Need help with camera & T5 lighting

[Smoker]

I can take photos fine of my tank with power compact lighting. I just got T5 for my other two tanks and the photos come out cloudy/whitish/bleached. Since the T5 lights are the only thing different I think it's them. How do you take a pic with these? Or is it my camera, Canon A430? I have tried various settings and again, my tank with pc's come out normal with colors and no bleached effect. Thank you for help.

 

[Reefltx]

Can you post up a sample of a photo taken under T5?

 

[Smoker]

I am obviously not good with a camera. It is old and maybe failing? No flash used.

With pc lights I get colors:

With T5 lights:

The items outside the tank show true colors even the TV pics.

 

[20nano]

Since you said your camera is old, I believe the culprit is the intensity of the T5 lights vs the PC. Older camera are not as good as rendering high intensity light and capturing such image up close. If you notice on some camera, it takes time when u change the camera's target for it to adjust to the brightness or darkness of an image. That is just my random guess. Are your PC and T5 lights the same color ratio? looks as if u have a really white or blue light in it to cause. I am probably wrong though. Try lowering the ISO?

 

[Reefltx]

I am obviously not good with a camera. It is old and maybe failing? No flash used.

With pc lights I get colors:

With T5 lights:

The items outside the tank show true colors even the TV pics.

The A430 was released in 2006, so it's not really old and should still be able to capture a better quality photo than what you've posted. It seems to be operator fault here not the camera. Do you know what settings you used? When I get on my computer, I can take a look at the image data and offer some suggestions on what you can adjust to improve your photo.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[20nano]

oh HAHA, i totally missed the part he typed Canon A430. I was sure I would be wrong. By the way, do u know why his pictures are so choppy? Even with PC his pics seem overly bright, are your ISO settings way up by any chance?

 

[steved13]

I'm by far no expert, I have trouble taking good pics also, and I'm not familiar with the A430 (so this may be useless info). I have found if I go manual and speed up the shutter, I can reduce the light and get a much better pic. I have to play with it, as sometimes they come out much to dark, but it does help.

 

[nanoreefing4fun]

I see you posted from your iphone - here a pic from my iphone 4

but to answer your question, if your canon can shoot Raw format or if you can upgrade your canon to a model that can, use photoshop essentials elements & pp (post process) to balance the exposure to account for the aquarium light, click click very easy to do.... here an example I took yesterday of my tank with my canon.

 

[Reefmack]

I'm a bit surprised that the Canon A430 has all of those horizontal lines in your pictures. Do you see those with other non-tank pictures? I'm not sure what would cause that, unless the camera is failing?

 

[Smoker]

I found that Canon issued a recall for A430 back in 2008 (which today they denied). The lines and out of focus are symptoms - broken CCD/stuck shutter. The failure happened to coincide with getting the new T5 lights. Thank you all for assistance.

 

[Reefmack]

I found that Canon issued a recall for A430 back in 2008 (which today they denied). The lines and out of focus are symptoms - broken CCD/stuck shutter. The failure happened to coincide with getting the new T5 lights. Thank you all for assistance.

You're welcome! That would explain a lot of things!

 

[nanoreefing4fun]

+1 ^ and You are very welcome !

 

[BigAl07]

This might not be of any help at all but I recently came into posession of a pair of really nice cameras that I can highly recommend.

Sony DSC-H70

and a

Sony Cyber-shot® Digital Camera W370


Both are excellent cameras and take really nice pictures with ease.

 

[20nano]

i would think that even with adjustments or not, the camera at that caliber should not take a picture anywhere near the quality u posted. Just out of the box should be able to take some pretty decent pictures. Can you take some normal pictures without the fish tank and just of something like your room or table or whatever? If its about the same quality with lines and faded color images, it might be the camera itself???

 

[Reefmack]

i would think that even with adjustments or not, the camera at that caliber should not take a picture anywhere near the quality u posted. Just out of the box should be able to take some pretty decent pictures. Can you take some normal pictures without the fish tank and just of something like your room or table or whatever? If its about the same quality with lines and faded color images, it might be the camera itself???

I think it's pretty much confirmed that the camera may be bad:

I found that Canon issued a recall for A430 back in 2008 (which today they denied). The lines and out of focus are symptoms - broken CCD/stuck shutter. The failure happened to coincide with getting the new T5 lights. Thank you all for assistance.

But good idea to know if it's with all pictures, or just the tank pictures.