Candid Makenna

Took a candid photo of a good friend of mines daughter Makenna. Lighting conditions where not ideal, but after a few adjustments in lightroom, I was able to get this. C&C welcome, thanks! The warm WB and desat is intentional, just curious if you think it works.

Exif data

Camera
Canon EOS 7D
Exposure
0.013 sec (1/80)
Aperture
f/1.8
Focal Length
50 mm
ISO Speed
1600

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …rmdriventitan/6​462856395/

white balance is way off and the shot isn't in focus. The question is do you know why?

Razor thin depth of field shooting a f/1.8. The nifty fifty lens isn't known for its focus accuracy. Shooting at 1/80 leaves no margin of error. If she, or your camera moves a millimeter before or during actuation, there goes any sharpness you might have gotten shooting at such a slow shutter speed.

Perfect example of when a bounced speedlight would produce stellar results. Even shooting at 1/80!

dave

Agreed with the above. I understand that you were going for a 'warm' white balance, but instead you seem to have settled on something that looks more 'off' than 'warm'. And the focus is definitely way off. Are you shooting with auto AF or single point AF? Did you focus and recompose? The 50 1.8 is pretty unforgiving. And if you are shooting auto AF it will choose the object closest to you - which I think is why the hand and whatever she's holding is more in focus than her eyes are.

Mike

Seventeen Nineteen wrote in post #13502695
Agreed with the above. I understand that you were going for a 'warm' white balance, but instead you seem to have settled on something that looks more 'off' than 'warm'. And the focus is definitely way off. Are you shooting with auto AF or single point AF? Did you focus and recompose? The 50 1.8 is pretty unforgiving. And if you are shooting auto AF it will choose the object closest to you - which I think is why the hand and whatever she's holding is more in focus than her eyes are.

Mike

If anything, its the shirt collar, definately not the hands. It was not on auto AF, it was single point and right between the eyes if a remember correctly. It wasent a set up shot, just grabbed the camera out of the bag and was in the process of making changes. Plus the amount of noise reduction i think over all is causing the image to be a bit on the softer side. Guess thats the beauty of a candid shot, its not gonna be perfect.

Just my opinion:

Her eyes are too soft/oof.

One thing I would try is to crop off the 2 end pictures on the right.

hope you don't mind but did a quick edit to show what I was thinking.

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dont mind the edit at all, thanks for posting

I edited your photo also. I think the eyes are actually somewhat in focus, but your exposure was pretty off. Underexposed. I played with the levels a bit in lightroom, changed the white balance and brightness, etc., and got rid of all of the heavy shadows on her face. My result:

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Seventeen Nineteen wrote in post #13507655
I edited your photo also. I think the eyes are actually somewhat in focus, but your exposure was pretty off. Underexposed. I played with the levels a bit in lightroom, changed the white balance and brightness, etc., and got rid of all of the heavy shadows on her face. My result:

Now the eyes look much more in focus because you can really see them. Slightly warm too. Hop you don't mind.

Mike

Dont mind the edit at all, definately looks better with a levels adjustment.

She looks creepy in that edit. The original is really cute as is. Just fix the white balance.

Ok. You prefer under exposure and heavy shadows? Interesting. Instead of using such descriptive adjectives, how about showing us your white balance fix? A picture is worth a thousand words, right?

CactusJuice wrote in post #13510583
She looks creepy in that edit. The original is really cute as is. Just fix the white balance.