Alpin & Puppy

C&C Welcome

Pros: cute girl, cute dog

Cons: missed focus, blown red channel, distracting background


You're close... but you need to shoot more frames to get the keeper. Unfortunately with the long lens and wide aperture, you blew out the focus so much that only the forearm is sharp but as you go back to their eyes, both are soft.

The shot is a good idea that didn't quite get there. Next time, lose the leash I think, and crop in to more of a head and shoulders shot. You could've then eliminated the bright paper white in the background as well. Next time try focusing on the eyes and then recomposing or choosing an offcenter focus point to make sure the faces are sharp.

Also, what RAW converter are you using? The older Adobe ACRs had particular trouble with the red channel, which is what it looks like here. Either that or your JPG setting is too high on the saturation. Oh yea and it is about 1/3 to 1/2 stop underexposed but that is easily brought up in post.

Great stuff, 'Hoff. I didn't really get any chance to compose the shot, I was basically walking through my parking lot, saw a cute girl with the puppy, asked the mom if I could take a photo and took a few.

Focus - it was on autofocus... still getting used to the manual.

As for RAW converter.. bear with me. I shot using a high .jpg and post-processing in PS 7. What problems would shooting in high .jpg cause?

Thanks

ameybrook wrote in post #6705461
Great stuff, 'Hoff. I didn't really get any chance to compose the shot, I was basically walking through my parking lot, saw a cute girl with the puppy, asked the mom if I could take a photo and took a few.

Focus - it was on autofocus... still getting used to the manual.

As for RAW converter.. bear with me. I shot using a high .jpg and post-processing in PS 7. What problems would shooting in high .jpg cause?

Thanks

Gotcha. Makes more sense now as a candid... these shots are easier to nail if you have the time to shoot a few dozen... kids and puppies are very unpredictable and rarely stand still and in the same plane of focus for long.

re: JPG

When you shoot JPG and let the camera process the RAW file into a JPG, you're letting it do some of the decision making. One of those decisions is how much saturation to give each color... and it is evident here that the JPG setting you chose is blowing out the reds. Look at the detail in her dress and how there are patches of color that are nothing but pure red.

If you instead shot in RAW format, and then processed the photo into a JPG afterwards, you'd have the ability to choose the saturation and NOT blow out the reds. As it is now, the JPG does not have any detail for you to recover.

btw, don't think I'm being too critical, I just like to offer something to think about in the future

This is the stronger crop I'd look for..

TheHoff wrote in post #6705482
btw, don't think I'm being too critical, I just like to offer something to think about in the future

Nope. I appreciate the comments. I post in sports and get nothing!

the cropped version looks better in my opinion and makes cloning out the leash easier.. lol cute pic!

Great picture and seeing the effect of the crop is an interesting example of the impact of someone with a good eye (which is something I don't have).