Ethan & Gracie - Indoor Natural Light Portraits

met

I wanted to practice some indoor portraits with all natural light. My parent's have nice floor length windows in their living room, so I set up a piece of fabric and grabbed some pictures of my niece and nephew.

C&C are welcome as always.

1.



2. This one is a little soft, but I really liked their expressions.



3.



4.



5.



6.



7. I gave the camera to my mom to snap a few and she caught this funny expression.

kris10jo

The last two are my favorites. I especially love the expression your mom caught. Cute!

Qarik

Pam these have a wonderful feel and look to them. They are a touch soft though. I think a vignette would have been nice on these as well.

Agnieszka

What a cute series. My favorite is #2, just LOVE their expressions & hug

Watch out with cut-off limbs (#1, 2, 3, 4) + most of them do look soft to me too ... Other than that I would also desaturate their ears (#5), who knows how that would print ...

Adorable photos, I'm sure all the relatives & friends were in LOVE with them!!

rhondavid

I have to say you children are just adoreable. Both have great expressions and beautiful eyes. Love the second one but wish the focus had been crisper.

Very nice use of the existing light. Nicely done.

met

Thanks everyone for the kind comments. My pictures being a bit soft is a consistent critique that I receive. I'm not exactly sure what I'm doing wrong in all of these or how to fix it. I have a 50 1.8 that I bought for about $30 because it has the classic oil on the aperture blades problem. I'm planning on investing in a 50 1.4, so I haven't bothered to replace it or send it in to be fixed. It definitely has problems at the higher aperture numbers, but I don't really have anything to compare it with as far as how it performs wide open. I'm fairly unfamiliar with the mechanics of lenses, but I'm wondering if this is one of the reasons that I get consistently softer images. If there is something that I should do with my settings, I'd love to hear other ideas that people may think it is.

met

Agnieszka wrote:

Watch out with cut-off limbs (#1, 2, 3, 4) + most of them do look soft to me too ... Other than that I would also desaturate their ears (#5), who knows how that would print ...

Thanks. I'll pay more attention to those things in the future.

met

One more thing regarding the softness...I have noticed it much more with my natural light stuff. When I put a flash on, while still not being as tack sharp as I would like - they do seem to crisp up some. Can someone explain to me the mechanics behind that?

adbsgicom

In a shot like this where the ambient is underexposed, the flash is contributing the most light. The actual duration of the flash strobe is something like 1/1000 or faster, so you have more of the exposure collected at effectively a higher shutter speed than the rest of your frame.

Interesting article on the Canon 580EX2 where this guy measured the strobe speed from 1/1000 to 1/35000 depending on the flash strength.

Scott_Quier

met wrote:

One more thing regarding the softness...I have noticed it much more with my natural light stuff. When I put a flash on, while still not being as tack sharp as I would like - they do seem to crisp up some. Can someone explain to me the mechanics behind that?

adbsgicom wrote:

In a shot like this where the ambient is underexposed, the flash is contributing the most light. The actual duration of the flash strobe is something like 1/1000 or faster, so you have more of the exposure collected at effectively a higher shutter speed than the rest of your frame.

Interesting article on the Canon 580EX2 where this guy measured the strobe speed from 1/1000 to 1/35000 depending on the flash strength.

with Andrew.

A couple of other things to keep in mind:

1. Shutter speed. Yours was 1/80s at 50mm on a 1.5 crop camera. That's right on the edge of the old 1/focal length rule of thumb.
2. If you were at all close to your subject, DOF at f/3.2 will be quite thin. In your #2 shot, it appears his sleeve at the shoulder is nearly in focus. In the original, I can see the knit pattern fairly well. With a DOF as thin as this, it's quite easy to achieve focus lock and have the camera move either closer to or away from your subject before the exposure has been made ... and an inch or two is enough to blow the focus.
3. Your flash, if it's anything like the Canon flashes (I don't know), has an AF assist light. This can help the camera (D'oh) acquire a better focus lock. This may contribute to a better focus when using the flash as compared to what you get without the flash.

kidzmom

Hey Met,
I agree that getting crisp, crisp shots in natural light INDOORS can be tricky. ESPECIALLY with kids. I have only been using natural light and I've dedicated the last 4 months to trying to improve my shots. Indoors with kids I always up my shutter to at least 1/150 minimum... this is the VERY minimum--1/250 is even better for non action portraits. Yes this will darken things up, but I try to shoot as wide open as possible and if it is still dark I just compensate with a slightly higher ISO than I'd like. I've found that dealing with noise is a preferable issue to me than than oof shots. Also I find that either using a single point AF or using manual focus has helped enormously. I have learned to shuffle the AF single focus button around while still having my eye in the camera... I used to have to look at the LCD but now I can do it while shooting. I do like manual focus though, but sometimes that is tricky if I don't have my glasses on! !

adbsgicom

Make sure you expose properly once you start pushing the ISO. The noise is in the shadow, so if you push the ISO and still underexpose the image, you will be worse off than you need to be. Some of the Canon bodies allow you to set the 8-way controller button to select the AF points pretty easily. Check the Custom Function settings of your particular model.

kidzmom

Thanks for that explaination Andrew. Do you find that the shadow noise starts showing up at the lower end of the high ISO range also, lets say...400-800 or is it really once you start maxing above those levels? I do tend to err on underexposing a bit. Can't seem to nail it perfectly yet. I can set my point selection in a few clicks. It took a bit of practice though. I just have to tap the upper right hand most button and then steer the points with the arrow keys. Easy peasy now, but it took some practice to learn to do it fast while shooting with my eye glued to the eyepiece.

adbsgicom wrote:

Make sure you expose properly once you start pushing the ISO. The noise is in the shadow, so if you push the ISO and still underexpose the image, you will be worse off than you need to be. Some of the Canon bodies allow you to set the 8-way controller button to select the AF points pretty easily. Check the Custom Function settings of your particular model.

adbsgicom

Where it starts to be a problem is body-specific, but the noise will always be in the lower band of samples. So, if you underexpose by 1/3-stop you will make whatever noise there is boost by 1/3 stop when you correct the exposure. If you shoot RAW there is a bit of room above when your camera says you've started clipping (this is at least the case on the 5Dmk2). Test your camera to see if the same holds true. Remember the histogram is based on the jpg compression of the image shot, not the RAW data. Here are some extreme examples. Both were shot last night at a MS BBall game. I shot these two in a corner and I was in full manual and just fired w/o thinking, and it was under-exposed by two stops -- noise is very noticable and pretty rotten. ISO3200.


This was still a little underexposed, but pretty close to right and the noise is pretty negligible, even at ISO4000.

kidzmom

Great examples and explaination on why it is best to get it right (or as close to right as possible.). I guess in a perfect world we should all carry around light meters. Do you have one? I was looking at them...and it seems like a very small investment to get pictures accurately exposed.

adbsgicom

No, I do not. Ultimately what I know is that on my camera, there is about 2/3 of a stop that I can recover if I overshoot and I get the exposure about right and go from there. I use the histogram on the camera as my primary guide. I let the TTL flash do its thing when I use it. I haven't done any studio work or majorly posed shots (other than my kid) so I haven't had the need nor desire to really go down that path.

MissB

I agree with the above about the shutter speed. I have been using the full manual setting up until recently. I have been playing around with some of the other priority settings.. IE: aperature priority... sometimes I will use the flash indoors if I am taking photos of my kids or just messing around. I have discovered the same thing.. vs.. my normal natural light approach. I believe (paaaleeease let me know if im waaay off) the flash generally throws enough light...
a. for the camera to focus correctly.
b. for the shutter speed to be adequate enough to capture sharper images. (which im finding is usually between 1/100-1/250 or better.

with the camera in a priority setting using only natural light...(especially indoors) if you aren't watching (or controlling) the shutter speed.. the camera will often compensate with a shutter speed that is too low. 1/100 or slower ..sometimes its borderline and makes the images just soft.

I dunno, just a thought. And these kids are ADORABLE btw!!

Scott_Quier

MissB wrote:

I agree with the above about the shutter speed. I have been using the full manual setting up until recently. I have been playing around with some of the other priority settings.. IE: aperature priority... sometimes I will use the flash indoors if I am taking photos of my kids or just messing around. I have discovered the same thing.. vs.. my normal natural light approach. I believe (paaaleeease let me know if im waaay off) the flash generally throws enough light...
a. for the camera to focus correctly.
b. for the shutter speed to be adequate enough to capture sharper images. (which im finding is usually between 1/100-1/250 or better.
with the camera in a priority setting using only natural light...(especially indoors) if you aren't watching (or controlling) the shutter speed.. the camera will often compensate with a shutter speed that is too low. 1/100 or slower ..sometimes its borderline and makes the images just soft.

I dunno, just a thought. And these kids are ADORABLE btw!!

With flash, you don't want to push the shutter speed above 1/250 (for the 50D) or above 1/200 (for the older dRebel cameras, don't remember for the Xsi). Attempting to set the shutter speed above these levels requires you to take positive action to set the camera/flash to High-speed Shutter Synch (HSS) mode. Otherwise, the camera will ignore you and reset the shutter speed to the above stated values.

Jheyerck

kris10jo wrote:

The last two are my favorites. I especially love the expression your mom caught. Cute!

TOTALLY AGREE!!! ADORABLE!!!

Mitchell

Great discussion here.

Natural lighting can be tricky unless you take full control of your camera. I tend to shoot aperture priority, but have blown many a natural light shot by not paying attention to my shutterspeed.:cry I now make every mental effort I can to look carefully at BOTH my aperture and SS for these shots.

A tripod would have been a help here. You were basically in a studio environment. When shooting kids, I try to keep my SS a little higher (1/125 or better).

Tay

Just as an aside to the conversation, I notice in #3 that Gracie's eyes are two different colors... the left side is very bright, vivid blue and the right is closer to the natural color I see in some of the shots (like #1). Not sure if that was intentional or not, but it was a bit distracting to me, almost looks like you 'missed a spot'