6 month shoot

This is my first time posting an image, I took some pics of our 6 month old. Please comment, I'm a noob at this, we didn't have any real props, so can you give me any pointers or suggestions.

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I know it has some noise in the shadows, but it isn't too bad at realistic photo size. Any comments or suggestions? Thanks in advance.

What were your settings? It looks like the focus fell on the baby's fingers. I think some eye contact would help this shot a lot.

Thank you for your reply. I'm sorry for the delay, I was at work and didn't have the details with me. It was shot with a T1i, and a Sigma 17-70 2.8 OS. In shot settings were: 1/20th at f3.5 with iso 800. I was using the light from my french doors to light the scene. Here is another one with my son looking at the camera, unfortunately his feet are out of focus.

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The whole baby is out of focus on both of these. The main reason is your SS it shouldn't fall below 2x the focal length or for simplicity just try to not go below 125. Most likely this is from shake because of the SS. I would bump your f-stop a little more so you can do the same with your SS.

Thanks, I'll try to increase the shutter speed, unfortunately, at the time, I couldn't do much with the available light and shot it about as fast as AV would let me, my aperture was wide open. Changing to TV may have let me speed it up a little at the expense of exposure, I'm guessing...

I appreciate the advice.

You would need to shoot manual. You have 3 options to increase light [aside from moving the baby] increase your shutter speed, bump up your f-stop or increase your ISO. You are already at 800 ISO so to avoid too much noise and your SS is already WAY WAY TOO LOW so I would look to your f-stop. Although increasing your f-stop is going to reduce your DOF but again if [for this example] you are not going to move the baby it's probably your only option. Because you will never be able to get a shot that is not soft with that SS or anything below 100-125 unless your using a tri-pod or you have extremely steady hands.

Thanks Jeni, I was using a tripod, it's certainly not the best but I've got to start somewhere. Do you think the composition was OK? I don't have much to work with other than a fairly patient baby boy

See even with a tripod it's got shake.

If that shot was sharp I would probably darken the blacks a bit, do some burning on the blanket and either add some black negative space above and do a portrait crop using the ROT or a landscape just below the top of his head to right before the top of his toes so his eye's follow the ROT. You always want to try not to go too tight in camera and lock yourself into one crop or worse yet one image size. I mean you can always PS your way out of in-camera crops but that's a lot of time that could be avoided, KWIM?

Not sure I follow the "burning" part, but most of everything else, I'm with you. I really don't do a lot of post processing, I'm still a noob at all of this. I'm just trying to get past taking snapshots. Really thanks though, I need to learn all I can.

burning is a tool in PS that will help turn the blanket black, help with shadowing where you want it, vignetting, etc....it's the opposite of dodging which brightens