Healthy Big vs Skinny Orange Sea Star Comparison

[Samw]

I believe they are Echinaster luzonicus

http://www.breeders-registry.gen.ca...._fall/star.htm

The smaller one was brought in from the office and was probably starving for several months. After trying to keep a reef in an unmodified Eclipse 6 for a year, I have to say that it doesn't work. Nothing is really fluorishing in there. The stock 8W light can not support any soft corals or polyps, not even Xenia or Green Star Polyps. The powerfilter does not provide much oxygen either.

Anyhow, the 2 stars were about the same size at first. But clearly, the one in my tank has outgrown the one from the office. You can see the tube feet on the big one but not on the small one.

[LostMind]

Can I take camera lessons from you?? I cant take a decent pic ever!

[Samw]

Sure. Here it is.

Set camera to quick shutter or auto mode.
Point, focus, click.
Upload the image to PC.
Process the image with Imaging software (BreezeBrowser) and use sharpen option durng the resize.

That'll be $100 please.

[LostMind]

I do all that and set white balance... I use gimp, not breezebrowser because I never heard of breezebrowser before... hmmm.

I think I need a tripod and a better camera :|

[Samw]

I haven't checked my manual for setting white balance. I don't touch that setting. I only learned how to use manual focus a few months ago and seldomly use it. But in some situations, I definitely need to use manual focus; mostly for taking Macros.

[LostMind]

Well, whatever you are doing seems to work

You have posted some great pics.

I just bought a star that looks just like those from JL. Was sold as a fromia tho.

[sumpfinfishe]

Sam,
You should try playing with your white balance settting, you can get some really good results sometimes. By no means am I telling you how to take pics Sam , as you are aware that I think you take some of the best images on the board, this is just a suggestion to try another feature that digital camera's offer.

I use my setting quite a bit when I want to get good coloration without having to take long exposures. I simply take a WB reading of the front of the tank by taking a shot pointed at the tank while my manual WBS is on, and then I just start shooting from there.
If you don't like the results your getting, just take a picture of a white wall or white board or dial your setting back to auto WB. Like I said above, to capture true color from some of the corals and fish in our tanks we need to take long exposures, but if the subject is moving then we can't, so the WBS allows us to do this by adjusting to the colors that are found only in the tank.

Here is a recent image of my brain using the WBS, if I did not use this setting I would have had to take a much longer exposure with a smaller aperature setting otherwise the brain would be overexposed and look fuzzy or tend to glow or glare a little, and with a longer exposure the clown would have also been blurred or out of focus. You can also see how the WBS that I took of the tank didn't effect the white stripes of the clownfish, they still turned out a nice white.

[AJ_77]

Good results with that tip, Rich! My ghetto-cam has only Auto...

Love that shot, Pinks are awesome.

[StirCrazy]

I second the "you should be using white ballance" remark, if you look at the star fish you probably had to use the software to change the color to match the look of the star fish in actual life.. if you didn't then we would go to your house and see the star fish and say "that doesent look like the pic you showed me" but with white ballance set properly you get the true colors of everything , including the rock, as if you only had daylight on the tank. the problem with lights in this hobby is digital camera don't do actinic well at all so while we see different colors in the rocks when we gool at it with our eyes when you take a pic all the camera will do is show different shades of blue.. the more actinic the worse this effect is. by using white ballance you can reverse this effect. I would highly recomend playing whith white ballance for anyone whith a camera that has that capability.

Steve

[Samw]

See, I still have a lot to learn. Thanks Rich. I'll make white balance the next feature to learn on my camera. Steve, I have started using the Autolevel option on my photo software lately. Is that what you mean? I'll try posting pics with and without Autoleveling and compare later. Other than that I don't do any white balancing with my software as far as I can see.