Input for a reshoot

I told my wife i want to reshoot a pic of my daughter for our christmas card tommorrow night cause i dont like my desk in the corner and my wife thinks she can get a better smile from my daughter. I only have the kit lens to use (long story). So what do you think?

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Yes i can pull her farther away from the tree. good idea!


I do have other options But alot harder to set up in my little house. I recieved a rarely used projector screen at work i want to try. black back, white front. i was thinking if i could light the backdrop projector screen red and/or green and throw a string of lights to the kid and let her go nuts.

My T3i would have to dispense sedatives for those painfully slow exposures!

I convinced my wife to allow me to use my 50 1.4 (a heavily argued xmas gift that she is making me wrap up and open it xmas eve morning) and to have some fun tom night taking lots of pics.

First off, beautiful subject you have there. Id use your 50 1.4 at say... 2.0-2.8 Pull her away from the tree like the above poster mentioned. Since youre now at much wider apeture, youll be able to lower your ISO and raise your shutter speed. Just a curious question, what made you choose F8 for this shot?

Also, you can drive to meet me and borrow a flash and umbrella setup.

thanks for the input and offer jak. I find the kit lens to be sharper at f8. but doesnt matter now that my wife is letting me use the 50 early.

I want my wife to relize that i need more stuff so im going to have to decline on using your flash. thanks though!

Yeah, beg and suckup until she lets you get an external flash. Regardless of your lens, the internal flash gives you bad light from a bad direction. At the least you need a flash you can bounce.

I decided on trying to find a used 550ex. with some universal giftcards i get from christmas, im going to try to find one.

So out of about 20 pics of a kid that was tired of sitting there, this is what we ended up with.

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That looks great!

You should sell that 1.4x TC and get a flash, much more useful. I think that last shot is pretty good, but 1/20 on 50mm is far too slow for a portrait, especially of kids.

I agree but it looks pretty sharp. The only thing Id do is put a bit of fill light in there on her face. Use the exposure compensation on the built in flash and turn it down until its just lifting the shadows on her face a bit. Even without that, its adorable and a great shot.

This is my final edit. ill use this one. i am saving up for a flash. i need to keep the 1.4 for birds. I wish i had PS for better PP but that will come after the flash.

Id try to brighten it up a bit. If youd like, I can try something with the original size JPEG or better yet, raw file.

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ill put up a fresh convert jpeg (original) on my flicker for ya. I see what you mean. I think a warmer color would look better though to match the tree lights.

Good job.
Hint: B&H is advertising the 580 EX II for $399. Offer good through Jan 7th.
If I remember correctly, I paid $370 about 2 years ago for mine. It has gone up considerably since then.