Help me fix my lighting!!!!

[digeraghty]

This is a photo of my daughter taken in the late afternoon using only natural light. I love the DOF, but why does her skin look so grainy? If I were to re-pose this shot, what should I have done to capture her with better lighting?



Camera: Canon EOS REBEL T1i
Exposure: 1/4000 sec
Aperture: f/4.5
Focal Length: 70 mm
ISO Speed: 1250
Exposure Bias: -1/3 EV
Flash: Off

[cphoniball]

First off, drop your ISO down to 100. Unless you're shooting fighter planes or something that moves very, very fast, there's no reason to be at 1/4000 shutter speed.

As for the lighting, there's a couple things you can do to improve its "quality". The most basic thing would be to make sure your camera's white balance is set properly - DPS has an article on what white balance is and how to set it, and your camera's manual can provide some more specifics. That said, the white balance here doesn't look too far off.

Direct sunlight is a very harsh, or hard, light source, and so it reveals details in the face that a softer light wouldn't. Soft light comes from a large light source - so if you put your daughter completely under shade, the sky lights her - not the relatively time source point of the sun. In this picture she's half in shade with spots of direct sunlight.

Finally, and I don't know if this was what you were looking for or not, but the picture looks a bit flat. There are no blacks in the picture, and not very much contrast either. Open up the picture in an editing program and use the levels tool to bring the blacks up, and you should see instant improvement as far as color quality goes.

Good luck shooting!

[digeraghty]

thanks. I increased the contrast and softened the temperature a bit. I know I could go into photoshop and turn it into the picture I want, but I wanted to learn how to shoot it better in the first place. Thanks for all the detailed advice!

[cphoniball]

Pops much better now