My Sister Before her dance. Critique Please!

Titus213 wrote in post #16383518
She's a lovely young lady. The third shot would be my preference of the group simply for the pose.

With a 50/1.4 a shutter speed of 1/200 is actually over kill. I would suspect your issue is DOF at f2.2 - you don't have much to play with at that f-stop. And you certainly had room to go a bit higher there.

Thanks!

So your saying 1/100th should be fine for 50mm and f3.X would be better. I buy this, and is my goal next time.

Titus213 wrote in post #16383518
She's a lovely young lady. The third shot would be my preference of the group simply for the pose.

With a 50/1.4 a shutter speed of 1/200 is actually over kill. I would suspect your issue is DOF at f2.2 - you don't have much to play with at that f-stop. And you certainly had room to go a bit higher there.

chubbyone wrote in post #16383527
Thanks!

So your saying 1/100th should be fine for 50mm and f3.X would be better. I buy this, and is my goal next time.

I went back and looked, for the last shot I posted, I'm at 1/200 and f/4 ISO 800. Could ISO 800 cause this softness? I used center focus point with no recompose. I still suspect my Body as front focusing (has shown on more than one lens, two Sigma 50 1.4's included).

General rule of thumb is to use a shutter speed equal to 1/focal length of the lens unless your subject is moving. You should be able to hand hold a 50mm at 1/50 for a posed portrait.

When photographing people you have to focus on the eyes. Move the AF point to the one closest to the eyes and recompose if necessary. But the eyes have to be in focus.

And yes, depending on the camera/sensor, ISO 800 could cause the appearance of softness.