LED light photo's with phone... tips please

[Snelly40]

hey guys... so my only camera is my iPhone6... however the new LED lights are so bright and vibrant that the phone just cant seem to handle it. Is there an app or something i can use where i can actually capture the brilliance of the tank lighting and corals once i put them in? I'm just not willing to drop money on a super expensive camera...

 

[Blndbunny]

I'm very curious to see what others say on this. I'm in the same situation

 

[Pat24601]

You know, I'm in the same situation too and I was blaming the fact that I went more blue on my t5s recently, but I'm starting to wonder if it was some iOS update that changed how the phone handles our colors because it feels like it used to do a better job.

Anyway, Doug was recommending an app called FEW in his tank thread. I can't find it yet, so haven't tried it.

http://reefsanctuary.com/forum/index.php?threads/dougs-rsm-250.87855/page-6#post-1287680

 

[NJ Reefer]

Pat is right, I am trying out an app called FEW - Manual Camera Controls. It is very simple to use and its free (at least it was when I downloaded it). Not sure if it will work perfectly for your LEDs, but I am getting some decent shots under my LED moonlights. Adjusting the white balance seems to be the trick for getting good colors. Still experimenting...here's one example from tonight...

I think I needed to adjust the focus a bit, but its hard to get it perfect.

 

[Travis]

I'm guessing the issue is dynamic range - the width of the spectrum from blown-out whites to deep blacks. The human eye has a much higher dynamic range than any camera - even film, which has a higher dynamic range than digital.

I struggled with dynamic range quite a bit back when I was doing a lot of aquarium photography- especially full tank shots!

iPhones (and most smartphones these days) have an option called "HDR" - this is "high dynamic range," What it does is makes up for the dynamic range issue by basically taking one underexposed photo, one overexposed photo, and combining them into a photo that has the good parts of both.

I'm sure this is tough to grasp but I would try turning on HDR. If that doesn't work, maybe there are some better HDR apps out there.

White balance is a completely separate issue, which is the blue cast you get on everything such as NJ reefer's shot above - that's a white balance issue.

Hope this helps some.

 

[Travis]

Also, try metering on different parts of the tank. You do that by tapping within the image area on the phone screen. You'll see the metering shift after you tap- for better or worse! Experiment with tapping on lighter and darker areas to see if you get a preview image that's to your liking!