Dog Portrait

[lerabu]

During the Easter weekend I finally had the time to take my camera out after long weeks of relentless work!

I tried to take a portrait shot of my in-laws dog, a very restless and nervous beast! I felt lucky I managed to get this shot.

I am looking for your feedback on composition and DOF (I was wide open in order to have the seperation from the background and high shutter speed which meant that the nose is a bit OOF but I hope I managed to get the eyes nice and in focus I Am looking forward to your comments!

EXIF
Camera Nikon D80
Exposure 1/2500 sec
Aperture f/1.8
Focal Length 50 mm
ISO Speed 125
Exposure Bias -2/3 EV
Flash No Flash
Aperture Priority

[karen_s]

Awe, what a cute little dog! He/she is quite a little poser.

Overall, I think you did very well. The background is nicely blurred and the subject of your photo is clear. You also got a nice little head tilt. My dogs still don't understand the head tilt command.

There are a couple things I see that I think might help improve this type of image ...

1. Try to get enough DOF to get both eyes in focus. When the dogs head is turned, the eyes fall onto different planes and at f 1.8, one eye can fall out of focus quite easily. Try stopping down (I think that's the proper term for narrowing the aperture) a few stops from the widest and see how that works. Also, many lenses are a bit soft at their widest. All of mine are. I tend to stop down 2-3 stops from the widest to get the maximum sharpness. When taking photos of my dogs, I go up even more to get a bit deeper DOF if I want a sharp nose too. (Some insist on in-focus noses too but I am not so particular about those, just the eyes.)

2. It's looks a bit dark, especially in the eyes. I can see some nice catchlights there to work with and I think a bit of lightening overall and "dodging" (lightening) on the eyes would really bring him to life.( If you have Lightroom or Photoshop or any software with a dodge tool, this is quite simple.)

That's about it. Keep experimenting with the aperture and you will soon know what works best for the kind of results you want.

[lerabu]

Karen,

Thanks for the constructive feedback! If only she was as cute and cooperative as she seems to be in this shot! She's a mix between a cocker spaniel and a hunting breed and can be quite a handful at times! Never seems to tire!

For the eyes I agree that 1.8 is a bit extreme and I could have stopped it down to 2.5 maybe to get more in focus. It's a new lens and I am still exploring the possibilities with the low/wide apertures and still have to experiment a bit more to know off the bat what type of aperture I need! My first lens didn't go below 5 at 50mm and this wasn't much of an issue but I didin't have such nice blur in the background.

It is true I could do a bit of work in PP, I did this rather fast in Lightroom and exported it. I didn't know Lightroom had a Dodge colour command I will have to find it!

Thanks again!

[karen_s]

Well, you made it look like she was cooperating so great job there!

Keep experimenting. I'm still learning how to get the best out of my lenses and I've had all of them over a year, some two.

Lightroom 3 (I think it was added in version 2) has a dodge and burn tool but it looks like a brush. It can be found in the row with the crop tool, spot tool, red eye, it should be the last tool on the right and under the Histogram in the develop module. You can do several things with it and I use it quite often to lighten and sharpen eyes.