14gal Nano Reef Build

[Nick Klimkowski]

Great pics as always Matt.

[trungnguyen]

very nice set up and frags. Any update?

[Discus-n00b]

Thanks. Rick, never done any focus stacking myself. I would however LOVE to get an MP-E 65mm on this tank to see what I can get, maybe I'll rent one soon.

I'll try and edit some new photos of the newest frags tonight and get them up. Participated in a live sale online the other day and snagged some good ones for good prices. Otherwise everything else is doing well, just kind of letting things grow.

[Discus-n00b]

Haven't gotten photos of the Sunny D or Utter People Eater palys yet or the branching lobo. Sorry for the blue/purple hue, tough under LEDs.

Pink Lemonade




Oakland A's Paniculata


Jedi Mind Trick


Birds of Paradise


Rainbow Table


And my prized jewel recently, Angels and Demons Millepora

[rickztahone]

Very nice indeed. I'm assuming you are on a tripod with a remote shutter release and mirror lock up?

I went and checked out the MP-E65 you mentioned and it looks to be a cracking lens. In the Sony mount we have something somewhat similar, if you have time, check out this lens description page of it: Minolta AF 3x-1x 1.7-2.8 Macro . It can stop waaay down and it is sold with its own light and knobs for focus stacking built in. You should definitely try a few focus stacked shots. You still get the narrow DOF feel, but with more DOF, lol. Best of both worlds.

[Discus-n00b]

Thanks Rick, I'm gonna have to look into focus stacking. Yeah I used a tripod and remote.

[Discus-n00b]

Been thinking about possibly sucking all of the sand out of this tank. Could then really crank up the flow for the mostly SPS stock. Anyone else gone BB before in a reef tank? The look doesn't bother me to much, remember I keep discus lol.

[Discus-n00b]

Gotta get some new pics but that will probably come after I move the tank. Moving it to a new stand in the next day or so. Everything doing well right now. Even found some baby Stomtella snails which is AWESOME. They are my favorite snail and I stocked the tank with 8-10 adults hoping they would reproduce at some point. Now I see small ones crawling all over each day. All of the coral is doing great and growing nicely.

[Discus-n00b]

Moved the tank, everything is doing great still.

Been trying to play with focus stacking but its really hard for me so far. Having to refocus a spot tends to move the camera enough to where it makes it a nightmare in post production. Also I miss some areas focusing. But I'm learning. Heres two stacked images from tonight. As you can see there are a few blurry spots.



Bit larger

[Discus-n00b]

Oh yeah heres the latest FTS I have. Its almost 2 months old though so I will get a new one.

[rickztahone]

I like that macro shot on the last set. Great job! Focus stacking can be tricky. The trick is simply to get software that does it for you

Do you own Photoshop CS6?

[Discus-n00b]

Thanks. Its a learning curve. Yeah I'm using Photoshop and the auto align/auto blend tools but I've figured some stuff out. If I went to resize the image or do anything before I saved it the PSD file would turn into a mess showing all of the lines where the image was put together. Its much easier once you stack them, save as a JPEG and work with it as a JPEG the rest of the way. Not sure if thats the correct process but seems to work better. The main thing I need to do is make sure I'm getting every area with focus, I missed a few spots on those above.

[rickztahone]

A good way to do it is to work in batches. So, for instance, if you are doing a total of 9 shots (for simplicity here), then you would split it to 3 batches of 3. So, you would run the CS6 align algorithm on the first three, save and then do the other 2 batches. At the end of that workflow, you take THOSE three final photos and merge THEM together. Of course, most times when you are doing stacking, you never really deal with such small batch samples. I know a photographer who usually uses hundreds of shots, but to stack for the Brenizer Method. Now THAT is something else.

[Discus-n00b]

Believe me, I've stacked many many star shots together to get my star trail photos, I understand batch size hahaha. This is at least 50 shots stacked.


I just figured I could get away with smaller batches with the coral, looking back I need more to get all focus points correct. I also didn't touch my f stop value for these as it was basically like my trail run. I'm sure I could stop down more to help my depth. Heres my Cali Tort photo, same problems as the others but overall pretty good I'd say. If I were doing it again other than whats mentioned above I'd frame it better to start so the crop doesn't make it look like I took the top off when cropping. Other than a bit going up the main branch and a little on the right branch I think I nailed this one fairly good.

[Discus-n00b]

Wish I could capture how green this Green Slimer is.



Here is a before shot of the green slimer after I first got it. The red planet is #4 in this pic so you can see growth on that as well.