Marc Levenson wrote:

LOL. Well, to be honest, the brand new XM 10,000K bulbs looked just like my one
year old 10,000K Ushios... very very yellow. It was driving me nuts and I
couldn't stand to look at my tank.

Fortunately, about 10 days later (100 hours usage) the tank looks muuuuch
better, with a nice white/blue crisp look to it. I still supplement with
actinics, but only T5s now instead of VHOs.

Well as of last night, since I put them in Saturday they seem to have
settled on a nice crisp blue/white look that I'm very happy with now.
Exactly what I expected. It looks really good! I guess these bulbs
just need a little time to figure out what they want to be when they
grow up. Now how long the "That Fish Place" brand lasts...we will
see. They assured me it is a quality true German bulb with their name
on it. With the 32W Actinics I have the perfect balance I'm looking
for. I must say, using a pair of Coralsun 48" 32W T8 Actinic 420s
with a cheepo Lowes electronic T8 ballast makes a LOT of Actinic
light!! Tonight my high powered ballast (Howard Ballast, 114% BF)
will be delivered so I should squeeze out even a little more light
when I wire that in. I was planning to over drive them even more with
an Ice Cap ballast but they work so well on a NO ballast that I'll
just leave them alone once I put the high power NO ballast in. I
never got around to getting aluminum reflectors for them so my
reflectors are 48" long 4" PVC pipe cut long ways in 1/3s. The
insides of this PVC are nice and shiny white so it works great.

I wrote an article about taking pictures, which you may have not seen yet?
http://www.melevsreef.com/take_great_pictures.html

I just read that, very helpful indeed!

There is a white balance feature on most prosumer models that can be adjusted,
even setting it yourself with the aid of something white in the tank. You can
set the camera to accept your own setting, by putting a piece of white PVC in
the tank, and pointing your camera at that and depress the shutter button.

The camera has a few white balance manual presets you can use and an
Auto mode. I assume if I pick Auto and focus in on my PVC sump return
in the corner of my tank, that will do the trick?

I've had to do that with 20,000K lighting, and I was amazed how good the
pictures came out. Let me see if I can show you a comparison. ... hmm.
Well, this is a
picture taken with the white balance corrected, under 20,000K bulbs.
http://www.dfwmas.com/newsletters_ht...March/sp_5.jpg
With the white balance left on Auto, it was bluuuue.

Have you ever heard if a digital camera making blue fish (yellow tail
blue damsels) turn bright purple? Is this related to the white
balance being wrong? Beings my 10000K bulbs are a little bluer them
most from what I've just read this seems feasible. However, it does
it under the 5500K Ventures too. I can't remember if I had the
Actinics on at the time so that may be the cause...

Matter of fact, that picture and many others are in this newsletter, including
the article about taking pictures. Plus the Featured Tank was taken by me as
well:
http://www.dfwmas.com/newsletters_ht...MAS_mar04.html

Awesome photos! I love the 150g short/wide tank.

I'd like to see your sump. You can post a link here or email them to me if you
like.

I see you joined Reefs.org, so it looks like you got to check it out.
I'm glad you like it! Not too bad for a first attempt...eh? It
couldn't fit the stand any better.