Clarity with an XTi - Portrait of my dog

I see great great clear clean pictures on here. How the heck do I get those on my xti? I have the kit lens. When I get the Canon 50 mm 1.8, is it going to make a big difference? I shot this at iso 100 f 6.3 and 1/60. It's pretty clean, but his nose is out of focus. Thoughts?

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I am kind of guessing here but I see that your ss is pretty low here. That could cause the blur that you are seeing.. But it almost looks like you have a very shallow dof which would also be the cause of the eyes being sharper then the nose..

The Kit lens is very slow and not great for low light. Your AP can only go so low with this one. I think 4.0 being the lowest. So that would cause your ss to also be slow..

Try and get a photo outside with more light. Don't use the flash unless you really need to and get the same kind of shot.. I bet your photo will look much better..

However I think this is a really nice photo and your dog is just to cute.. Thanks for sharing.

its okay that the nose is a tad bit out of focus, isnt terribly unusual for f/6.3.

The kit lens is pretty well known for not being an incredibly sharp or saturated lens, but every now and then you can pop out a nice image with it. I did notice a bit of an upgrade in image quality once I got my first 50 1.8, but it still needs a bit of contrast and saturation in post processing.

To answer your question, there's nothing in particular that youre doing 'wrong', but there are a few things that can be improved here and there. You can bump up the saturation and contrast (along with several other things) in your camera under your custom parameters, that might help a tad. Another thing, explore your custom white balance settings (its very quick and easy to custom white balance, and it can make a world of difference).

All of this is of course assuming you shoot JPG, if you experiment with RAW, you can really broaden your horizons in post processing.

Hope this helps...
~Jon

Hey thanks a lot for the info! I really appreciate it!I'll give that a try tomorrow. I really haven't done too much outside shooting yet, but I look forward to it.

OH yeah, I JUST learned the world of RAW and it's my new best friend! If you can fix everything in RAW, what's the point of getting white balance perfectly on? I'm getting really discouraged with white balance right now. Something I think looks good on my lcd, I get on the computer and it looks horrible. I can't be messin around with this if I'm shooting babies.

Hello again. two things to remember here. If you are shooting in Raw you probably will have to run a light USM.. When shooting in jpeg the camera will do a little sharpening on it's own but in raw it is common to have a little softness to your photo..

The 2nd thing I want to talk about.. The main goal that you should set for yourself is to get a perfect photo sooc.. Keep your editing and minimal as possible.. unless you are wanting to enhance it.. Try and get into this mindset because it will save you a lot of grief later..

I would use the CWB unless you know for a fact that your lighting is going to change often. Otherwise use AWB..

Good luck to you and keep on practicing.

Thanks a lot!! What is ACR in Bridge? How do I change these saturation and such under my camera parameters? Oh man, so much to learn! Anyone have a sticky topic on this they can point me to?

Just to add....as far as white balance...if you're shooting RAW, it doesn't really matter if you get it right in camera or not since it can be easily changed with no ill effects. The only downside is that it may cost you a bit more time.

jra - thanks I'm really glad someone finally sad that, now I don't feel so bad about adjusting my horrible photos :P

I agree with the others with the current lens limitations. You can work with it though, by adjusting the stop to saturate a little more. I noticed the black background - probably because the flash is overpowering the scene. Try reducing flash intensity and lengthening the shutter duration. This will bring up the background a little and at the same time make the flash a little less noticable resulting in a more natural look. Feel free to go into Manual mode and try varying combinations - you're not wasting film so go for it!

HeatherSik wrote in post #5248284
Hello again. two things to remember here. If you are shooting in Raw you probably will have to run a light USM.. When shooting in jpeg the camera will do a little sharpening on it's own but in raw it is common to have a little softness to your photo..

The 2nd thing I want to talk about.. The main goal that you should set for yourself is to get a perfect photo sooc.. Keep your editing and minimal as possible.. unless you are wanting to enhance it.. Try and get into this mindset because it will save you a lot of grief later..

I would use the CWB unless you know for a fact that your lighting is going to change often. Otherwise use AWB..

Good luck to you and keep on practicing.

what is USM and what is sooc, both mentioned above in Heather's reply....thanks to anyone that can answer this...I've got the rest of 'em...

Heathermarie..Hey, just wanted to drop by and say Hi...I've only shot in RAW twice now...and loved it as well, but found it took up my card so fast..so just be aware of that if you're not already.....

USM - Unsharp Mask - a filter in Photoshop
sooc - straight out of the camera?

ACR - Adobe Camera Raw

And I disagree, auto white balance very seldom gets it right. If you can use a custom white balance. If not you may be better selecting a fixed white balance - like daylight - and correcting from there in ACR.

It looks like you have some whiskers in real sharp focus there. I've used the kit lens a bit and find that once you get over f6.3 your image quality goes up a bit.

Increase your ISO to 200 or even 400. It will allow a higher shutter speed at higher f-stop.

And don't forget your subject may move some too.

Titus213 wrote in post #5249852
USM - Unsharp Mask - a filter in Photoshop
sooc - straight out of the camera?

ACR - Adobe Camera Raw

And I disagree, auto white balance very seldom gets it right. If you can use a custom white balance. If not you may be better selecting a fixed white balance - like daylight - and correcting from there in ACR.

It looks like you have some whiskers in real sharp focus there. I've used the kit lens a bit and find that once you get over f6.3 your image quality goes up a bit.

Increase your ISO to 200 or even 400. It will allow a higher shutter speed at higher f-stop.

And don't forget your subject may move some too.

thank you Titus

Small dog, close up - you're going to have a shallow depth of field no matter what. Try to get the eyes sharp and the rest is less important.

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