This is the photo that I took for "smile." It was taken with my Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II lens. I used an f-stop of 1/4 and an aperture of 2.8. The ISO was 800.
Wiggles started getting bored with me at this point. I would have loved to play around with this a bit longer. He kept moving and so I had the darnedest time trying to capture anything. This is a picture of him playing with his robot. I have a few where his robot is more intelligible and his face is framed better; however, they are fuzzy due to his constant moving around. I guess asking little bit to be a model for more than twenty minutes is just too much.
This one was also taken with an 1/4 f-stop, 2.8 aperture and a 800 ISO. I used the same lens for this one as well.
As I've been critiquing these in my head, it sounds harsh. But there are things you need to know so you can practice them, so just remember it's a little bit of red ink on a very long paper.
ReplyDeleteI really like the composition on the "smile" picture and the fact it's not a straightforward smile. I think the subject of the second photo is a little more vague because the robot is mostly cropped out (I wouldn't have known what it was without reading the paragraph). As a viewer, my eyes follow where Mr T's are looking, but not quite enough of them show to lead me anywhere, so I'm not really getting a boy/robot interaction.
Both of these photos have a real problem, which I believe was probably cause by shooting in Aperture priority mode in low light. Both of these pictures are blurry. Sharp focus is the one thing you can't even try to fake in post-processing, so you have to do it right, in camera.
In aperture priority mode, you have set the aperture (also referred to as f-stop) as 2.8. The camera then adjusts the exposure (shutter speed)and the ISO to create what it estimates is a properly exposed image. In this case you had set the aperture as 2.8, so with little light to work with, it pushes its ISO to 800 (as high as it will go on auto. You can manually set it to 1600) but it was working with so little light that it had to have a slow shutter speed, 1/4s. That's far too long for a sharp picture. Even with a tripod it would still not be sharp because a living subject can't hold perfectly still.
The rule of thumb for shutter speed and focus: In order to prevent "camera shake", your shutter speed needs to be twice the focal length. For example, your lens is 50mm, so you minumum shutter speed is 1/100. I know you can push that to 1/50 or 1/60 with practice and steady hands, but the 1/100s will have more of your pictures turn out.
So now compare 1/100 to your actual shutter speed of 1/4s (25x times slower, way too long to get a sharp picture.)
With the limitation of your camera, you really needed to get more light into this scene before you could have a great picture. If you were really trying to get it though, you could open up your aperture to 1.8, manually put your ISO to 1600, and hold your breath as you depress the shutter release.
I love Av Mode, but you have to keep on eye on your shutter speed while you use it. And the lower shutter speeds (like 1/60s) won't work for a young child as the subject most of the time, because they never stop moving. The rule of thumb I gave you was just for preventing camera shake (visible motion of the camera) not motion blur (blurred movement from the subject.)
(Now, this is a rant that really should be covered in red ink. My grammar, structure, and use of commas is terrible.)
Message me with any questions.
Kara
Fun pictures of T! I agree with Kara, you need more light. How do I know this? Because I have pictures on my blog with the exact same problem!
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