Criticism and advice please

Demian

Okay, I took some pictures at this bar. I had no clue what I was doing. I was using a 5d2 with an 85 1.8 lens. The bar was dark, and it had a black ceiling with a HUGE pipe going right down the middle, so I put the flash on the cable so I could better control the light. Unfortunately, this meant I could not use the flash's focus-assist light, and it was rough to get to focus on ANYTHING. Eventually I gave up and changed the autofocus from center point to auto-select point, which helped it focused faster... but then threw some shots by focusing on the wrong thing.

Oh yeah, and there were a bunch of these yellowish red lights everywhere that made them look like martians. I tried to fix the skin tone as best as I could... ARGH



1/160 f/2.8 ISO 4000



1/125 f/2.2 ISO 2000



1/160 f/2 ISO 4000


A bunch of the shots I just screwed up from missed focus (In the second picture, focus is on the hand, in the third it's on the bow tie). But if I cranked up the aperture any more, it choked out the ambient light and the flash created really harsh shadows. If I kept the flash on camera I could use the focus assist on the center point, but that would mess up my light too!

Are these shots decent at least? What would you guys do here?

VayCayMom

these are great, I'd be happy if they were mine.

Hackbone

For the conditions you had and inexperience I think you did a pretty good job. If you were doing a bar shoot for a bar you would have had alot more equipment to complete the job in a competent manner.

divamum

These look great - nothing to worry about at all with these results!

jonh68

I think they look great considering the conditions and your equipment at the time.