July 2022 POTM winner @ Maroun.c

maroun.c · Sep 21, 2022

Congratulations to "me"

for winning Jul 2022 POTM contest: Full Tank Shot sponsored by Avast Marine.

Thanks for all who participated in Jul POTM and everyone who voted for my pics. Jul 2022 has been the best month in reefing for me ever, as I got Reef of the month and photo of the month in the same month which is something I always dreamt of!

Thanks to @AVAST Marine for sponsoring POTM and for the great products they make.

I would like to offer the prize to the winner of a fun competition we will have where the topic will be top down pictures, preferably taken with the Avast porthole. winner will be randomly selected so anyone who can submit a top down picture has a chance to win.
to make it more fun there will be no limit on the shots you can submit, more pics is always a good thing

Thanks again for all who participate in POTM and voting, the quality of the pics we get every month is top notch to the point that voting isn't easy anymore.
make sure to participate in the fun photo competition and in Sep POTM which is currently running.

CONTEST - Photography contest

As announced in POTM winner thread https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/july-2022-potm-winner-maroun-c.937555/ I'm giving away the POTM prize offered by @AVAST Marine to the winner of a fun competition we will have here. Rules are pretty simple: No rules really just a fun competition with a nice...

www.reef2reef.com

#POTM #POTMWinners #MODS #RS

blaxsun · Sep 21, 2022

Beautiful tank - kudos!

oceanleaf · Sep 21, 2022

Beautiful picture. Congrats!

Daniel@R2R · Sep 22, 2022

Congratulations, @maroun.c!! I've admired your pictures for a long time!

For anyone looking to take better aquarium pictures, Maroun has an excellent series of articles in our photography forum. Here's the first article in the series to get you started: Your Guide to Aquarium Photography #1 - Getting the Basics

Dave-T · Sep 23, 2022

Great tank and great picture! So can you tell us how you took it? Camera, lens, settings, etc?

maroun.c · Sep 25, 2022

Dave-T said:
Great tank and great picture! So can you tell us how you took it? Camera, lens, settings, etc?

Thanks,
this was taken with a Nikon D750 with a 24-120 Nikon lense
shot with all my lights (Halides and LEDs on
Raw format 1/60 F5 ISO 640
The D750 is a great camera at High ISO performance so could have easily boosted ISO to 1000+ which woulhd have ginve me a bit more room for narrrower aperture for some more DOF or a faster shutter speed for better motion freeze.
yet I'm happy with the DOF I get focusing at the front middle of the tank to get most of the corals and fish in focus.
image was post processed in photoshop like most of my shots and following is typically done:
Adobe Camera raw to:
- Adjust white balance (white balnce picker on grey rock then manual fine tuning
- Crop the shot for better framing
-Adjust exposure
-convert to high res JPEG
Adobe photoshop:
-Fine tune exposure
- Clone tool and spot healing brush tool to cleanup floating detritus or air bubbles in water as well as cleanup back glass
-fine tune exposure.
-Apply a bit of sharpening
-save for web