1st Post.... B&W

[onbypass]

Hello everybody,

This is my first attempt of a portrait with a new Nikon D5000. It was a pretty windy and overcast day, and I was using my 55-200mm lens. The original was cropped, and I thought it looked better in B&W.

Any comments or suggestions are appreciated!!

Thanks!!
Mark

From 2010-01-24

(For a larger image.... click on the "date - 2010-01-24", and that will bring up picassaweb, and then you can click again for a larger picture. For some reason, clicking on the photo itself, gives a bad link.)

Camera: NIKON CORPORATION
Model: NIKON D5000
ISO: 400
Exposure: 1/2000 sec
Aperture: 5.6
Focal Length: 200mm
Flash Used: No

[WooD]

I'm wondering why you chose those camera settings?

For the conditions you were shooting in I think you got a nice shot. If you had used a little flash to get some light on her eyes it would have been nicer.

[onbypass]

Thank you!! I was fairly far from her, and I was trying to get a shallow DOF. Since it was still fairly bright, I probably should have used ISO 200 instead of 400, which would have slowed down my shutter speed a little. Do you think that would have made any difference? Since I was beyond the flash range, I don't know that it would have given her eyes any additional light. I think that what I am learning, it that I needed to be closer...even with the telephoto lens.
THANKS AGAIN!!!

[leviathan]

Great shot. Nice exposure. Nice composition. Nice contrast. Perhaps a little more bokeh behind the subject would be nice to help the subject "pop" a little more.

[Benji]

You said you wanted to get great bokeh so you used the 200mm setting. You sacrificed getting a well lit image so you could get a blurry background. Do you think her mother will look at the image and say wow what a nice blurry background?

When shooting portraits ALWAYS do whatever is needed to get it lit properly first. EVERYTHING else is secondary to good lighting. You can easily fix just about everything post capture except the lighting. In this image she has raccoon eyes. A fill flash would have brightened her eyes up, but using a long telephoto lens renders most d/c powered flash units ineffective. Valuable lesson learned.

Benji

P.S. She is slumped over. Not good.

[onbypass]

Thanks for the suggestions.

Actually, it was somebody else who suggested the bokeh (very good suggestion.

I definitely learned that I needed to get a little closer.

In reality, it was a great candid that turned into a good portrait. I agree that if I was closer, a little flash would help.

Thanks to everybody for the advice and suggestions.

[DCBarner]

I like the amount of scenery around the subject, but you didn't need to be that far away. I think a 50mm or something with much less zoom would have been better. As for the ISO thing, 200 may have sharpened the image a little more. That in combination with a shorter lens may have helped this one out.

Honestly, I think the mom will love the picture just because her daughter's in it.

Dane