Many Questions!

[In The Moment]

It was a beautiful day here last Saturday so I went out with my husband and took some pictures of him. It was only my 2nd time shooting with my camera on manual mode so I was proud of myself for that....but I still have so much to learn. I really love this picture but it's obvious that I didn't nail it. My questions:

1. Sharpness- My main issue is getting the subject of my images sharper. I used f/8 thinking since he was positioned farther away in the frame that this would be enough to keep him in focus...do I need to increase this number to keep him sharper? Or is my shutter speed maybe too slow allowing for camera shake? Just really having a hard time nailing the sharpness.

2. Coloring- Can't get this right either. I shoot jpg and all of my images are terribly dull SOOC. Does shooting RAW help with this? Or is there something else that I should be doing differently? Is calibrating my monitor an absoutely necessary step to take (when posting images online for others who's screens haven't been calibrated, won't the tones of my photo look different to them on their monitor anyway?)


Sorry for all of the questions! Any help you can give/questions you can answer would be awesome. The only PP done on this picture was a Gaussian Blur at about 35% opacity but I can post the original image if needed. Thanks in advance for any help.

Cameral Model: Nikon D5000
F-stop: f/8
Exposure Time: 1/200
ISO: 360
Focal Length: 48mm
Flash: Compulsory, Strobe Return

[MrJones]

I like how you used the back lightning, and the colors look ok to me.
shutter speed and aperture value are fine and should give you the desired sharpness so please tell us about your focusing technique and the lens that you are using (my bet is on the technique).
other than that, you chose to position your husband in the middle, I think it would have worked better with him on either the right third or the left third of the photo (leaving more fence or more background).
my main problem is with the blurred fence, it just takes to much away from the main object in the photo which is your husband. my eyes keep going toward the fence. maybe it's because it's a fence, so we have parts that are blurred but in between we have areas that are sharper, like the background.

[jml79]

1. Sharpness- My main issue is getting the subject of my images sharper. I used f/8 thinking since he was positioned farther away in the frame that this would be enough to keep him in focus...do I need to increase this number to keep him sharper? Or is my shutter speed maybe too slow allowing for camera shake? Just really having a hard time nailing the sharpness.

A couple of things here, I am not sure why you applied a blur if you wanted sharp. The blur will soften everything, but the face and eyes will be most noticable. When I am taking pictures of people I will use spot focus using the centre focus sensor, focus on the eyes and then recompose the picture with the focus locked. Do this in single shot mode not continious AF. I also often apply an unsharp mask in PP to increase the sharpness even more. Sometimes selectively to just the eyes or face, sometimes to the whole picture depending on the DOF.

2. Coloring- Can't get this right either. I shoot jpg and all of my images are terribly dull SOOC. Does shooting RAW help with this? Or is there something else that I should be doing differently? Is calibrating my monitor an absoutely necessary step to take (when posting images online for others who's screens haven't been calibrated, won't the tones of my photo look different to them on their monitor anyway?)

If shooting in jpg are you using your cameras WB settings. In this picture your subject is mostly in the shade. I would have tried that WB setting or a WB bracket (not sure if your camera does this). Shooting RAW will allow you more control over the WB in PP but it is an additional skill to learn and you have to decide when you want to tackle that. As for your monitor, at least try to do some basic brightness and contrast calibration (search google). It may be your monitor that is making things look not the way you want. If your monitor is at least somewhere normal, who cares what everyone else sees but if your monitor is completely out to lunch then it is likely that your pics will look off to everyone else.

Exposure - This was a very difficult picture to expose right, you have to make a choice in shots like this. The subject is shaded but the background is harsh autumn sunlight. Again spot metering or bracketting would help you learn here. I honestly would try both exposing for the face and exposing for the whole scene and take a look after to see what I prefer. You could also try boosting your fill flash in a scene like this to reduce the exposure difference between the subject and the background. I would be interested to hear others opinion on the exposure just because this is a difficult situation and I am sure I could learn from it.

[mjsnikon]

I'm new to digital photography and have a Nikon D3000... I've been taking photos in auto mode, with flash/no flash, manual mode (with different settings each time), and in the various other modes (sports, portrait, etc.) of the same scene and subject back-to-back and then comparing them to one another when I get home....this has helped alot. Best of luck!

[TBrown00]

How are you focusing? It works best if you can position a focus point over the eyes without having to recompose and choose that one using AF-S and single point focus.

I wouldn't blur this image. Would you mind posting the original so we could see what the focus looked like?

RAW won't necessarily help with color. RAW files include more information so they're easier to work with in PP, but it isn't necessary.