My first baby shoot that I feel like I nailed it!! CC please

[RebeccaAPhotography]

So here is my 2nd stab at newborn photography. The first time was HIGH iso and super grainy photos with icky looking newborn skin colors. I really concentrated HARD on this. How'd I do guys?

 

[Mully]

I like 1,2,5 I do think they are all nice. The first image it would look better if you retouch out the little hand on top of her body...looks a little creepy.

 

[RebeccaAPhotography]

LOL!! I didn't even see that! I agree I am on it right now!!

 

[CherylL]

I like the natural poses. #5 is my favorite.

 

[RebeccaAPhotography]

Thanks! I def can NOT do any of those other poses. I tried, it didn't work. I'm 6 months pregnant I'll have my own guinea pig soon enough!

 

[MLeeK]

1. VERY orange. There is some extreme noise in the bottom eye. Focus is sharper on the head band. Exposure is good, but the eye noise tells me you raised that side of the exposure instead of getting it right in camera. The catch lights captured in the eyes are beautiful.
The hand with little bits of fingers being cut off is unfortunate here, however at an 8x10 crop I believe that partial hand will be cropped out and it'll feel much better.
2.The conversion is pretty decent. This is going to be a problem printing to any standard size other than 4x6 because you have filled the frame and left no room for the inevitable crop. It's very grainy. Focus seems to fall on the lace instead of the eyes. The chopped off toes are unfortunate if you are remembering to leave enough room for the crop factor this won't happen. This will crop to a much better head and face shot. The copious use of props really takes the focus off baby and makes this very busy. You have fur, lace, hat and something on either side of the fur. You have again captured some great catch lights in the eyes.
3.The color on this one is very nice. Might be slightly pink. Focus is on baby's hand or maybe the fur, not his face as I feel it should be in this one. Very grainy. Your camera has some fantastic capabilities and I am not sure why you are getting noise like this. What are the settings on these images? You've minimized your distractions here with less props. It's simply about a sleeping baby. Very nice. The exposure here looks good, but I am wondering what it looked like SOOC because of the noise issues.
4. Focus is on the fur, not baby's face. The composition of this one makes the arm pit the main subject. THe fact that baby's face is headed off screen just doesn't balance. HOWEVER cropped to an 8x10 in either landscape or portrait orientation it will work nicely. The noise isn't as pronounced in this one. Exposure is good here.
5. IMO this is the best of the lot. It's a problem to print to any standard size but 4x6. It's very warm/yellow. Focus is much closer here. Seems to be on the top of the ruffle, but the face is within fairly acceptable DOF. I could live without the pearl thing in there. One prop is plenty with a baby. Here you have the ruffly thing, the blanket's texture and the pearls-which IMO look cheap. Noise is infinitely better on this one. Exposure is great. Baby needed to be further from the background so we don't see the blanket texture there and the shadow at the rump would fall elsewhere. THis is one really sweet image.

Questions for you: Do you use one focal point or multiple? What were your settings and what lens? What focus mode are you working in?

 

[RebeccaAPhotography]

Oh MLeek THANK YOU! I was so hoping you would put your 2 cents in! You always have great CC!! and I love your work!

Ok here are the photos SOCC for you and the exif data to go with it!


1) 1/60, f 3.5, iso 800
2) 1/100, f3.5, iso 800
3) 1/250, f2.8, iso 800 (should have cut the iso and shutter, I had room to play with now that I look at it)
4) 1/200, f2.8, iso 400
5) 1/320, f2.8, iso 400

I was using one focus point and picking which one trying to pick the one closests to her eyes. Should I have used multiple and had the camera think for me there? I used my nifty fifty for this one b/c it can shoot wider open, hoping I would not have had to use my flash. I was using ONE SHOT AF mode, would Al focus, or al servo worked better in this situation?

This shoot took awhile Emerson was up the longest she had ever been up since being born hahaha! I really was able to try and take my time manipulating my camera.

 

[MLeeK]

Oh MLeek THANK YOU! I was so hoping you would put your 2 cents in! You always have great CC!! and I love your work!

Ok here are the photos SOCC for you and the exif data to go with it!
View attachment 24857View attachment 24858View attachment 24859View attachment 24860View attachment 24861

1) 1/60, f 3.5, iso 800
2) 1/100, f3.5, iso 800
3) 1/250, f2.8, iso 800 (should have cut the iso and shutter, I had room to play with now that I look at it)
4) 1/200, f2.8, iso 400
5) 1/320, f2.8, iso 400

I was using one focus point and picking which one trying to pick the one closests to her eyes. Should I have used multiple and had the camera think for me there? I used my nifty fifty for this one b/c it can shoot wider open, hoping I would not have had to use my flash. I was using ONE SHOT AF mode, would Al focus, or al servo worked better in this situation?

This shoot took awhile Emerson was up the longest she had ever been up since being born hahaha! I really was able to try and take my time manipulating my camera.

Nope, you are doing the right thing with your focus points. What about your focus mode? AI Servo AI Focus or One Shot?


1 and 2 definitely are suffering from your very slow shutter speeds. I had a feeling you were very slow on some. The 1/200 and 1/250 is a good speed to be at for this session. It puts you into a pretty safe zone to prevent camera shake.

You are getting so much noise in these because they're underexposed and you are raising exposure in post. If you shot at ISO 100 and raised exposure in post you'd introduce noise. Never keep yourself at a lower ISO in order to keep noise at bay and think you will just bump a little in post. It's a mess waiting to happen.

What are using to edit? What colorspace are these in? Something in your editing is just not matching these up well with the versions in your first post. Are you shooting in jpeg or raw? Something else is also going on because these don't reflect the quality that the 50 should give you.

 

[RebeccaAPhotography]

Oh MLeek THANK YOU! I was so hoping you would put your 2 cents in! You always have great CC!! and I love your work!

Ok here are the photos SOCC for you and the exif data to go with it!
View attachment 24857View attachment 24858View attachment 24859View attachment 24860View attachment 24861

1) 1/60, f 3.5, iso 800
2) 1/100, f3.5, iso 800
3) 1/250, f2.8, iso 800 (should have cut the iso and shutter, I had room to play with now that I look at it)
4) 1/200, f2.8, iso 400
5) 1/320, f2.8, iso 400

I was using one focus point and picking which one trying to pick the one closests to her eyes. Should I have used multiple and had the camera think for me there? I used my nifty fifty for this one b/c it can shoot wider open, hoping I would not have had to use my flash. I was using ONE SHOT AF mode, would Al focus, or al servo worked better in this situation?

This shoot took awhile Emerson was up the longest she had ever been up since being born hahaha! I really was able to try and take my time manipulating my camera.

Nope, you are doing the right thing with your focus points. What about your focus mode? AI Servo AI Focus or One Shot?


1 and 2 definitely are suffering from your very slow shutter speeds. I had a feeling you were very slow on some. The 1/200 and 1/250 is a good speed to be at for this session. It puts you into a pretty safe zone to prevent camera shake.

You are getting so much noise in these because they're underexposed and you are raising exposure in post. If you shot at ISO 100 and raised exposure in post you'd introduce noise. Never keep yourself at a lower ISO in order to keep noise at bay and think you will just bump a little in post. It's a mess waiting to happen.

What are using to edit? What colorspace are these in? Something in your editing is just not matching these up well with the versions in your first post. Are you shooting in jpeg or raw? Something else is also going on because these don't reflect the quality that the 50 should give you.

I was using One shot af mode... So for me to have stayed in the 1/200 ss should I have bumped my iso even higher. I fear 1600, 3200, 6400 (probably bc I always get grain in those) OR should I have bounced flash. I didn't even bust out the flash at all to try it. I should've tried.

I shot these in raw + jpeg, but only edited my raw photos. I edit in Lightroom 3. I dont have the 50 I have the t2i that will def make a difference I just looked up in my camera the color space I'm using is sRGB should I use Adobe RGB?

Like I said to someone else I will have my very own guinea pig in a few months and we have awesome winter light coming thru my picture window, so all the helpful cc is awesome and greatly appreciated. Photography is such an awesome world you can always grow! I dont know if you remember what I used to photograph like and what I am now. Its folks like you who help me grow

 

[MLeeK]

Oh MLeek THANK YOU! I was so hoping you would put your 2 cents in! You always have great CC!! and I love your work!

Ok here are the photos SOCC for you and the exif data to go with it!
View attachment 24857View attachment 24858View attachment 24859View attachment 24860View attachment 24861

1) 1/60, f 3.5, iso 800
2) 1/100, f3.5, iso 800
3) 1/250, f2.8, iso 800 (should have cut the iso and shutter, I had room to play with now that I look at it)
4) 1/200, f2.8, iso 400
5) 1/320, f2.8, iso 400

I was using one focus point and picking which one trying to pick the one closests to her eyes. Should I have used multiple and had the camera think for me there? I used my nifty fifty for this one b/c it can shoot wider open, hoping I would not have had to use my flash. I was using ONE SHOT AF mode, would Al focus, or al servo worked better in this situation?

This shoot took awhile Emerson was up the longest she had ever been up since being born hahaha! I really was able to try and take my time manipulating my camera.

Nope, you are doing the right thing with your focus points. What about your focus mode? AI Servo AI Focus or One Shot?


1 and 2 definitely are suffering from your very slow shutter speeds. I had a feeling you were very slow on some. The 1/200 and 1/250 is a good speed to be at for this session. It puts you into a pretty safe zone to prevent camera shake.

You are getting so much noise in these because they're underexposed and you are raising exposure in post. If you shot at ISO 100 and raised exposure in post you'd introduce noise. Never keep yourself at a lower ISO in order to keep noise at bay and think you will just bump a little in post. It's a mess waiting to happen.

What are using to edit? What colorspace are these in? Something in your editing is just not matching these up well with the versions in your first post. Are you shooting in jpeg or raw? Something else is also going on because these don't reflect the quality that the 50 should give you.

I was using One shot af mode... So for me to have stayed in the 1/200 ss should I have bumped my iso even higher. I fear 1600, 3200, 6400 (probably bc I always get grain in those) OR should I have bounced flash. I didn't even bust out the flash at all to try it. I should've tried.

I shot these in raw + jpeg, but only edited my raw photos. I edit in Lightroom 3. I dont have the 50 I have the t2i that will def make a difference I just looked up in my camera the color space I'm using is sRGB should I use Adobe RGB?

Like I said to someone else I will have my very own guinea pig in a few months and we have awesome winter light coming thru my picture window, so all the helpful cc is awesome and greatly appreciated. Photography is such an awesome world you can always grow! I dont know if you remember what I used to photograph like and what I am now. Its folks like you who help me grow

You most definitely should have got the flash out.
Bouncing flash isn't as hard as it sounds. If your main light is coming from a window, point your flash at the same window!
sRGB is correct. I just wanted to make sure your color issues weren't from being in the wrong colorspace.

I think whatever you are doing in editing is really where much of your problem lies.
Here is your last image my second one only edited in Adobe Camera Raw CS6 and then I actually opened in PS and softened skin and adjusted that background a little and that's the first one. It's a pretty dirty edit done in all of about 5 minutes tops for both versions, but it shows that you have a pretty good image to begin with.

 

[RebeccaAPhotography]

Thanks for all the CC and time I will def bust out the flash next time. I'm not afraid of flash, yes I still have A LOT to learn about it. But I will use it. I actually have another photo shoot with this family in a week or 2. Same house, same windows for light... I'm doing their holiday photos for them with their Xmas tree... I've been trying different presets out and I think thats my problem in these edits. I am happy or happier with what I am getting SOCC and need to just tweak the small areas rather then presets.

 

[MLeeK]

Thanks for all the CC and time I will def bust out the flash next time. I'm not afraid of flash, yes I still have A LOT to learn about it. But I will use it. I actually have another photo shoot with this family in a week or 2. Same house, same windows for light... I'm doing their holiday photos for them with their Xmas tree... I've been trying different presets out and I think thats my problem in these edits. I am happy or happier with what I am getting SOCC and need to just tweak the small areas rather then presets.

Presets can work-if you know what they are doing. Which means you have to know how to edit without them in the first place. I agree that the quality of your SOOC images is better than the edited ones.
I had missed where you said you didn't have the 50... I meant the 50mm lens, not the 50D.
One thing you have to be aware of is your DISTANCE from the lens to the subject and how it affects your DOF. You have stopped down from wide open here, but you are very close to the baby between the feet away and the bit of zoom the 50 gives you on your camera. That combined to make your DOF EXTREMELY shallow and that's part of your missed focus problems.

When you shoot the tree session use your flash. Bounce of the ceiling or the wall behind you if it is white. Or even a piece of poster board or foam core behind you.
Do some close to the tree and do some as far as you can position them from the tree for shallow DOF.

 

[kathyt]

MLeek has given you some really good feedback. I am so glad you posted your SOOC images with your settings because it is really helpful to see what you started with. As you can see from your edited images, all that noise was somehow added in PP. If you are using LR3's recovery slider too much and then applying presets on top of that you will see alot of noise added to you images. Your images look so crisp SOOC, especially #2 and #4, before you even started editing.
If you go back and look at your original post and peek at the images edited in color, you can see that all of the skin tones are different. If you learn to edit skin tones by the numbers, which really sucks at first, you will then train your eye and your images will get more and more consistant. No preset will give you accurate skin tones. You must get these correct first.

 

[MLeeK]

I am bored tonight...
This is just in ACR from CS5. Same thing you have in your LR. I raised exposure. Added some fill light. Used the brush to brighten up the bottom eye a bit, used the brush to soften skin, adjusted white balance a little. Applied a bit of a contrast curve.

 

[RebeccaAPhotography]

I have CS5 jut not on this computer. I think part of my issue is Im trying to do too much with light room. Yes I am def struggling with the white balance. Its funny bc I didn't have this issue before, its grown! I think I need to do basic stuff in Lightroom then bridge over to cs5 and I think I would have better luck working on just the person or just the background to achieve the colors I want.

Thanks! Kathy! Yes MLeek def has given phenominal advice! Do you have any tips on editing skin tones just by the numbers. I guess that is what I have been trying to do, key word trying. Like I said do you have any tips for me to overcome this white balance/skin tone rut i am in.... lol