First Time Posting- And first time dSLR user

[dancingolive]

Hello everyone! I received an awesome gift for Christmas from my husband- my new Nikon D90 and was able to take some pictures of a friend of mine's baby.
This is my first post and would love any feedback but my main concerns/questions were:
Does the lighting look okay?
What about the color?
No Flash
58mm
f/5
1/50 exposure

Any suggestions are very much appreciated!
Thanks,
Carissa

[ncbcymtechie]

You got the focus pretty much on the eyes, so you got a big part of it down!

Probably the biggest thing I see that could be improved is the lighting. I think you could have gone for a bit more exposure. I wouldn't lengthen the shutter duration because at 1/50 you're already risking camera shake (if you didn't use a tripod—rule of thumb is to use 1/focal length as the shutter speed) and definitely motion blur. So my suggestion would be to open up the aperture a little more, maybe to f/4 or so and see how that works. The picture looks a little dark overall and I personally would go for more of a (and again, this is a very quick take so more experienced members, feel free to chime in):



This was a really quick curves, brightness, and contrast adjustment (I don't know any theory on this, so if you want to know how to properly do it you'll have to ask someone else; I just tweaked it a touch to brighten the picture), but I hope you can see that I tried to add more "light" into the picture. (I also did a tiny, tiny bit of work on her nose to get rid of the bright spot which got even brighter as I worked.) The point: to make it a little brighter.

Lastly, looking at it zoomed in, there is a bit of blur (evident to me around the bow area) that I don't think is caused by depth of field, so I'd opt for upping the shutter speed to more than 1/focal length, or at least 1/60 for the 58mm you were using.

OK, not lastly. I want to say one more thing. Just because this may seem like a lot to take in doesn't mean it is—it's not that much at all. The picture is already wonderful and you did a great job, and I applaud you. So feel proud of your work and strive to be better at what you love! (... photography. In case that wasn't clear enough. ) Well done!

[ncbcymtechie]

I hate to double post, but I think it would be nice to compare these photos full size (I used Imageshack.com for a quick upload, but you could get a free Flickr account, which is what most people here use):



Cheers!

[dancingolive]

Thank you for the sugguestions. I wasn't totally happy with the lighting and that was my main concern. I am kind of leery about overexposing so I tend to underexpose most of the time...next time I will try to open up the aperture more. Should I also have maybe used the flash? Once again, I didn't use the flash because I didn't want to overexpose (that is what happened on some of the other photos I took with flash during this shoot).
Thank you for your comments...any other suggestions are welcome as well!!

[ncbcymtechie]

Well, underexposing is OK as long as you have a remedy to fix it. Massive underexposure, however, is just as bad as overexposure (certainly more so with JPEG and to a certain extent, RAW) because underexposure can give you pixels of pure black from which you can't get any more detail. Lots of overexposure gives you pixels of pure white. In any case, you should aim for the final product to be properly exposed whether through lighting or post processing.

As for on-camera flash, the reason most people opt not to use it for portraits is because when used at the distances you're shooting from, the light is very harsh and creates shadows and does odd things to the eyes, etc. But if you figure out how to bounce or diffuse the flash you should be able to do something beneficial to improve exposure. (If you want tips on photographic lighting by way of teaching you all the know-how to lead you to the point where you can improvise, I recommend "Light—Science & Magic.")

I understand your fear or overexposing, butdon't overcompensate by underexposing, compensate by learning to expose correctly.