question about blurred foreground while photographing people

I happened to have the camera out the other day while my daughter was messing around so I had to snag a few shots of her. These two are not nearly the best of the lot (in fact I hate them), but they demonstrate something I have a question about. Notice how her hands and arms are out of focus in each, while her face is focused. Personally, in photos of people I don't like foreground blur, I'd rather see nice background bokeh. What do those of you who are experienced at people photography think?

(Both of these shots were with Tamron 17-50 f2.8, focal length 33 mm, f2.8, 1/100 sec, flash bounced off ceiling)

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For what it's worth I tend to agree, IMO both those shots would be better with the subject fully in focus and the bland background out of focus.

I agree, in general I prefer to have the subject be entirely in focus. But there are degrees of this.

For example, I really can't stand having such thin DOF that parts of the person's head are OOF. To me the subject really needs to be reasonably sharp from the tip of the nose back to the ears at a bare minimum.

Beyond that, it's nice but not quite as critical to have things like the hands in the example shots be in forcus as well.

Informationally, if you want more of the subject in focus while still having nice background blur, here is how you do it. Step further back, use longer focal lengths and use smaller apertures. That's not always possible (like inside a house), but when you have control of a shoot this works well.

Hmmm, if you want the hands in the lower shot sharp, but the b/g soft your going to have to do this in post. Not sure if there is a lens that will do that.

I don't have a problem with f/g softness to be honest, as long as there's enough softness in the shot for it to make sense. I use 1.4s and 1.2s etc wide open, so I'm getting the nose soft, eyes sharp, ears very soft most of the time. It looks fine. The thing that looks odd in the lower shot is the crop has dismembered the hands, that for me is a bit of an awkward shot as a result. it's not the same with the upper, that shot looks just fine for fall off.
For instance...
http://www.johnwildgoo​se.com …pi=10000&s=7&p=​2&a=0&at=0

I agree with you completely! A nice background bokeh (bur) for a photo of an individual or portrait is what I personally prefer. I feel that the subject or model in the photograph needs to be the main focus and what the viewers eye is drawn to. Having a bokeh background can really bring out the subjects personal features as well.

What I really liked was the advice that John Wildgoose gave, after looking at his link below I was truly amazed. I think you wouldn't go wrong with taking a few shoots using a 1.4s Wide open if you know what I mean!!

If you're going for the background being blurred, you'll need to move your subject much further away from it. Also, having the hands up and in front like that is always going to have them blurred a bit when shooting close and at large apertures, simply because the depth of field is really narrow.

Shoot a smaller aperture and have her hold her hands closer in if you want to reduce that effect a bit, though.