Rare moment of willingness

[celtex]

Grabbed a rare shot of daughter in garden while waiting to go out. Tried the tamron 70 to 300 again at about 140 mm, f4.5, 1/200th pop up flash. Looks softer on here than on my laptop

[tesarver]

Re: Rare moment of willingness

I like the composition, the lighting w/flash is spot on and the OOF background is perfect. I like the soft look in the eyes, however it looks like the focus was on the shoulder. But still this is definitely a keeper shot.

Tom

[celtex]

Re: Rare moment of willingness

Thanks Tom,

I have been disappointed with a lot of my shots, not being very sharp, does not seem to matter what lens I use either. I know when an image looks sharp, so I don't think it is my eyes. And I have had some very sharp images so I know it is possible, and therefore not an issue with the camera.

In this case though you are correct, I went back and checked the af point - for some reason I broke my habit (of only using the centre af point) and it was on auto. The points used seemed to have been the shoulder, the lips and parts of the hair. - Lesson learned.

But this also brings another point, some of the shots I have taken, I use centre af point only, but this then necessitates focus/recompose (which I know a lot of photographers advocate anyway) I do this a lot, sometimes with good results.

Problem is in DPP, when you check the data, the AF point will show its position after the recomposing, so if I focus on eyes (beep and green light) but then lower the camera (while keeping the shutter half pressed) to get a better composition, I cant see after the event where I focused to check for error on my part. Am I doing anything wrong in this?

Cheers

Ian

[Muscat]

Re: Rare moment of willingness

Ian, nice portrait and a good keeper.

With regard to the soft focus issue I was wondering if you have tried any static tests with the lens, I am making the assumption here that it is normally with this one lens, by putting the camera on a tripod and using the different af settings to take the same shot and then using a manual focus to see what you get. It may be that you need to do a microadjust to help improve the pairing of camera / lens to get a better focus. If I have missed the point then sorry for the ramblings

[celtex]

Re: Rare moment of willingness

Thanks Muscat, I might give that a try, here was a quick grab really, we (my daughter and I) were ready to go out just waiting on the other half and as my daughter was actually allowing me to take a shot or two (happens less frequently than Hally's Commet) I had no time to set up a tripod or fiddle with settings too much

Cheers

Ian

[Stan]

Re: Rare moment of willingness

Although it is a little soft its still a nice portrait and would have been a cracker with sharp eyes.

You always need to take control of the focus point and never let the camera make the decision. I am lucky with the 7D in having 19 different focus point to choose from, so 90 % of the time I can choose a focus point which is over the area i want to focus on. Even with those cameras such as yours with only the 9 points, I would have thought one would be close enough even if it meant perhaps stepping back a little / changing the zoom or cropping on pp

Stan

[paul linton]

Re: Rare moment of willingness

As members have said this does look a little soft which is a real shame as this is a lovely portrait, Tom points out the shoulder is the sharpest part of the image.you must give this another go, if those eyes were sharp this would be a perfect portrait.

Paul

[tesarver]

Re: Rare moment of willingness

Hi Ian,

Yhis might be where Backbutton focus comes into play. Use the backbutton to set focus then when you recompose, the shutter button is not the issue. I you probably know this, but the older I get the more I need to follow the rule Focal Length = Shutter Speed. I'm not as steady as I once was, or would like to think I am

Tom

[Trevoreast]

Re: Rare moment of willingness

Let me start by saying it's a lovely pic of a pretty young lady.

When we start pixel peeping with a view to finding faults, we will invariably find. :-)
Put this on facebook and people will say "wow great pic!".

Might be where Backbutton focus comes into play

Yes Tom, it's one of the key uses of BBF imho.

Ian I notice this image shot at ISO 1250 and is noiseless, have you used NR software at all ?

Trev

[celtex]

Re: Rare moment of willingness

Let me start by saying it's a lovely pic of a pretty young lady.

When we start pixel peeping with a view to finding faults, we will invariably find. :-)
Put this on facebook and people will say "wow great pic!".


Yes Tom, it's one of the key uses of BBF imho.

Ian I notice this image shot at ISO 1250 and is noiseless, have you used NR software at all ?

Trev

Hi Trev, thanks for the comments. I just went back tot he EXIF to check and I can see that I had the camera on night scene - I normally only use AV and Manual (sometimes TV) now but I just wanted to try out the night scene setting on a previous shot, got distracted and forgot to return the camera to my normal setting, hence the auto iso and the iso of 1250.

as for the noiseless??

I have not done anything, I never use the noise reduction in DPP - all I do is play with contrast, maybe sharpness, then I open in picasa or something else and tweak a bit.

here is the exif

I think I need to try out BBF as suggested - thanks again


File Name Rhianna Portraits_2012_09_06_2167.CR2
Camera Model Canon EOS 600D
Firmware Firmware Version 1.0.1
Shooting Date/Time 06/09/2012 19:13:31
Author Ian Taylor
Copyright Notice (c)Ian Taylor Photography
Owner's Name
Shooting Mode Night Scene
Lighting or Scene Default setting
Ambience Standard setting
Tv( Shutter Speed ) 1/200
Av( Aperture Value ) 4.5
Metering Mode Evaluative Metering
Exposure Compensation 0
ISO Speed 1250
Auto ISO Speed ON
Lens 70-300mm
Focal Length 141.0mm
Image Size 5184x3456
Image Quality RAW
Flash Off
FE lock OFF
White Balance Mode Auto
AF Mode One-Shot AF
AF area select mode Automatic selection
Picture Style Auto
Sharpness 3
Contrast 0
Saturation 0
Color tone 0
Color Space sRGB
Long exposure noise reduction 0:Off
High ISO speed noise reduction 0:Standard
Highlight tone priority 0:Disable
Auto Lighting Optimizer Standard
Peripheral illumination correction Enable
Dust Delete Data No
File Size 24476KB
Drive Mode Single shooting
Live View Shooting OFF
Camera Body No. 023011007794
Comment

[Trevoreast]

Re: Rare moment of willingness

as for the noiseless??

600D is capable of impressive clean images @ ISO 1250 even allowing for reduction ans web display at 800px, that's all I'm saying :-)

In night mode the camera may have auto focussed on the shoulder because it was closest.
I'm not sure if you can pick your own focus point in night scene mode.

Trev

[pelliott1954]

Re: Rare moment of willingness

Could it be the Auto Selection setting, as per the Exif, for the AF point which has made the camera select the nearest focus point, i.e. the shoulder?

Regards Paul

[Hereford_EOS]

Re: Rare moment of willingness

Ian a lovely image of your daughter Rhianna.
Some simple post processing in DPP will sharpen this image.

[Treff]

Re: Rare moment of willingness

Very nice portrait. A little soft, Looking at the overall image I think your main problem is camera shake and a little front focused. I would when using that lens never drop below a 500th. I know that sounds a lot but a think the quality of your pics will improve with a higher shutter speed.
Again nice pic and lovely model. Every time I get the camera out now I get large sighs from the Grand Kids. I have found that if you tie them down with clear cellotape it does not show on the pics. (just kidding)
Cheer
Treff

[Nathaniel]

Re: Rare moment of willingness

Ian! Cheer up. I like this photo quite a lot as the softness does add to the niceness of the image. Too much sharpness or details makes the image look very harsh IMHO.