Testing out my new Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II

Very nice puppies. Looks good to me. I'm on my laptop so it's not definitive though.

I think you should have stopped the aperture down a bit. The focus seems to be a bit off on both their eyes. If you used a smaller aperture, then you would have had more in focus.

the aperture was 1.8

oscarinabox wrote in post #6807881
the aperture was 1.8

That's with the aperture "wide open" (maximum opening). What juicebox is saying is that you should have stopped it down some (smaller opening) in order to get more in focus, very important here since the subjects are at different distances to your camera. For example you can clearly see the nose on the pup on the right is out of focus.

I gotta agree with Juice and fullcity here. Looking at the pup on the right, the eyes are almost in an acceptable focus (close enough to sharpen at least) but when you look at the pup on the left, the eyes are quite soft and oof. Animal pictures are like people pictures...the eyes should ALWAYS be in focus and if there are multiple subjects then everyone's eyes need to be in focus.

I tried to look at the EXIF data on the image but it appears to be missing so it's a bit hard to make a specific suggestion here but I'd have to go with Juice's initial assessment and would have stopped down a bit. Instead of f/1.8 (which creates a VERY shallow DOF), I probably would have shot this at around f/5.6 (or smaller). You would probably need to either bump up the ISO or simply add more light to make sure the shutter speed stays up but that would give you enough DOF for both sets of eyes to be in focus. Another option might have simply been to back up a bit...DOF increases as the distance to the subject increases (and get's shallower as you move closer to the subject).

If I may make a comment...I have one of those nifty fifties as well and when I first got it, I have to admit that it was very tempting to walk around shooting everything wide open at f/1.8. The thing that I quickly discovered was that f/1.8 does produce a VERY shallow DOF and really isn't appropriate for most subjects under most conditions. I'm sure you were just "playing with the new lens" here to see what all you can do with it...and that is a good thing, just keep this in mind as you go. In most cases, it's usually better to just add more light (or bump the ISO) and shoot at an aperture that's more appropriate to the subject.

I won't go into the compositional aspects of the image as I don't think that was the point of this exercise but I would add that it looks like your white balance may be a bit off as well. Looks like it was shoot under incandescent lighting...just a tich too yellow. If this was shot in RAW, might be worth correcting.

Cute pups by the way...I love beagles .

Just my $.02 worth,
Jim

Okay, I'm looking at it on my calibrated monitor now.

The white balance looks perfect to me. As does the exposure. The puppy on the left is a little out of focus. I'll bet you were using the lens wide open because of low light.

Lots of things to correct next time, but lots to admire in this photo as is.

Study up on aperture, depth of field, ISO and composition.

thanks for the suggestions !

Love the one on the right!