B&W Shot using Macro Lens on my Toddler

[graciousness]

Hey guys

I took this photo yesterday of my little one whilst she we were in our usual cafe and she was stirring my latte. I had my macro lens with me and wanted a close up photo of her to be converted to B&W/monochrome as I really want to get a handle on monochrome photos.

Anyhoo, here she is, with goopeey eyes and all, her skin is not that great as she is suffering from dry skin/eczema and it's clearly showing on the photo. I don't care so much about that as she is what she is. I don't really like altering or smoothing out faces as it's not my style.



Exif data

Camera Canon EOS 30D
LENS 50mm f/2.5
Exposure 0.067 sec (1/15)
Aperture f/5.6
Focal Length 50 mm
ISO Speed 100
Exposure Bias 0 EV
Flash Off, Did not fire

Handheld


I think I got the shot ok and it converted ok as monochrome. However, I need fresh and more trained eyes to give me advice on this shot as I really dont' know how I've done. I do know that the little blown out sky on the upper right side may be a little distracting, but is it too much? I don't know what could be done to fix that if I tried anyway.

Are the blacks black enough or is this still too grey, esp on her face? Is it also very noticeable that her left eye is not as focused as the right? I'm still struggling using my macro lens and figuring out what right aperture to use.

Many thanks for looking and I look forward to all your responses and advice on this. I really would love to hear everything you can provide as critique.

Cheers,

Grace

[MrJones]

your B&W conversion seems to be great, not grayish but actual B&W.
I see you cropped the image in PP, I would have loved to see a bit more of her head but I'm guessing the original was shot horizontally.
one thing that bothers me, and I have no idea how you managed to get such a sharp photo with those settings, is the shutter speed. why did you shoot at 1/15 which is extremely low speed when you could have bumped up the ISO to 400 and get 1/60 or even open your aperture a bit and get even faster shutter speed.
great job hand holding the camera with those settings!

btw, it's a bit dark for my taste and you can brighten it up a bit.. but that's a matter of taste.

[graciousness]

Yey! Thanks for the reply!!

This goes to show you how much I am still learning the exposure triangle. As we were sitting outside, albeit in the shaded cafe sidewalk, I didn't think of needing a higher ISO as I thought ISO100 would be sufficient. It just got ingrained in my head to use as low ISO as possible.

Yes, this shot was taken landscape and very candidly. Didn't have the time to set up at all, as I saw her sit right next to the chair next to me to stir my coffee. Then I picked up my camera quickly and she looked at me and I just snapped. My saving grace was that I was sitting down so I had my arms tucked in my body, took the shot as I was breathing out. I didn't even notice how slow the shutter was, really! I took 3 shots that included this one and this was the one that came out the best.

I had to crop as tightly as I can because there was a man bending over in the background that was quite distracting, plus a little bit of the bright sky was in the shot. So I thought it best to crop as much as I can. In regards to her head, that was the widest that I could take the shot from the landscape orientation taken with my macro lens. Initially, there was a bit more to her left side with blurred background of the sidewalk with cafe goers. I thought it would be nice to include it, blurred of course but with enough identifying scene, to show where she was. Well that didn't work out to well because a wait staff showed up behind all of a sudden.

I thought with a wider aperture, the depth of field would be too narrow and I would have more issue with focussing. Lots to learn.

There was just a tiny sharpness adjustment in post processing, but only a tiny. Anymore would have shown too much of her already poor and dirty skin condition.

I also had this a bit brighter before when I was editing, but that blown out sky was too much I thought better to darken a little. But yes, I think it's a little bit dark for me, too, so I think I'll play around with this photo in Photoshop and see what I can do (used Aperture before).

Thank you so much for your thoughts! I really, really value the critique from you guys as it really helps me heaps. I learn from critiques more than I learn from reading - by miles!!

I will pay attention to shutter speed more now from your comment. I only pay attention to it when it's glaringly slow when I take photos!

[kevingeary]

It's a little muddy to me. I like higher contrast b/w shots. This one has too many midtones.

[graciousness]

Originally Posted by kevingeary

It's a little muddy to me. I like higher contrast b/w shots. This one has too many midtones.

I would love to have a high contrast B&W, but that's hard for me as I don't have the technical eye and skill to set up shots so that they can be converted with balance on post processing. Something I aim at doing, but obviously, the skill is not there yet

However, I need to know how one would get that high contrast on shots used with natural light and without flash. I can't imagine getting the whites without blowing out the shots and keeping the black in balance unless it's a set up shot with use of flashes, etc, esp if doing portrait or shooting people. All the high contrast shots I've seen with people have been either staged/posed with external lighting used --- is this possible with natural lighting?

How would one create more contrast on this photo via post processing?

[kevingeary]

It's not always about achieving perfect exposure (from white to black), it's about achieving what works for the shot.

It appears you had plenty of light to achieve a higher contrast look. I think it's more a fault of how the image was processed than how it was captured.

Then again, I don't have the original file, so I don't know.