Kid at Roller Rink!

[NikD300]

This is honestly the first candid/street photograph I took. Completely unknown person but took permission to shoot. What do you think of the composition / quality of the pic w.r.t focus/sharpness. I feel its little soft on focus but while shooting the focus was on eyes and spot on.


EXIF:
f1.8
shutter speed: 1/30
50mm lens
ISO 800
no flash

Share your comments and how I can improve the quality. I know I could have used a faster shutter speed but the lighting was very poor so had to use higher ISO and slower than 50mm shutter speed.

[BigFuzzy]

You're right, the focus is completely off. As you note it's a result of your slow shutter speed. When handholding you really need to get 1/60th or better (unless you're awesome ) and you can achieve that by having boosted your ISO to 1600 or better. 1600 would have given you 1/60th.

Quite honestly, the focus is the main thing that needs improving on. While I don't find the image to be particularly captivating, it is a nice environmental capture that's well composed. But in the end, the focus kills it for me making it so the rest just doesn't matter.

[NikD300]

Thanks for the honest opinion. Thought 1600 would be really noisy on ISO side and would have degraded the picture quality (well this doesn't matter now as the focus is bit off anyways). Do you think the focus is completely off? I thought its not all that bad.

Considering this is the only shot I could get, what else I could do to improve on this picture (any PP help?) to bring little sharpness? I did run the unsharp mask on this.

Feel free to edit the picture, if you choose to do so.

[SusanH1970]

ISO 1600 would have added noise, sure, but that to me is better than an out of focus photo. You can always run Noiseware on a noisy photo - you can't sharpen a blurry shot.

[Rentham]

Originally Posted by NikD300

Considering this is the only shot I could get, what else I could do to improve on this picture (any PP help?) to bring little sharpness? I did run the unsharp mask on this.

This is probably the best method to fix it in post.

You can fix, or at least mitigate, noise. Motion blur and missed focus can't be fixed.

[NikD300]

Originally Posted by Rentham

This is probably the best method to fix it in post.

You can fix, or at least mitigate, noise. Motion blur and missed focus can't be fixed.

HAHAHA....I like the idea