Banggai Cardinal picture

[Wampatom]

The Banggai finally moved in front of an interesting background. It is the only decent picture I have taken of her.

 

[Anonymous]

That is seriously cool. What ISO is that? And what kind of post-work did you do?

 

[Len]

Good ol Banggai Cardinals: did you know what not too long ago, these things were super rare and well over $100 a pop? Next thing you know, they're being imported next to extinction, but now that captive breeding is feasible, they're doing well again

 

[Anonymous]

Nice shot. What is in the background?

 

[Anonymous]

Looks like a closed brain to me

 

[Anonymous]

That's what I would guess, I have never seen an orange on before.

 

[Wampatom]

Thanks for the comments.

Nikon D100, Nikkor 105mm f2.8 micro, 200 iso, 1/80s, f3.2 (I never record the exposure but the camera does)

The fish was just sitting at the front of the glass. I used the natural aquarium lights—vho sun and actinic. The camera was handheld on autofocus and I just shot away. I have 6 almost identical shots.

Post processing—crop unwanted snail on the glass, my aquarium glass is scratched so I removed a large scratch with the PS noise and scratch filter (since the background was already out of focus from the large aperture this was easy), adjust levels, downsize to 640, unsharp filter

The background is a large brain coral. I didn’t adjust the color. The D100 camera gives a reddish orange tinge to browns under actinic lights. It looks OK to me, but from your reaction maybe I should adjust the color.