Wife/Daughter First Portraits - C&C please.

[jwbryson1]

I used a 45" white shoot through Photoflex umbrella 45 degrees camera left and a large piece of corrugated white plastic camera right for reflective fill light. Shot at ISO 100, f/6.3 at 1/200 with my Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 lens.

C&C welcome. Thanks for looking.

 

[Johnboy2978]

I think it came out pretty well personally. Keep it up. Good shooting.

 

[jwbryson1]

I think it came out pretty well personally. Keep it up. Good shooting.

Thanks for the comment. NewB working on learning lighting.

 

[tirediron]

Good work on the lighting; I think the image would have been stronger had both mother and child worn clothes that were neither black nor white, but that's minor. The image does seem slightly soft however; is it possible that you missed focus, or is it this super-high quality government supplied monitor I'm using?

 

[jwbryson1]

Good work on the lighting; I think the image would have been stronger had both mother and child worn clothes that were neither black nor white, but that's minor. The image does seem slightly soft however; is it possible that you missed focus, or is it this super-high quality government supplied monitor I'm using?

No doubt I could have missed focus as it does look slightly soft to me too. For some reason I am not always able to get the eyes solidly in focus--not sure why. The camera indicated an in-focus shot and I did some slight adjustments in LR3, but I didn't think I had over softened it. I'll take a look at that.

Thanks for the post.

 

[tirediron]

...No doubt I could have missed focus as it does look slightly soft to me too. For some reason I am not always able to get the eyes solidly in focus--not sure why...

How do you focus? For this sort of work it's important to make sure that the faces are on or close to the same plane of focus, and that you are using an aperture which will provide sufficient DoF to ensure that both faces are sharp. I use a single focusing point, place it directly on an eye and go from there.

 

[Trever1t]

Good job!

 

[jwbryson1]

...No doubt I could have missed focus as it does look slightly soft to me too. For some reason I am not always able to get the eyes solidly in focus--not sure why...

How do you focus? For this sort of work it's important to make sure that the faces are on or close to the same plane of focus, and that you are using an aperture which will provide sufficient DoF to ensure that both faces are sharp. I use a single focusing point, place it directly on an eye and go from there.

I also did some individual shots of the baby and used single point focusing for those. The shots of the 2 of them were at f/6.3 so I thought I had sufficient DOF, but I could be wrong. I did not use single point on the group shot.

EDIT: On the group shot, when the baby smiles or looks at the camera, it's a rush to get the focus done and the shot snapped! :lmao: My Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 lens autofocuses fairly quickly for this purpose.

 

[RauschPhotography]

Nice work. Only concern is that the child's arm looks kind of lumpy.. I know she's a baby, and there's nothing you can really do without going overboard, but it jumped out to me at first viewing.

 

[kundalini]

I use a single focusing point, place it directly on an eye and go from there.

+1

EDIT: On the group shot, when the baby smiles or looks at the camera, it's a rush to get the focus done and the shot snapped! :lmao: My Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 lens autofocuses fairly quickly for this purpose.

If you've stopped down your lens as you have, focus on your wife's eye and the two of you do not move. Turn AF off and wait for the baby to give you the expressions you're after. A tripod would be helpful for this method also.

 

[jwbryson1]

Nice work. Only concern is that the child's arm looks kind of lumpy.. I know she's a baby, and there's nothing you can really do without going overboard, but it jumped out to me at first viewing.

The lumpy arm is my favorite part! I love those lumpy arms!! :lmao:

 

[jwbryson1]

EDIT: On the group shot, when the baby smiles or looks at the camera, it's a rush to get the focus done and the shot snapped! :lmao: My Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 lens autofocuses fairly quickly for this purpose.

If you've stopped down your lens as you have, focus on your wife's eye and the two of you do not move. Turn AF off and wait for the baby to give you the expressions you're after. A tripod would be helpful for this method also.[/QUOTE]

Yeah, a tripod would have been useful. I have one but was working in such limited space, and I was also moving around a lot trying to get shots from different angles, heights, etc. It just was not conducive to working with a tripod. Thanks for the comment.

 

[Derrel]

Pretty good way to light this. Minor quibble would be that the baby's right eye lacks a catchlight...I might have cheated the light closer to the camera, for about a 30-35 degree angle, which would have given a catchlight in the baby's right eye. Probably only a short distance closer to the camera would have done it. I myself kind of like the black-on-black clothes and background. The image does look soft...maybe it is an image hosting issue???

 

[gsgary]

Black on black can look great but the lighting has to be good and you will need more lights, i shoot black dogs on black

 

[jwbryson1]

Pretty good way to light this. Minor quibble would be that the baby's right eye lacks a catchlight...I might have cheated the light closer to the camera, for about a 30-35 degree angle, which would have given a catchlight in the baby's right eye. Probably only a short distance closer to the camera would have done it. I myself kind of like the black-on-black clothes and background. The image does look soft...maybe it is an image hosting issue???

Thanks. I think the baby's right eye has a catchlight. It's the left eye that has a very small catchlight and you are correct--you cannot see it here because of sizing. It's pretty small but it's there.

I think you may also be on to something on the soft focus. I uploaded this to photobucket and my initial thought was that the posted photo looked a bit softer than the original. It's also on Flickr. What's up with those forums affecting the focus?