My First Photo Shoot..... Please Help

[Tatortech]

I Shot my first photo shoot yesterday and I thought I did well. I then loaded my pictures up on my computer and saw that they looked kinda grainy. I photo shopped acouple of the pictures to try and fix them but I dont think I did that great of a job. Please Critique these photos for me. Please help a newbie get better. Thanks again.

P.S I took approx 75 photos within the hour. If you need to see more just let me know


#3http://i327.photobucket.com/albums/k463/tatortech/Photo%20shoot/TouchUp.jpg

#4http://i327.photobucket.com/albums/k463/tatortech/Photo%20shoot/IMG_5926.jpg

[JuiceBox]

You have a large problem with chopping off feet. A couple of them have no grounding or not enough; watch that.

Exposure looks like it needs some work too; some are a bit flat, some have hotspots. These are things you can easily fix in PP.

I'm not one for portraiture, but these are my nitpicks. Take them with a grain of salt.

[tonydee]

The first one seems to be focused on the near shoulder, leaving her face out of focus. The EXIF data recorded in the picture says your lens was at 17mm f5 1/50s ISO250, that Canon 17-85mm lens can't focus closer than 35cm, but if you really were that close your depth of field would only be about 8cm. To get a depth of field of about 50cm (i.e. just enough to have her near shoulder and face in focus), you'd need to be about a 80cm from her and focusing just past her shoulder, but not as far past as her face. You can't do that easily in auto-focus mode as there's nothing there to point the camera at. It's generally much easier to shoot a little further away and just focus on either the shoulder or face. You can do these kind of calculations at http://dofmaster.com/dofjs.html, though the calculator there makes a few assumptions it's a good start.

BUT, you didn't need to be shooting at 1/50s. At 17mm, the rule of thumb is that a shutter speed of 1/17s should be sharp enough if the subject's not moving appreciably. And you have IS, so you can go even slower than that. What use is that? It means you can afford to use a smaller aperture, like f8 or f11, which will provide you much more depth of field. You may want to reduce the ISO to 100 or 200 too... 250 is not a "100 * power-of-2" mode, and I've read the camera will actually use ISO400 and then adjust recorded exposures. Higher ISO values have more grain.

Re #2: I agree the missing feet is a bit weird, but I think it's a very cool pose... lots of energy and attitude.

Cheers, Tony

[Lonnie]

#1 - you gotta get that eye in focus. Focus/recompose may work, but that up you'd probably be better off manually selecting a focus point and not moving the camera. I'm not real crazy about the up-the-nose view anyway.

#2 - I like the pose and exposure fine. You need to get some fill light on her face by either repositioning your subject or using either a reflector or low-power flash (preferably off camera). Since you did cut off her feet, I'd recrop above her knees.

[Tatortech]

Thanks for the info guys, please keep it comming. The 2nd picture was taking with her on a small building and I was on the ground. I thought it was good but apparently wasn't

[alexchern75]

I have a few issues with the first one.
Pose:
I can almost see nose hairs.
Too short of a lens and a bad angle makes her arms look huge, also her chin
the angle makes it look as if she had a receding hairline or a wig
too soft, unless you were planning on the tattoo being the only sharp thing.

I wont waste much time with the second one, funny pose, no feet, distracting shadows/harsh lighting.

[Tatortech]

Anyone got anymore info

[mpistone]

The first (#3, I guess you removed some), would be better without the selective coloring. It draws my eyes away from an otherwise nice shot to just see the tattoo. I agree the distortion is a bit of an issue, step back a bit next time to keep her proportionate, but I think it's a very nice conversion without the coloring.
The second just doesn't work for me, the pose is odd and slack, and her feet are cut off. I'd like to see others if you have them around?