Lots of pics, I just got an underwater enclosure for my SLR!!

[Taqpol]

Here we go, I'm finally to the underwater pics! This stuff really blows me away, I can't believe how well some of these turned out. It was a little different as some of my corals are really close to the surface of the water and the focal depth on the lens I was using is not that great so there were some corals I was physically not able to get a good shot of (like my Red Planet ).

Before when i would take top down the best I could get was something like this:

Or when the fatty fish gets in the way:

While I think both of those pictures are good, you have a lot of trouble with the lights reflecting off the surface of the water, the water not being perfectly still and distorting your pictures, or getting salt water on your expensive camera when the freaking trigger tries to squirt at you.

Compare those pictures to this one.

Not only is the picture much crisper, but DANG! I've never even seen that side of the coral!

Green Birdsnest

Cali Tort + Red Birdsnest

Green Digitata

Maricultured Colony + ORA Spongodes

Purple rimmed Monti cap

 

[Taqpol]

Zoa corner

Picasso hosting + Chevron Tang

ORA Birds of Paradise

The only good picture I've ever been able to take of my ORA Borealis:

I still think the main reason to be able to take top down/underwater pictures is for clams.

These last two are my absolute favorites.

Chalk Bass: "What the ___ are you doing?"

My Sargassum trigger now has a buddy, his reflection.

 

[Taqpol]

I took a lot more (non underwater) pictures, including some coral macros during this shoot, but I posted them all over in my build thread (click on my username, go to homepage).

Any comments, suggestions welcome. Thanks for looking!

 

[reef18ster]

Great pics! Thanks for sharing.

 

[sgwill122]

Love the pictures especially the borealis shot. What is your lighting and flow. I ask as I have the borealis as well and I get good growth but the polyps never come out. Does your borealis polyps get blown about by by high flow? How far do you have it from your lights?

 

[roscoe]

Wow.... Love the pics man!!! I need one of those! What make, model and body are you using?

 

[Taqpol]

Great pics! Thanks for sharing.

Any time!

Love the pictures especially the borealis shot. What is your lighting and flow. I ask as I have the borealis as well and I get good growth but the polyps never come out. Does your borealis polyps get blown about by by high flow? How far do you have it from your lights?

I have 8x54w T5's with individual reflectors and the coral is pretty much at the top of my rockwork. I'd say it gets medium high, to high light. It is also decently close to a vortech MP40 on full blast lagoon mode. The polyps definitely move around all over the place, but for all of these pictures I had all of the flow off.

Do you have any kind of nippers in your tank? I also dose bacteria and vodka, which have been known to increase polyp extension.

Wow.... Love the pics man!!! I need one of those! What make, model and body are you using?

All of these shots were taken on my Canon Digital Rebel T1i with a Tamron f2.8 28-75mm lens. The underwater enclosure is:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470938631&pf_rd_i=507846

For less then $100 that is a screaming deal, and will be particularly useful to me when I go on my honeymoon to the south pacific this summer.

 

[roscoe]

Sweet!!! I have to look into this. It looks bulky. Is in awkward working with it in the tank?

 

[Taqpol]

It is pretty bulky, and my canopy is short so I had a hard time just getting it into the tank and an even harder time maneuvering it around and trying to look through the viewfinder. For some of the shots I just had it on autofocus and "Sprayed and Prayed", but about halfway through I found out that I could focus with the liveview function that displays the viewfinder on the LCD screen.

The camera bag floats, thats probably one of the reasons I didn't break any corals. I could imagine if your tank was crammed pack full of rock and corals you might have some issues, but for the more open tanks its no big deal. Definitely worth it to me.

 

[Brie]

Those are awesome! I'm jealous.. I've never been able to afford an underwater housing for my camera so I just use lookdown boxes like this:http://cgi.ebay.com/7-x7-x3-photobox-top-box-for-frag-tanks_W0QQitemZ190354266234QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item2c51ff987a