Got my 450D yesterday, played today!

Hi all! I'm a newbie to your site - I've been lurking for a couple days and love it so far. I have just started in the world of DSLRs (have used film SLRs in the past). I've spent the bulk of this afternoon figuring out RAW conversion, and here's my first finished shot. What do you think?

Canon 450D
50mm F2.5
ISO 200
1/320 @ f3.5

Oops, maybe this should be in the kids & family section...still learning my way around here

Congrats on the purchase & Welcome to POTN. Love the eyes in the photo

Thanks!

I love how natural the shot looks .. great job! Carla

Thanks Carla!

Nice shot... only suggestion is a touch smaller aperture for a touch more depth of field... there's a softness at the sides of his head that I find distracting, but that's pretty subjective. I'm not entirely at peace with the lighting overall... Robert Lay's the expert on that... he might comment, but it's also worth finding one of his posts (there'll be a dozen spread across the threads on the 1st page) and reading the "Quality of Light" document linked from his signature....

Re here vs family forum: your picture is entirely welcome here, but by posting in here you are implicitly inviting criticism, effectively saying "what did I do wrong and how could I do better?". Some criticism can be pretty harsh. It's contributed by a huge range of people with diverse levels and areas of experience and knowledge, and can be contradictory, so it's important to filter out what rings true for you and use it as a basis for experimentation while developing your own eye, insights and style.

Cheers, Tony

i like the eyes too but the more i look at it the more creepy it looks. no offense

I think as Tony says - people will be harsh and give different and conflicting views. My comments are as a beginner so take them with caution. I think the picture is generally good but but this is what I would change if I could:

1. Depth of field as mentioned above.

2. A fraction more space above the top of the head on the crop.

3. The hair! on my monitor there is a patch at the top front that looks distracting from two perspectives. Firstly a mesh of cris cross hair strands that look very prominent (almost white). Could these have been caused by over sharpening in PP? Also that whole patch of hair in that area looks almost grey and from an older person.

4. Setting aside also changing aperture for increasing the depth of field; based on the data that you posted, I would have knocked my ISO down to 100 by going a stop slower on shutter speed thereby getting the least possible noise/grain.

5. I keep wanting to straighten the blue top, but perhaps that adds to the character of the image - I don't know.

I think it is a great first post.

I would probly suggest putting your subject in front of a more interesting background, instead of just the white wall, shoot in from if something with a little color.

and maybe dont crop so close to the head, give a little more space around the head.

but it is a very nice shot, well done.

Thanks for all the input everyone! I don't mind honest feedback, good or bad, to help me learn my way around this.

I will increase aperture when I go take more shots today. I did notice the shirt being crooked and his hair being all over the place - I was trying to snap these pictures while he was on the move on a windy day, so I couldn't do too much about that

About the lighting - does it look flat? In trying to keep the post processing to a minimum, did I leave his skin tone too cool or not increase the contrast enough?

Also, I'm not sure what caused the hair on top of his head to look like that, I tried to keep the PP to a minimum, but like I said, yesterday was my first try so I still have a LOT to learn.

Thanks again for all the help, it's appreciated!