One of the most challenging aspects of sharing pictures or video of blue light heavy reef tanks is trying to genuinely represent the fluorescent colors of so many different coral species. Smartphone camera sensors are particularly sensitive to the overwhelming blue light we provide for our corals which has led many to simply use color-correcting yellow and orange filters which do wonders for eliminating the blue light, but also dramatically increase and oversaturate the ‘real colors’ of corals as viewed in real life.
Without getting too much into the weeds about what ‘real color’ actually means regarding corals, our personal opinion of authentic representation allows for very blue light but we really try to avoid using orange filters as a crutch. We feel the same way about how we observe our corals in real life and strive to obtain truly awesome color rendition using the best lights to illuminate the healthiest corals possible.
A while back this intersection of working the manual settings of our camera coupled with diligent color balance allowed us to capture truly realistic representation of the health and vitality of the collection at the World Wide Corals farm without any color filters. We were actually a little surprised that we managed to faithfully represent WWC’s corals as they appeared under rich azure blue spectrum because we didn’t even know that was possible!
There’s certainly some deviation from the real natural appearance between all the digital translation and depending on the kind of screen or monitor you are viewing this video on but as far as we can tell, this is about as close to the real appearance of corals under blue light that we’ve ever managed to capture. Big thanks to the World Wide Corals crew for all of their work to cultivate such fantastically healthy corals and for allowing us in the sanctum of the coral farm.
