A stop along the way

Went for a bike ride with kids last weekend and in 20 min the weather changed from cool & sunny to outright cold, so we stopped at the local Starbucks for a cup of hot caramel steamer.

Practicing my available light portrait skills. The lens is old Minolta MD 35-70/3.5 Macro, which was one of the best early zooms back in the late 70s - early 80s, good enough that it was produced under Leica Vario Elmar name.

Both shots done in available light (dim), at f3.5 or 4, the 2nd one (no coffee cup) is handheld at 1/20 which is about the best I can do without OSS & not get a noticeable blur.

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/ns7a​7z

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/np8D​CM

rule of thirds needs to be applied... eyeballs are dead center

crop out just about everything behind the young man, adds nothing to the image

I'd agree. As I raised the camera, I'd have switched to a focus point at the right side. Don't know if you can do that with your current kit.

In my mind the shots are somewhat right-centered, but may be not enough. This is a manual focus lens so the focusing point is irrelevant, purely the matter of composition.

Tried this quick & dirty edit in Aviary:

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/nqCy​Lt

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/nqVe​9n

These look ok for what they are. Do you focus by magnifying a spot on the LCD display? Not very easy on moving subjects right?

No, I use focus peaking, it doesn't take as long as magnification and is very precise. I don't use LCD much, my camera has an electronic viewfinder. It's WYSIWYG, so all adjustments are immediately visible before taking the shot. For moving subjects I have modern lenses, although there are ways to use manual, especially if I prefocus on a spot. Btw you can use peaking with Canon via Magic Lantern, except that you must use Lv for that.
I really love my Minolta MDs, especially this one. These old lenses render portraits in a very special way, a combination of soft glow on skin and very sharp resolution. Plus they are fun to use I am going to start hunting for some old L lenses (Fd / FDn), although due to mirrorless getting more and more popular the prices are quite a bit up. That's a big part of why I went with Minolta - they produced some first class lenses but aren't as well known today and are pretty cheap, this particular lens cost me $45 and I got some real gems for $5 - $20. A cheap way to try different lenses with different rendering and character, which cost pretty penny back in the day and are still excellent optically. My entire manual lens collection (2 x Minolta 50/1.7, 70-210/4, 35-70/3.5, Kiron 28/2 and 80-200/4.5, and Pentax 135/2.8) cost me about $120 total. About the only lens I can't replace is EF85/1.8, there's simply nothing available for Sony E-mount that combines it's super fast focusing with superb IQ, all at $320. Plenty of good IQ choices, but no fast focusing 85s in that price range that I know of. Sony's own 85/2.8 is good optically but with slower aperture and anemic focusing speed, unfortunately.

I'd warm them up--the right side of the boy's face is definitely bluish.