Bubba's SPS Journey

blackizzz · Jan 31, 2019

No need to apologize bubba, anyone that doesn't wanna see those corals again is crazy

najer · Jan 31, 2019

bubbaque said:
ARC Fireworks

I just wrote your settings down, I need skills like yours!

lolgranny · Jan 31, 2019

najer said:
I just wrote your settings down, I need skills like yours!

There’s a old saying, practice makes perfect. Listen to the Granny

Renton777 · Jan 31, 2019

Teach me to fall off the forum bandwagon for a month or two. I fell behind by about 35 pages (and bubba even took a week or two off from posting!!). I have been putting in the work since yesterday to catch up, as Bubba may have noticed all my sporadic "like" notifications over the past 24 hours.

I took some notes on things I wanted to respond to as I caught up:

1. I was excited to see confirmation that the Bubble Bath Unicorn is the same as the Fruity Pebbles. I have a frag of the Bubble Bath Unicorn that is growing but still in the process of coloring up, its getting there and happy to see yours.

2. I got a frag of the ASD Rainbow Milli back in October and like you said, it is a stunner and reasonably priced for the eye candy it provides!!

3. Your WWC Allstar is divine. I am putting that on my list!

4. Love the new Tamron 90mm lens, I have debated getting that one myself over the past year.

5. That ARC Ultra Milli.......... I MUST HAVE IT!! That may have just moved to the top of my acquisition list.

Everything is looking great Bubba!! I have a big local fragswap coming up in the month so I have started to slice and dice some corals and my tanks are soon going to look like a flea market

ESH · Jan 31, 2019

Awesome thread! incredible photos! time to start looking through this one!

Fudsey · Jan 31, 2019

Bubba, not sure you mentioned this or not but what is the minimum focal distance on that lens? I can't find it anywhere...

Epic Aquaculture · Jan 31, 2019

bubbaque said:
Thanks!

Unfortunately I think my whole tank is going to become a zoa garden soon. I have this urchin that likes to carry around zoas and just drop them off where ever. He even has zoas on him in that pic if you look at the top of the left overflow. I am finding zoas growing in places I never wanted them to be.

Pro Tip: Get a 5 watt laser from Amazon. You can use to "trim" your zoas. I do it to make sure some of my more aggressive ones don't overtake some of my purtier ones. Gotta be careful with the laser, but for me it works great to keep zoas where I want them.

Fudsey · Jan 31, 2019

NM found it. .29M or 11.4 inches

Haggisman14 · Jan 31, 2019

@bubbaque - just sayin....those pics are BEAUTIFUL! You should create a drop box or something where people can grab full res pictures...those are sick!

erk · Jan 31, 2019

If you think the ISO ability of the D5300 is nice, you need to try a full frame. The D810 is so nice. I can crank up the ISO to 6400 and still not get much noise. Have you thought about using an off camera flash with some gel filters so you can lower the ISO further?

lolgranny · Jan 31, 2019

Renton777 said:
Teach me to fall off the forum bandwagon for a month or two. I fell behind by about 35 pages (and bubba even took a week or two off from posting!!). I have been putting in the work since yesterday to catch up, as Bubba may have noticed all my sporadic "like" notifications over the past 24 hours.

I took some notes on things I wanted to respond to as I caught up:

1. I was excited to see confirmation that the Bubble Bath Unicorn is the same as the Fruity Pebbles. I have a frag of the Bubble Bath Unicorn that is growing but still in the process of coloring up, its getting there and happy to see yours.

2. I got a frag of the ASD Rainbow Milli back in October and like you said, it is a stunner and reasonably priced for the eye candy it provides!!

3. Your WWC Allstar is divine. I am putting that on my list!

4. Love the new Tamron 90mm lens, I have debated getting that one myself over the past year.

5. That ARC Ultra Milli.......... I MUST HAVE IT!! That may have just moved to the top of my acquisition list.

Everything is looking great Bubba!! I have a big local fragswap coming up in the month so I have started to slice and dice some corals and my tanks are soon going to look like a flea market

The almighty Renton is alive!

bubbaque · Feb 1, 2019

Renton777 said:
Teach me to fall off the forum bandwagon for a month or two. I fell behind by about 35 pages (and bubba even took a week or two off from posting!!). I have been putting in the work since yesterday to catch up, as Bubba may have noticed all my sporadic "like" notifications over the past 24 hours.

I took some notes on things I wanted to respond to as I caught up:

1. I was excited to see confirmation that the Bubble Bath Unicorn is the same as the Fruity Pebbles. I have a frag of the Bubble Bath Unicorn that is growing but still in the process of coloring up, its getting there and happy to see yours.

2. I got a frag of the ASD Rainbow Milli back in October and like you said, it is a stunner and reasonably priced for the eye candy it provides!!

3. Your WWC Allstar is divine. I am putting that on my list!

4. Love the new Tamron 90mm lens, I have debated getting that one myself over the past year.

5. That ARC Ultra Milli.......... I MUST HAVE IT!! That may have just moved to the top of my acquisition list.

Everything is looking great Bubba!! I have a big local fragswap coming up in the month so I have started to slice and dice some corals and my tanks are soon going to look like a flea market

Thanks Renton and it's nice to see you around again!

I am really liking the Tamron. It's probably my new go to lens unless I want to take whole colony pics.

My All star is probably one of the best corals I have. Maybe we can do a trade in the future.

The ARC Ultra milli is really nice but has to be one the most finicky corals I have. It holds colors pretty well but any change in water parameters I will see the white growth tips get shorter. It's one of my corals I use to judge how well my tank is doing.

Thanks a bunch for the 100 "likes"!

ESH said:
Awesome thread! incredible photos! time to start looking through this one!

Thank you so much!

Haggisman14 said:
@bubbaque - just sayin....those pics are BEAUTIFUL! You should create a drop box or something where people can grab full res pictures...those are sick!

If people would use them I would look into.

erk said:
If you think the ISO ability of the D5300 is nice, you need to try a full frame. The D810 is so nice. I can crank up the ISO to 6400 and still not get much noise. Have you thought about using an off camera flash with some gel filters so you can lower the ISO further?

I am sure that camera is amazing. I am pretty happy with the ability of the ISO with this camera. Until about 2 weeks ago my iso was usually in the range of 3000 - 4000 on pics. One of things that sold me on buying this camera is Farmerty showed me a pic where he used 8000 ISO and it still looked great. When I was checking out the camera online the ISO seemed to be one of the standout features people would mention.

lolgranny said:
The almighty Renton is alive!

I am glad to see him again. Now if we can get him to post some pics in his thread.

Aaron-A2 · Feb 1, 2019

Those new pictures are absolutely insane. I need to get a porthole and start taking top-down shots... Your settings are somewhat close to mine, but I tend to be lazy and stick to one setting for close AND far shots.... need to stop doing that lol.

Epic Aquaculture · Feb 1, 2019

bubbaque said:
I agree with you. I think their original pic was from being freshly brought in. I posted the TSA pic a couple times as well and their looks just like mine. I’ve seen some say they get orange polyps but maybe im just not able too, who knows.

It is. The pic this morning and yesterday were with the new lens. So far I’m really liking it and it will probably become the main lens I use.

Your ARC Fireworks looks great. I agree about the polyps. I don't think they get bright red. A fellow reefer once described them as "an optimistic shade of brown" That made me laugh, and I agree.

Mike220 · Feb 1, 2019

ARC stand for
Thanks

bubbaque · Feb 1, 2019

Mike220 said:
ARC stand for
Thanks

A Reef Creation. It’s a store in New York.

Big E · Feb 2, 2019

Bubba those shots are fantastic!!

I bought a new camera.......still trying to figure it out. The lens that came with it is way to limited for what I want to do.........I need to get me a macro lense.

Did you do any custom white balancing, using filters, ect?

litenyaup · Feb 2, 2019

bubbaque said:
I will take a new pic of the Red devil but it's way, way different.

I shared these pics on my IG recently but since I am trying to give examples I will post them again. Sorry to those who already seen them.

My settings don't change too much from picture to picture, a slight difference here and there but generally the same. What changes a lot is the distance from the lens to the coral.

The picture you asked about was taken with these camera settings. I take pics in manual, Shutter speed 1/100, Aperture F16 and ISO 800. The way Nikon D5300 camera handles iso is amazing. On my old Nikon D3000 at 800 iso the pics would have tons of noise (little dots all over).

Picture in question

That was the settings for that pic.

How my camera looks with the porthole.

This pic has close to the same settings but you can see how close it is compared to the one above. It just depends on how close you are to the coral. If you want to show more of the coral, back up some, want to show up close detail, move in. Shutter 1/100, Apeture F13 and ISO 640.

I posted this pic already but just to show it's the distance to the coral. Shutter 1/100, Apeture F13 and ISO 640

Maleficent. Shutter speed 1/100, Apeture F14 and iso 1000

Pc superman. Shutter speed 1/100, Apeture F14 and iso 1000

I can try and answer anymore questions you have but I am still a novice when it comes to taking pics. The more pictures you take the better you will get. I enjoy taking pics and seeing myself improve only leaves me wanting to take more pics.

What do you do for white balance?

bubbaque · Feb 2, 2019

Big E said:
Bubba those shots are fantastic!!

I bought a new camera.......still trying to figure it out. The lens that came with it is way to limited for what I want to do.........I need to get me a macro lense.

Did you do any custom white balancing, using filters, ect?

litenyaup said:
What do you do for white balance?

Thanks Ed!

I was always under the assumption that white balance didn’t matter if you took pics in raw. I started talking to a few people who take great pics and they said it does slightly matter as the data that’s saved in the camera is more accurate.

Those more recent pics were taken with a custom white balance and no filter. I set the white balance by buying one of those cheap white balance cards off amazon, setting it in the tank, taking a pic of it and setting it as the white balance.

I’ve noticed my pictures seem more accurate after doing it this way.

Here is a link to the cards I bought.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00GSC97HG?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_pd_title