2 for CC Portrait / focus on eyes.

[VegasPhotoNut]

1. This one i got the eyes pretty much spot on. 50mm f/2.0 at 1/50 just not as angelic as number 2

2. This one i love, except the obvious fact that his right eye is not in focus.. i just still am having a hard time grasping why this happens time and time again! is it because the face is turned a bit and the focus was on the left eye, and because at f/2.0 it to shallow a DoF?

 

[tirediron]

The focus does indeed appear to be on the eyes, but.... they're both soft, due in part to a very shallow depth of field, and in part to (for #2) I suspect camera movement from the low (1/30 sec) shutter speed. Estimating the distance to the subject at 3'; your DoF is something in the order of 1/8". Yes, ONE EIGHTH OF AN INCH! Have a look at a DoF calculator such as this one to get a better idea of what apertures to use at what camera to subject distances.

 

[o hey tyler]

f/2 does provide a VERY shallow depth of field. Shooting at a close distance also accentuates this. In addition, you're using a crop frame camera which narrows your field of view. Your photos are not as sharp as they could be because you were shooting at 1/50s. When taking photos with a low shutter speed, make sure that your shutter speed is at least 1/focal length (which yours was on shot #1). But ideally, you'd want it to be 1/60, or 1/80 to prevent camera shake since you are using a crop frame camera.

The reason that both eyes are more in focus in photo #1 is because they were on the same focal plane, whereas #2 had one eye on the focal plane, the other in front.

 

[VegasPhotoNut]

yea, i knew that them being soft was a probability hand-holding at 1/50 and 1/30 and going to be a problem shooting at those speeds. three feet sounds about right... maybe a bit closer than that actually. So looking at the dof calc it probably would have suited me better to taker a couple steps back and then crop down ?

 

[o hey tyler]

yea, i knew that them being soft was a probability hand-holding at 1/50 and 1/30 and going to be a problem shooting at those speeds. three feet sounds about right... maybe a bit closer than that actually. So looking at the dof calc it probably would have suited me better to taker a couple steps back and then crop down ?

Either that, or close down your aperture to f/3.2 - f/4 or so to get better DoF

 

[VegasPhotoNut]

Thats what i thought Tyler regarding the same plane. what do you mean by so basically since its a 50mm i wanne be shooting at least 1/50 while handholding. makes sense. Usually i dont shoot that low, was dark and was working on only shooting on manual

 

[VegasPhotoNut]

the problem with shooting at f/3.2 or 4 was that it was causing me to shoot at like 1/25 or 1/15 which i knew was going to be way to slow! but i understand what you are saying. makes complete sense

 

[tirediron]

1/60 is generally regarded as a good minimum for hand-holding, especially for people who haven't a lot of experience. I can shoot sharp to 1/20 - 1/30 handheld and have a friend who regularly shoots tack-sharp images at 1/10!!!!! It's pretty much all a matter of practice.

 

[VegasPhotoNut]

Yea, i have read that to. Thank you for all the advice guys.

 

[Diddy2theJJ]

Hey, yes, the reason is because you are working with such a shallow depth of field that with the eye being slightly farther away from the lens, it is slightly out of focus. My personal preference, if you are working with such a shallow DOF is to have the eye closer to you in focus as it leads you into the photo more.

Unless it's an artistic choice you are making, it's nice to have both eyes in focus. You could try closing down your aperture and increasing your ISO to keep the exposure the same, and see if that helps things.

There's some different colored lights in the area from the looks of things so white balance is hard to get spot on, but in my opinion the photos both have a bit too much of a red/blue tint.

 

[Diddy2theJJ]

a general rule of thumb is to never shoot below 1/60 but if you have IS or are really steady you can get away with it. But what Tyler mentioned is that if you are shooting with a telephoto lens it's a good general rule of thumb to shoot at 1/the zoom length. Example, if you are at 200mm shoot at a minimum of 1/200. It doesn't work for everything obviously because if you are shooting at 30mm with a lens for example, you'd still want to keep it at a minimum of 1/60, not 1/30.

 

[sm4him]

1/60 is generally regarded as a good minimum for hand-holding, especially for people who haven't a lot of experience. I can shoot sharp to 1/20 - 1/30 handheld and have a friend who regularly shoots tack-sharp images at 1/10!!!!! It's pretty much all a matter of practice.

Says you...
Probably true for MOST people, but I have a hand tremor. I'm doing good to keep it steady at 1/60, even with IS. All the practice in the world isn't going to help when your hand just suddenly decides it's gonna start shaking!
Anything below 1/30 ends up looking like someone's four-year-old shot it.

 

[VegasPhotoNut]

@diddy i was already shooting at 1250 iso i didnt want to increase it more but maybe i could have gone to 1600 to get an extra stop or so. I agree with focusing on the closer eye, that makes sense. I wasnt truly thinking about it at the time, because it was hard enough to just get a shot where he was standing still long enough to snap it. The red and blue tint makes sense, we were at this place called the magical forest which is a christmas light display here in Las Vegas. Also, im color blind... so editing photos dealing with Hue's seems to be challenging. lol

 

[KmH]

If you use flash, the short duration of the flash of light stops camera shake and subject motion.

By using flash, you can turn down the ISO and don't have to crank it up to ISO 1250.

By using flash, you can control the ambient light exposure separately from the strobed light exposure.

White balance was also a big issue here. This is just an approximate white balance correction. A Raw file could be better corrected

 

[VegasPhotoNut]

I agree KmH i had my white Balance set to cloudy... i should probably just put it back to AWB. also, I dont have an external flash, and like it seems with most others, i dont like on camera flash. But thanks for the photo edit. I will correct the Raw file when i get back to see what else can be done.