical effect of point and shoot digicams) the second time round. (ie: the new 1mb jpg you downloaded just now), so the thing here is which look do you like? the end output can be any thing you want.

personally I prefer the first one, which I think is closer to reality.

also, on the subject of sharpness, I see it on my monitor (first pic) as sharp, and the second pic as over sharp. this has to do with the screen resolution , dot pitch and contrast ratio of the monitor as well. so each person may see things subjectively different.



I'm using the viewsonic vp191.

specs here

http://www.viewsonic.com/products/de...ndex.htm#specs

[wong1979]

So I supposed post-processing (excluding cropping) is a need in digital photography? A bit leychey leh. In the past with films, you see what you get.
Now, seems like photoshop can do almost anything wonderful to your pix