Icecream boy

[albumelf]

Hi I'm a newbie here. Never posted before and only just working out the manual settings on my camera. I'd like some feedback on this shot. F4, 1/800s ISO800. 55mm

[Woodymite]

Hi Albumelf, this liitle person seems to be enjoying that ice cream, I think this pic would have been better shot in "portrait" rather than "landscape" the reason being that the background is uninteresting and you have framed most of the image on the childs face at this distance but you have cut off the top of the head, a bit distracting to the image. Why such a high ISO? Cheers Woodymite.

[albumelf]

Thanks for the feedback. I agree (in hindsight that a portrait shot would have worked better). The ISO - I was basically playing around with various settings and there was a lot of shade and I wanted shallow depth of field so was difficult to use a large aperture and still expose correctly. Any suggestions on what better settings/combinations I could have used?

[jpitz31]

When shooting portraits it is ok to use a shallow depth of field in order to blur the background. I noticed your were shooting at 1/800 on the shutter speed and f/4 on the aperture. Using a 55mm lens and the reciprocal rule you can safely shoot down to 1/60 shutter speed, hand holding your camera.

So this would give you a chance to dial in a bit more depth of field.

Again a vertical format is more favorable for portrait work.

Check out this link for more on the reciprocal rule.

Single-Serving Photo – Focal Length Reciprocal Rule

Thanks

Joe

[jpitz31]

One more thing,

Unless you have an extremely high-end pro camera, there are trade offs to using high ISO settings. With higher ISO settings, more light sensitivity for your camera sensor, you run the risk of losing image quality, and introduce noise and or chromatic aberration into your images. The safe this to do is shoot as low as ISO as you can.

If the light level to too low, then think about shooting with a flash. When shooting with a flash consider using an off camera flash technique. Check out strobist.com for their Lighting tutorial 101.

Thanks

Joe