Help! Conquering Crisp Focus

[creativelyfive]

I didn't look much at the first image, but the shot of the baby is interesting. First, you shot it at ISO 200, a shutter speed of 1/200 and an f/stop of 1.8 using a 50mm f/1.8 lens. There are three limiting factors there, as first it is under exposed by more than 1 fstop, and the DOF at f/1.8 is pretty narrow. Worst of all the sharpness of the Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens when wide open is not all that good.

I'm not familiar with the camera, so I have no idea how much higher you could have gone with the ISO, but certainly ISO 1200 and maybe 1600 would have been doable. The shutter speed of 1/200 is nice, but 1/100 on a tripod would have been sufficient. The main significance is being able to stop the lens down to at least f/2.8, perhaps f/4 while still getting proper exposure.

Looking at the histogram will show how close exposure is. You will have to be the judge of how high an ISO you can tolerate with your camera. Think about a tripod!

Past that, it isn't really a bad shot! It needs to be edited some. The color balance is way off, as you don't want babies to look anything but pink. Unfortunately in this case I though it required one adjustment for the baby, another for the arm holding it, and even a third for the background. I tried to make the baby pink, and the arm holding it much less saturated and more towards washed out white. The background was simple enough, I just desaturated it to BW!

I increased brightness and contrast to where a histogram showed the darkest areas at about 30 and the brightest areas at about 245.

And then I gave it a dash of Sharpen and a good little bit of Unsharp Mask.

Note that due to DOF at f/1.8 there are areas which aren't in focus. The baby's feet for example. However that avoids distraction from its face and upper torso, and might be considered a good thing artistically. If you are into that sort of selective focus, the Canon 50mm f/1.8 is not the right lens though. Try an 85mm f/1.4 to get better results.

Here's what I came up with in the editor:

Here are my edited versions. I had already done edits to the image before I posted the original on the thread but wanted to see if I could get feedback on the original issue. Even with the edits I don't feel wowed at all by the images but its definitely an improvement from the original. I have been trying to use a tripod when I can to eliminate the camera shake but often I find it impractical to use because of how much I am moving around to get a different view.

A monopod might not be a bad investment for you then, I use one occasionally for wildlife photography though admittedly much of my own stuff is shot handheld anymore. It's much easier to manipulate than a tripod and whole lot easier to switch around, pretty much a pick it up, drop it, pick it up again sort of affair.

I will definitely look into the monopod as one of my next investments. I tend to get a shaky hand.

Out of curiousity, if it is possible to set aside the fact that the picture is out of focus and that the overall composition of the image isn't very good. What are your thoughts on the editing from original to my two edits? I often find that I think the editing on my images is looking good and I feel good about it and then I may go back a week or two later and view it again and think the coloring is way off or it looks too warm or too cool or it looks over exposed with the edits. It's hard for me to judge my own work sometimes.

 

[paigew]

Is your monitor calibrated? That would be the first step to insure your coloring, contrast, etc. is correct.

 

[Derrel]

In your color edit, the baby has been made a healthier, more-acceptable pinkish color, but the hand and arm of the woman holding the infant looks very cold and off-color (toward the unappealing yellow/green end of the range), and as a result, the edit is simply NOT finished properly. My experience is that people WILL accept overly-warm, ruddy color; too much red,or too much magenta in the color is generally forgivable, but too much green, or yellow or blue is simply not acceptable to people, and they will rightly complain about bad color.

 

[creativelyfive]

I believe my screen is calibrated correctly. I within the past couple months ordered calibration prints and everything appeared to be ok.

 

[480sparky]

What does a calibrated screen have to do with focus?

 

[hamlet]

If you want to shoot a portait and get your whole subject within the DoF, then you must shoot at f4. Even my hamster is not within my DoF and he is 1/100 the size of your baby. Don't be greedy with your aperture, it is what it all comes down to.