Caleb

joshhuntnm

this is a son of a friend. c and c welcome.



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Swartzy

Josh,

A couple things come to mind. First the color balance is way off due to the tungstun lighting. 2nd, it appears you are shooting pretty much wide open (as in aperture) attempting to get fast enough shutter speeds but still, as you can see there's motion blur. Also what happens when filling your frame with close ups when the aperture is say at f/2.8-3.5, eyballs and focal points become an issue.

Using a flash on board (bounce it around the room, up in the corner, off a wall, you'll get better exposures, sharper images and a fighting chance at correcting color balance. Most of all you can stop the lens down to say f/5.6 and get the entire child's face perfectly in focus....an absolute must. Too often we are seeing more shots of half noses, parts of chins, one eye ect. in focus and everything falls out. Some call it art. If done on a consistent basis, nobody will pay for that kind of work.

joshhuntnm

thanks for the help.

As for the color tone, that is an issue of preference. I actually like it that way, though I respect that it is not true color.

As for the sharpness, you are saying we have two problems: camera shake and low depth of field. The flash did fire. The aperature was at 5.

If it is low depth of field issue, obviously a 1.8 lense is not going to fix that, unless, it is just a sharper lens.

I guess a monopod or tripod could help.

Another problem, I suppose, is he is moving.

Sorry I am rambling.

Scott_Quier

joshhuntnm wrote:

As for the sharpness, you are saying we have two problems: camera shake and low depth of field. The flash did fire. The aperature was at 5.

If it is low depth of field issue, obviously a 1.8 lense is not going to fix that, unless, it is just a sharper lens.

I guess a monopod or tripod could help.

Another problem, I suppose, is he is moving.

Sorry I am rambling.

The maximum aperture of a lens has no bearing on the DOF of an image, unless you are shooting at that aperture - and you've already noted that you were shooting at f/5.

What will help is a faster shutter speed to stop the motion of your subject. That comes with either larger aperture or higher ISO (or both) - but you already knew that. The mono-pod/tripod will not help with stopping subject motion but will help with camera motion.

Also, more attention to attaining critical focus of the eyes, rather than the nose. I don't know if you did this so I'll mention it just in case. At your shooting distance, you can't use the center focal point on the eye and then re-compose. Select the appropriate focus point (select only one - if you leave it to the camera to select the focus point, it'll get it wrong most of the time), compose the shot, focus, and fire.

Here's what I see in the photos:

1 - Focus seems to be almost there, but at that distance, it's incredibly difficult to get it exactly right. Looks like the focus is on his nose rather than on an eye. Motion appears to be well stopped. Color is off (but you've already commented on that so I'm done with that). It does, however, appear to be a little under-exposed. Also, a touch centered. He's looking to camera right, but at what?
2 - All of the above. Very nice expression. Too much of the blanket in the foreground. Much better position of his eyes/face in the photo.
3 - Not really wanting to be harsh, but this is just a snapshot. On the plus side, the exposure is much better - at least to my eye.
4 - This is probably the best of the lot (at least to my eyes). The slight blurring of his hand is not significant and IMO actually adds to the photo. Would have loved to have seen this in landscape orientation to get more of an environmental perspective and to reduce the amount of the blanket in the foreground (easily a 1/3 of the photo is taken up with the blanket).

You mention that you like the warmth of these. Fair enough. Have you adjusted the WB as a trial to see what they would look like with "correct" WB applied? That's not a suggestion, just me rambling (my turn now:D).

BriShay

Scott, i just love how you take the time to give us your thoughts! (Hijacking post, sorry) but your advice is so detailed, that is wonderful of you!

Scott_Quier

BriShay wrote:

Scott, i just love how you take the time to give us your thoughts! (Hijacking post, sorry) but your advice is so detailed, that is wonderful of you!

Thanks. I tend to get wordy sometimes. To make up for that, I figure I should insert some quality as well.

joshhuntnm

BriShay wrote:

Scott, i just love how you take the time to give us your thoughts! (Hijacking post, sorry) but your advice is so detailed, that is wonderful of you!

Yes, thank you Scott for taking the time.

My take away is that the key issues of sharpness have to do with picking a different focus point in the camera (making the camera focus on a different dot so I don't have to move much to frame) and focusing on the eyes. My habit has been to use the center spot and then reframe.

The second thing is to speed up the camera. This was shot at 60--the default on P with the xti with the flash on. Of course, with this lens, I don't have a lot of choices. the iso is at 400. I ramp it up and it gets grainy. It seems a tad grainy already. 2) I could get more light in the room. I have lots of lights I could haul in, or an umbrella an external flash. I was going for a natural light look bouncing the flash off the ceiling. 3) get a faster lens, which should be here tomorrow. I also want to try a monopod.

Scott_Quier

joshhuntnm wrote:

Yes, thank you Scott for taking the time.

My take away is that the key issues of sharpness have to do with picking a different focus point in the camera (making the camera focus on a different dot so I don't have to move much to frame) and focusing on the eyes. My habit has been to use the center spot and then reframe.

Exactly. The focus and re-compose technique works les and less well as the camera to subject distance decreases. At the distances above, it doesn't work at all well.

joshhuntnm wrote:

The second thing is to speed up the camera. This was shot at 60--the default on P with the xti with the flash on. Of course, with this lens, I don't have a lot of choices. the iso is at 400. I ramp it up and it gets grainy. It seems a tad grainy already. 2) I could get more light in the room. I have lots of lights I could haul in, or an umbrella an external flash. I was going for a natural light look bouncing the flash off the ceiling. 3) get a faster lens, which should be here tomorrow. I also want to try a monopod.

Here's something you are not going to believe until you've actually done tested it, and if you actually do as indicated below you will have been the third person I corrupted.

Excessive grain happens when you attempt to recover an under-exposed shot and it happens even worse with higher ISO. The cure is to select the appropriate ISO and get a good exposure. Check out Michael Reichmann's discussion on "Expose (to the) Right" for a very good essay on the subject.

By way of example, this photo was captured at my last wedding with a Canon 30D, ISO 800:

(click on the photo for the EXIF data). If you look at the EXIF, you will note that the EC was boosted 1/3 of a stop to move it the right a bit and then the exposure was "corrected" in ACR to bring it back down.

And, if you want it, you can look at the X2 size here.

This photo was not "cherry picked" to demonstrate what is possible, it was just kinda grabbed at random. In addition, there was no after conversion work done to reduce the noise - no noise ninja or neat image or anything like that. The image was converted in ACR, contrast, saturation, sharpening, and a little other stuff done in PS, and BANG -> JPG comes out the other end.

Moral of the story? Since you were shooting with a flash and were bouncing it - boost your FEC +1/3 or +2/3 stop to get more light bouncing around. This will correct your exposure and increase your S/N ratio (almost always a good thing ).

joshhuntnm

somewhere along the line I think I increased the exposure on the flash, that is why #3 is brighter. I assume these would have about the same effect--increasing exposure on the flash or on the camera. I understand they are doing two different things, but both are getting more light to the sensor--one by way of more flash, the other by way of more ambiant light.

I like to leanr by repeating, so here is what I hear you saying: when shooting at hight iso where I am fearful I might have some noise, better to err on the side of too much light rather than too little.

I also assume I would do better to shoot in raw. These are captured jpg in the camera.

My take on raw is that if you happen to get the eposure really close, raw doesn't help you too much and if you had a bunch of pics to work with, as in a wedding, it it one more step in the workflow. But, if the exposure is off a bit, as it is here, you have much more data to get it corrected.

I took some more pics this morning I will post in a bit. they were taken before I read this, but I think I had boosted the light some anyway.

joshhuntnm

Oh, and again, thanks for taking the time, Scott.

Swartzy

joshhuntnm wrote:

somewhere along the line I think I increased the exposure on the flash, that is why #3 is brighter. I assume these would have about the same effect--increasing exposure on the flash or on the camera. I understand they are doing two different things, but both are getting more light to the sensor--one by way of more flash, the other by way of more ambiant light.

I like to leanr by repeating, so here is what I hear you saying: when shooting at hight iso where I am fearful I might have some noise, better to err on the side of too much light rather than too little.

I also assume I would do better to shoot in raw. These are captured jpg in the camera.

My take on raw is that if you happen to get the eposure really close, raw doesn't help you too much and if you had a bunch of pics to work with, as in a wedding, it it one more step in the workflow. But, if the exposure is off a bit, as it is here, you have much more data to get it corrected.

I took some more pics this morning I will post in a bit. they were taken before I read this, but I think I had boosted the light some anyway.

Just a little confirmation for your info Josh: When taking people pics, RAW is THE way to go..simply because if you shoot in Jpeg, your camera does it's in camera processing....not good. Yes, there are hundreds of debates out there on both sides but let me provide you with a verbal example:

This past Saturday I set up the second camera as RAW + Jpeg. When comparing those shots side by side, the saturation, colors, etc. were extremely different than those of the RAW. Attempting to color correct odd Jpeg files is a much daunting task. The Raw files give you a fighting chance.

There is a reason we color balance our photos. Our eyes make incremental adjustments unbeknownst to us and we see skin tones in person as normal. The camera captures it as it is.....it doesn't make those incremental eye adjustments. We don't want green and orange people....I've never seen a green or an orange person unless they were wearing a Halloween costume .

That's why it's imparative to get the white balance corrected..otherwise the photo looks unnatural.

Scott_Quier

joshhuntnm wrote:

somewhere along the line I think I increased the exposure on the flash, that is why #3 is brighter. I assume these would have about the same effect--increasing exposure on the flash or on the camera. I understand they are doing two different things, but both are getting more light to the sensor--one by way of more flash, the other by way of more ambiant light.

You need to do some research on Flash Exposure Compensation (FEC) and Exposure Compensation (EC) and the difference between them.

joshhuntnm wrote:

I like to leanr by repeating, so here is what I hear you saying: when shooting at hight iso where I am fearful I might have some noise, better to err on the side of too much light rather than too little.

Did you read the essay I pointed to? The objective is to boost the exposure at the time of capture (not in post), sliding the histogram to the right. But, you don't want to blow any highlights. When you blow a highlight, there's not information there and no way to recover. Oh, and in case you haven't seen it yet, this entire question is very religious in nature - some are rabid for (like me) and some are rabid against. I don't know if there are any in the middle ground, but there probably are 'cause there are a lot of reasonable people around.

joshhuntnm wrote:

I also assume I would do better to shoot in raw. These are captured jpg in the camera.

My take on raw is that if you happen to get the eposure really close, raw doesn't help you too much and if you had a bunch of pics to work with, as in a wedding, it it one more step in the workflow. But, if the exposure is off a bit, as it is here, you have much more data to get it corrected.

I ALWAYS shoot RAW. I would rather make the photo processing decisions than leave it up to the camera. The number of images to process doesn't enter into the equation. Processing RAW is, for me, no slower than starting with the JPG. One reason is that the chances are better then even that I'm going to want to play with the WB a bit and there's more wiggle room for this in a 12-bit RAW file (14-bit if you are shooting with the 40D) than in a n 8-bit JPG.

joshhuntnm wrote:

I took some more pics this morning I will post in a bit. they were taken before I read this, but I think I had boosted the light some anyway.

Cool - it'll be interesting to see what you've got!