technical critique please

[Surfside1975]

technical critique please. a shot of my nephew playing with his dad's hat.
I realize it is noisy but i had to bump the ISO due to extremely low light.
any suggestions besides technical are also welcome.

taken with
canon 60D
ISO1600
f1.8 @ 1/100
external flash fired

[Rentham]

Cute picture, but for me the biggest issue is that you seemed to have missed focus. The hat looks sharper than the eyes.

[tomservo51]

Getting candid shots of kids that close @ 1.8 is going to be a challenge indeed.

I second that... It can be difficult to focus properly at 1.8 and under! You seem to have focused on the hat, not the eyes.... Its happened to us all! you just have to take a little more care when shooting with such a shallow dof to be sure you are focusing in the right area, manual focusing can help!

[XxkmoorexX]

Originally Posted by Rentham

Cute picture, but for me the biggest issue is that you seemed to have missed focus. The hat looks sharper than the eyes.

What he said. The noise doesn't bother me.

[ccting]

Originally Posted by Rentham

Cute picture, but for me the biggest issue is that you seemed to have missed focus. The hat looks sharper than the eyes.

Dear Rentham, many experts are able to determine the focus issue, but i just can't. May I know how do you determine the sharpness of eyes?

Ty.

[sk66]

Originally Posted by ccting

Dear Rentham, many experts are able to determine the focus issue, but i just can't. May I know how do you determine the sharpness of eyes?

Ty.

It's a relative thing, the eyelets/stitching on the hat is sharper than the eyes, thus misfocus (as opposed to camera shake etc). I can't say why the camera chose to focus there as I don't know what focus pattern/point was used and I don't see anything particularly "stronger" at the point of focus.

[ccting]

Originally Posted by sk66

It's a relative thing, the eyelets/stitching on the hat is sharper than the eyes,.

@SK,

Please validate my statement below :

"The hat is sharper than the eyes because of the hat is lit with much more light than the eyes, causing the eyes blur ..as the sensor did not receive sufficient light from the eyes... And the diffuse reflection from hat within family of angles from surrounding making it look sharper and clear in detail. In contrast to the eyes, the eyes does not exposed to sufficient light and good angles from light sources".

Hmm, is my guess true?

[dakwegmo]

Originally Posted by ccting

@SK,

Please validate my statement below :

"The hat is sharper than the eyes because of the hat is lit with much more light than the eyes, causing the eyes blur ..as the sensor did not receive sufficient light from the eyes... And the diffuse reflection from hat within family of angles from surrounding making it look sharper and clear in detail. In contrast to the eyes, the eyes does not exposed to sufficient light and good angles from light sources".

Hmm, is my guess true?

The issue here is that you were shooting at f/1.8. That wide open, assuming the camera was one meter away from your nephew, you're only going to have a depth of field of about 2.5 cm. Basically half of that would be in front of the brim and half behind that. That's really not a lot of room for error, so you have to really work to make sure your camera is focusing on the eyes.

[Rentham]

If the camera was allowed to pick the AF point (bad idea) it may have selected the hat because of more edge contrast. I don't know. If the OP manually picked the AF point it could be missed focus due to focus-recompose technique at such shallow depth of field.