This was quite a fun bunch of evenings for me. I must have taken a bazillion shots during all of the different trials. For anyone that is interested, here is the setup:
10 gallon aquarium.
standard aquarium lights (2-15 watt clear bulbs).
white foam board backdrop sitting about 5-inches behind the aquarium.
halogen desk lamp behind and to the side of the aquarium aimed only at the foam board.
A c-clamp and a hemostat from my fishing gear used to control the flow of the bubbles from the standard aquarium pump - 2 air lines.
I don't have any gels for my lights so I experimented with setting up a custom white balance off of colored pieces of paper. This gives the shot a colored tint as if it where shot in colored light. For this one I believe I set up on a red card, then shot a blue card with the red custom white balance and used this new picture for my custom white balance. It was kind of a mistake as I forgot to go back to auto or tungsten between different colored cards.
During the shot I had to use the on-camera flash to freeze the bubbles. It was so harsh that I mounted some tracing paper in a cardboard frame and used it to diffuse the flash. I held the diffuser in front of the flash with one hand and pushed the shutter release cable controller with the other hand.
The picture had sort of a purple hue to it. In post-processing which was just resizing and a little USM, I was adjusting the levels and found that if I picked a spot on the background for my medium grey, the levels adjustment knocked out the purple and actually improved the clarity of the bubbles so I went with it.
I don't know for sure what caused the gold flame-like spots and trails. I am guessing it is some internal refraction of the glass of the aquarium, the water, and the bubbles themselves. In all of my shots I saw a neat rangle of glod, green and blue trials.
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