My grainy photo

[dandylad]

Hey, I'm new here, and pretty new to photography. I cover men's fashion in New York for a magazine called MR, and have recently been required to do more and more of the photography myself. My editor is writing an article about the CEO of Bloomingdales, Mike Gould, and I was sent to take his picture. I have a Canon 6D, but the light was low, and although I upped the exposure in Photoshop, the picture is pixelated/distorted in parts. 1/160 sec, f/2.8, ISO 400.

What am I doing wrong? I see lowlight pictures without distortion.

Image below. Please help?

 

[The_Traveler]

the picture is too small to see anything.
put a link to an original or at least very large image.

that being said, it is clearly underexposed and any editing will bring up noise in the shadows.
you need to know more about photography and processing

 

[The_Traveler]

With only overhead lights you need to be able to get lights onto his face and eye sockets.
A reflector or flash would help

This would be a better crop, get him off the center.

 

[bratkinson]

With only overhead lights you need to be able to get lights onto his face and eye sockets.
A reflector or flash would help

This would be a better crop, get him off the center.

View attachment 61384

^^^^^^
+1 All of the above!

 

[Designer]

Pose your subject in better light, either by asking him to move to a pool of light, or find a surface such as the ceiling or a wall from which to bounce your speedlight. Ask your subject to turn more toward the camera and smile if he's got it in himself to do so. Turn your camera to portrait format. Watch the background for distracting people or objects.

Other than that, pretty good.

 

[MK3Brent]

Question:

Are you going to take any of these edited photos back to your editor, where they may be published?

 

[Overread]

Get your ISO higher.

Most modern DSLRs can easily do ISO 800 without much noise (esp when prepared for print and typical web display). Whilst higher ISO does mean more noise its important to realise that underexposed photos brightened will show even more noise than if you'd used a higher ISO to get the exposure brighter in the first place. The "Expose to the right" theory and the use of your histogram when reviewing shots are two things you should read up on.

Early on advice for beginners was to keep ISO as low as possible - these days I personally feel that is bad advice and that people should be taught to set their aperture and shutter speed as needed for the scene and then let the ISO land where its needed to for the shot. There after they can consider the theory of a low ISO for less noise once they've got the creative and exposure control aspects understood