Did not get focus correct

[greybeard]

Bouncing your flash off the ceiling will often create dark eye sockets so I always use my hand or a white card along the back side of the flash to help fill in. Also if you are going to shoot without a flash inside set your white balance to match the room lighting. In this case you will notice how green they look. This due to the fluorescent lighting in the room. Setting your white bal to Fluorescent will correct this.

 

[Dave442]

Thanks for detailed description Dave. I did not know that flash can reduce the image blur. I do know that faster shutter will help but like I mentioned before, I was worried about the light.

I had a feeling that in built flash in this shot will create bright spot in the picture. Is there a way to use flash and avoid it?

I captured nef images but converted it to jpeg to post it here. I noticed the image to be greenish but could not identify the reason. Thanks for suggestion.



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A bright spot caused by the flash requires using less flash vs amount of ambient light, you can turn down the power of your pop-up flash and may need to hold a piece of translucent white material in front of it if you are especially close to the subject.

Your original image has almost very little blue on the skin of the faces. The Red and Green channels are almost the same value for the skin. I usually try and make a custom WB off of the white of the eye in post. I tried that on this image and it fixed the green, but came out a bit yellow. So then I went to the tone curves and added a tiny amount of Red and Blue and removed a tiny amount of Green. I ended up with this...

 

[Derrel]

For me, I never shoot below 1/500 unless I'm on a tripod with a still subject.

Whaa? Never? Never ever? Never ever ever?

Pretty much. I know the rule about focal length and shutter speed but, for me, I'm a swayer and I need that shutter peed. My hand holding technique is obviously not the greatest. I suppose I could get down to 1/60 if I absolutely had no choice and had something to lean on, but for me, higher ISO gives better results. For taking pics of kids for anyone, I think 1/500 is a good speed.

Years ago, in the mid-1970's, one of my early photography mentors, a long-time, small-town commercial shooter told me, "You don't know what sharp is until you start shooting all your pictures at 1/400 or faster." Yes, he said 1/400. Old shutter speed, from a man who was old by 1970. I thought he was a bit daft when he told me that bit of advice.

Fast forward a few years. I got more and more into photography, and acquired my first Nikons, and more and more lenses. Fast forward about eight years, and I thought, "I'm gonna try his advice for a week." I had been shooting LOTS of photos, with good lenses. I had a nice lens kit, an F3HP and an FE-2 and a FM, 24,28,35,50,85,105,135,200mm primes. Eighteen pounds worth of kit. I shot all types of assignments, at whatever speeds I felt like shooting....1/30,1/60,1/125 second, lots of stuff with 100 speed Ektachrome slide film, or 400 speed Tri-X.

So..I decided to try shooting everything at 1/500 second for a week. I'll never forget this. I get the first roll of E-6 slide film back from the processor and I am dumbfounded. EVERYTHING is SHARP as HELL. I had not realized it, but the entire world is in motion. Shots that I had shot many times at 1/125 second...were now,at 1/500, really,really,really crisp. Of course I was at wider f/stops, but no more of this f/8 at 1/125 stuff... f/4 at 1/500 second made the entire world POP! with clarity with the 24,28,35,and 50mm lenses. My tele shots with the 105mm f/2.5 were astoundingly crisp at 1/500 second. Not just crisp, but astoundingly crisp.

I had thought that with a decade of experience, that I had nothing to fear from shooting at 1/60 and 1/125 all the time. Boy...was I wrong.

All I can say is...you don't know what SHARP is until you start shooting everything at 1/400 second or faster. Try it for a week.

 

[vintagesnaps]

But the thing is Derrel, for that to work there has to be enough existing light to use a shutter speed of 1/500. But I may try it sometime... I'm thinking if I'm out on a decently sunny day I'm usually going to be at 1/250-1/500 anyway, and yeah probably getting some nice sharp images; in less than ideal light, not so much.

I can usually shoot at sync speed hand held, but getting slower than that takes getting positioned to be able to shoot at a somewhat slower speed. (Which I guess I could try to describe... my stance is somewhat toes in, heels out, knees bent, shoulders back, shifting my weight accordingly... almost like getting ready to do the Time Warp.)

 

[vintagesnaps]

So back to the original photo... the lens was too open, try a somewhat smaller aperture - neither boy is completely in focus. The boy to the left has his face in focus but not his arm/hand; the boy to the right seems to only have his right hand in focus (barely). I think the boy to the left is farther forward a little closer to the camera. The depth of field is too narrow - what's in focus looks like it's in a slightly angled plane from one boy's face across to the other boy's hand. You'd need a smaller aperture to get both boys' faces and hands in focus.

Indoors this could possibly work if you open all the shades/curtains/blinds, turn on lights, etc. Think about the time of day when you'd get the most sunlight (and try it on a nice sunny day). Think about where you'd position the boys first and do a couple of test shots - also notice the backgrounds you'll be getting.

In this photo the light seems to be coming in from the right. Try positioning them so that more of the light is hitting their faces instead of what looks like a 90 degree angle to the window. Maybe experiment with this while they're napping etc. and do some practice just with your camera - then try it with them in the room and in the pictures.

As far as white balance, the built in camera settings may not always be the best for the actual light (the WB for Cloudy etc. may not be accurate for the existing light). If I'm in iffy late day lower light I may scroll thru the settings and preview to see what looks the most like what I'm actually seeing.

 

[Braineack]

exif says: Manual, 1/15 sec, f/1.8, ISO 500 at 6am

considering the above, seems like complete unrealistic settings for the environment (there was no window light here).

1/15sec is simply too slow for images of things that move, held by something that moves.

if i were shooting this is would have been at least 3200ISO -- keeping the f-top at 1.8, that would have bumped the shutter to 1/100 so the chances of a sharp images have been greatly increased despite still being underexposed.

 

[vintagesnaps]

Exactly, way too slow shutter speed. But if you want to get two little boys both in focus you better try a somewhat larger aperture (unless you can get them to not move, not blink, not breathe! lol for more than about a half a second). OK I'm exaggerating but seriously, maybe with older kids but with little ones I don't know if you could get them to stay in the exact postion to use a really open aperture and get both faces in focus.

 

[Braineack]

spray and pray.

 

[ksasidhar]

Thanks for all your comments. I tried to include the suggestions and retake the picture. I took the shot at f/5.6 with flash open and shutter speed of 1/250. I can see increased depth of field and both children seem to be in focus. Please give me your comments if the photo needs further improvements. I did not try to check the composition of the picture and the background does not look great.

I usually take the photo both in NEF and JPG format simultaneously. The picture I posted last week was the one I saved as JPG from the NEF format. This time I checked both the pictures. I see that the greenish tinge that was found in the photos is coming from JPG format saved from NEF. Directly captured JPG format white balance itself looks better. Please see the attached photos in NEF and JPG format.

I used photostudio Darkroom 2 for converting NEF to JPG. I dont know enough about post processing NEF files and probably I did not convert the picture properly.

thanks,
Sasi

 

[Braineack]

When using flash, you can drop the SS much lower to increase the ambient exposure (or bump up iso or both) -- that would balance the background more instead of leading into darkness. The quick burst of the flash will freeze the motion. it's all a balancing act.

flash shot does however look significantly better than your first, but focal plane is somewhere behind both faces.