Looking for help and opinions on some portraits

I've got 4 shots from yesterday that i would like some input on. I don't want anyone else to correct my stuff, just some friendly nudges in the right direction. I'm pretty new to all of this.

To give you an idea of the setup. we used a gray duvet as a backdrop, and bounced a flash off the ceiling in the house. I wasn't behind the camera for most of this, and i know the focus is a little soft on some of the shots. So... Fire away.

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#2 looks a little bit flat, but I like where you are going with the picture.
#3 looks pretty good overall, my only critique would be to center the baby.
#4 I would say to get the full body in the frame, and giving a little more space on the head. I think it's a little to close to the top and thus creating tension.

Overall, I think you're shots are fine. My last suggestion would be to try and PP out the wrinkles in the background, they are a bit distracting.

Keep it up!

These are good in my opinion. The choice of prop in the first one is interesting, I like it. Yes, the first one is slightly out of focus, looks like autofocus hit the backdrop instead.

My main suggestion would be to play around with the metering some. Here's how I arrived at that: They're all shot with the same settings, but the single shot of the baby is much brighter. Once you start adding elements, adults with dark clothes, the baby gets darker. I take this as evidence (and I may be wrong) that the camera is using an average metering that takes the entire scene into account. Also, your flash may be metering the same way. At f2.8, ISO 200, 1/40 sec., there should be a TON of light in the picture. (btw f2.8 is really fast, but harder to nail the focus). You can tell the flash was bounced off the ceiling by the shadows on the adults' faces. The camera's meter read slightly too dark making those shadows darker. I hope this helps any.

As far as subject matter goes, the last one is great.

Bottom one's great... think in the other ones he looks a little too focused towards the camera. Having something more engaging for him - mum! - certainly got a charming reaction. In comparison, the middle two make him look fenced in. It's more dynamic with him on his feet too. I'd say roll around this way and that, engaging him more directly, while taking a couple hundred shots that are a little less posed, and you're sure to get more that capture more of his personality. Cheers, Tony

Lats one works for me...first one babe is OOF, and it does get darker as the adults are involved color wise.

Thanks for the responses.. They've been gentler than i expected considering this is my first shoot like this.

Now with the dark background, is there any way to make the dark shirts pop a little more?

Well #1 and #4 are out of focus. It looks like the backdrop is in focus on them.

#2 and #3 seems to have decent focus but everything is too red - a drawback to Canon flash images with AWB.

#2 has dark eyes for everone.

RedHot wrote in post #4441842
#2 and #3 seems to have decent focus but everything is too red - a drawback to Canon flash images with AWB.

According to Lee Varis, in his excellent book Skin, digital captures have a natural bias towards red/magenta because of the layout of the Bayer sensor and how skin tones fall in place, so it's not necessarily a white balance issue. If you try calibrating your camera to a Gretag Macbeth Color Chart, you'll see that if you calibrate the red channel to the color chart's red, you get beautiful reds but your skin tones go crazy. If you calibrate red to the skin patch (the second patch on the top), your reds become a bit more orange and a little more desaturated. To give you an idea, my normal ACR calibration optimized for reds is -14 Hue, +26 Saturation in the red channel, while optimized for the skin tones, it's +17 Hue, -11 Saturation in the red channel. The skin tone calibration kills any bright reds in the picture, but it makes skin tones look so much better.

Just poking around in Photoshop on picture #3, I'm getting reasonable values for the skin tone for the woman and the baby, and the background is dead neutral gray. There's just a tad too little cyan in the skin (too red, as you said), so if you pull down on the red channel curve the skin tones will look better.

I noticed i was too red, which led me to notice that everyone was. I toned down the overall red, but i probably need to do some touchup on my skin tone.

I'm glad i found a good color for my son and wife though.

And yes, i am a descendant of all over europe.