One from today's session, trying to learn new lens

[cgipson1]

It's very "2001", or "Major Tom".

Yep.. she is just floating, without an anchor! lol!

 

[Derrel]

Okay...let me just say the lighting pattern here is not a good one. You could have put Cindy Crawford or Irena Shayek down there, and with that lighting, the photo would still be bad. I want to say "awful", but, with Cindy or Irena, it would not be awful...just "bad". What I mean by bad is a multi-part thing. For instance, her eyes: they are not lighted well. The new polite term is raccoon eyes. THe eyes would look so much better if they had a catchlight in them.

What you have here is a case of two, conflicting lights. The "main light" is placed horribly wrongly. It is the "main" or "key" only by virtue of its brightness, and as we can see on the camera left sleeve of her blouse, it casts a strong, deep shadow, AND even worse, it lights the camera-left ear up like a pumpkin...there's a secondary light that causes a second, weaker shadow, on the camera-left arm, below the deep shadow...that is a second light, casting a secondary shadow...the entire light set-up is not good...

This lighting simply looks horrible...it's set-up and aimed entirely wrong. A better solution would to have placed ONE LIGHT, to the right of the camera, and aimed it at her face and body. Just one, single light. That would have been fine. That way there would not have been conflicting shadows and also, her eyes would have had some catchlights in them, as well as some light in the eye socket/brow area, to alleviate that raccoon eye look. As to Bitter's question about the framing--it's a seated pose, horizontally framed, and she's outweighed by all that blackness around her. The classic pose would be her seated on her butt, her left hand resting on the floor, her knees pointed camera right, and her lower legs and feet bent around and pointed camera left. Her right hand would grasp an ankle, or be placed on a knee, or her top thigh. That is the classic way to photograph a pre-teen girl in a skirt and blouse,seated, indoors, in formal portraiture. That pose would have looked nice on an all-black backdrop, shot as a TALL...and it would have looked good tomorrow, as well as 10, then 20, then 30, then 40, then 50 years down the road.

 

[cgipson1]

E for effort?? Night/Indoor photography???:blushing:

FLASH! Fixes all of those problems!

I don't have a flash other than the one on my Canon, so it interferes with the studio lighting and i've had it happen where too much light is on the face.

Off Camera is better.. but even on camera is better than continuous lighting that is not used correctly. If you were getting blown out highlights.. that means you were using flash incorrectly!

 

[Vtec44]

Lighting, composition, white balance, sharpness, and cropping. Oh, black background looks very unnatural.

 

[LightSpeed]

Distance certainly does play a role in sharpness and/or what might appear to be lack thereof.
In this case it doesn't, given the image and its data.
She wasn't far enough away.

When the atmosphere takes it's toll on the image......along with heat and a number of other factors, it really can't be blamed on a lens.
6 feet away has nothing to do with it though.

 

[LightSpeed]

Lighting, composition, white balance, sharpness, and cropping. Oh, black background looks very unnatural.

Yep, but it's still better than that crap you posted earlier.
No offense.

 

[Vtec44]

Lighting, composition, white balance, sharpness, and cropping. Oh, black background looks very unnatural.

Yep, but it's still better than that crap you posted earlier.
No offense.

That was taken by my 2nd shooter, using a 5Dm2 and his 70-200 VR2! lol


This picture was taken last year using the Nikon version of the 50mm f1.8D, about 5ft away at f2.2 if I remember it correctly. Yes, flat lighting, sharp shadow on her forehead, short sleeves, and weird halo on her chest. Lighting was simple 2-light setup (speed lights). It's not my best work but just a quick example of how close you can get w/o having to stop down that much and still get a sharp image. Given that she was using Canon's version of that lens, she should be able close to the sharpness.

And for Derrel, yes her necklace is centered!

 

[WesVFX]

This might be stupid questions but...

Why would one shoot with an ISO of 800? Don't you typically want to shoot with as low an ISO as possible to reduce noise? (Not that noise is really a problem in this picture).

Secondly, why the large aperture? I mean, that gives you a very small DOF, which I'd think is another reason she's out of focus.

And of course the lighting has already been discussed...

 

[Vtec44]

This might be stupid questions but...

Why would one shoot with an ISO of 800? Don't you typically want to shoot with as low an ISO as possible to reduce noise? (Not that noise is really a problem in this picture).

Secondly, why the small aperature? I mean, that gives you a very small DOF, which I'd think is another reason she's out of focus.

And of course the lighting has already been discussed...

I'd assume that she doesn't have enough light to use lower ISO, and same goes to using a large aperture. I personally don't think the focus issue has to do with distance or aperture.

 

[MTVision]

I'd assume that she doesn't have enough light to use lower ISO, and same goes to using a large aperture. I personally don't think the focus issue has to do with distance or aperture.

What do you think cause her focus issue? I think it had to do with her aperture. She is not use to shooting with a shallow depth of field. Think about all the threads here about people missing focus with their primes and it is usually due to a shallow depth of field. She can definitely get a sharp image with a shallow depth of field if she practices.

I guess how she is focusing could also play a factor but I'm sure the shallow depth of field is part of the issue.

 

[Vtec44]

I'd assume that she doesn't have enough light to use lower ISO, and same goes to using a large aperture. I personally don't think the focus issue has to do with distance or aperture.

What do you think cause her focus issue? I think it had to do with her aperture. She is not use to shooting with a shallow depth of field. Think about all the threads here about people missing focus with their primes and it is usually due to a shallow depth of field. She can definitely get a sharp image with a shallow depth of field if she practices.

I guess how she is focusing could also play a factor but I'm sure the shallow depth of field is part of the issue.

I think it's more her technique and that's something she has to figure it out on her own. I was at a much closer distance using wider aperture but didn't have focus issues at all. Maybe Nikon equipment are just that good. lol

 

[MTVision]

I think it's more her technique and that's something she has to figure it out on her own. I was at a much closer distance using wider aperture but didn't have focus issues at all. Maybe Nikon equipment are just that good. lol

No - it is technique but that's what I meant by practicing. It's harder to nail focus at shallow DOF's versus a depth of field of 4ft+. It is far from impossible to get sharp focus at wide apertures but more than likely it wouldn't happen after having the lens a couple days.

I shoot at wide apertures a lot but I did practice at it.

Horrible old picture but it's in focus! F/2.0 and really close

 

[LightSpeed]

I'd assume that she doesn't have enough light to use lower ISO, and same goes to using a large aperture. I personally don't think the focus issue has to do with distance or aperture.

What do you think cause her focus issue? I think it had to do with her aperture. She is not use to shooting with a shallow depth of field. Think about all the threads here about people missing focus with their primes and it is usually due to a shallow depth of field. She can definitely get a sharp image with a shallow depth of field if she practices.

I guess how she is focusing could also play a factor but I'm sure the shallow depth of field is part of the issue.

I think it's more her technique and that's something she has to figure it out on her own. I was at a much closer distance using wider aperture but didn't have focus issues at all. Maybe Nikon equipment are just that good. lol

Possibly due to using auto focus with a lens that is not correctly tuned in? IE backfocus issues?
Has nothing to do with equipment.
Any decent camera with a decent lens can capture a great image.
There are award winning images out there captured with Holga's.

 

[MTVision]

Possibly due to using auto focus with a lens that is not correctly tuned in? IE backfocus issues?
Has nothing to do with equipment.
Any decent camera with a decent lens can capture a great image.
There are award winning images out there captured with Holga's.

So are you saying it could be an equipment issue or not. Tired and you confused me!

Anyways - it could be the lens is back focusing OR it could be that she just got her lens and isn't able to nail focus yet with a shallow depth of field (like a million other people with their first primes).

 

[LightSpeed]

Possibly due to using auto focus with a lens that is not correctly tuned in? IE backfocus issues?
Has nothing to do with equipment.
Any decent camera with a decent lens can capture a great image.
There are award winning images out there captured with Holga's.

So are you saying its an equipment issue or not. Tired and you confused me!

Anyways - it could be the lens is back focusing OR it could be that she just got her lens and isn't able to nail focus yet with a shallow depth of field (like a million other people with their first primes).

If the lens is correctly tuned for focus and focus priority is turned on, the camera won't fire unless focus is obtained.
Makes it kinda hard to miss focus. Add to this proper aperture, and missing focus becomes almost impossible , but people still do it.