First Shots in DIY Studio

[gewolke]

Hi Everyone -

Here are a couple of pics. Please let me know if I am on the right track with the lighting.....

First, here is a picture of my setup:

http://www.pbase.com/gewolke/image/72343640.jpg

To try it out, I took this one of my Christmas angel:

http://www.pbase.com/gewolke/image/72343642.jpg

Finally, my son got out of up and I took this one of him:

http://www.pbase.com/gewolke/image/72343647.jpg

any suggestions would be very welcomed!!!!

George

[JMHPhotography]

The Angel looks fine, your son's eyes are pretty soft. I'm suspecting that it's due to the use of such a large aperature since the stitching on his left shoulder appear to be acceptably sharp. Remember that when you use large aperatures, you're DOF is paper thin. You'd be better served to up the ISO to 800 and drop the shutter to gain a couple stops of light to give back to the aperature. You should be able to get F/4 at 1/50 with ISO 800. Of course adding more light to the scene would make things easier. I shoot all of my portraits at f/8-f/11 depending to maximize sharpness through the subject DOF. Try to get your lighting to allow bigger aperatures. If you can't ADD more light, move the light closer. I also think that the light is too low. You want the shadow pattern to point down toward the corner of the mouth.