For C&C please

[bedantabd]

This image of my 1.5 yrs. old son was shot with a Canon 550D / 18-55mm kit lens at 18mm. (f/3.5, 1/200, ISO-1600, handheld with window light only). I had to bump up ISO to 1600 even with the widest aperture available, which resulted in the high noise. No PP done apart from cropping.



For your comments on framing/composition, camera settings, etc. Will any PP improve the image further? Unfortunately, the image was shot in JPEG only.

[kdoc856]

Hi Bedanta,

Lovely child. Dont know if this was a spontaneous , grab-it-as-you-can shot or more planned. If planned, would try a plainer, more homogeneous background so there would be less distracting clutter, and would encourage you to get in tighter to fill the frame with this face. Getting in tight will also decrease your DoF and blur your background more. As you suggested, shooting Raw will give you a lot more tonal and contrast control. I made a quick play at PP in LR4 and PSE10: hope this helps a little

[bedantabd]

Thanks Kevin,

Lovely child. Dont know if this was a spontaneous , grab-it-as-you-can shot or more planned.

Restless as well, which is why this was more of a spontaneous shot (you know how hard it is to plan a shot for a child of his age......too restless!!). That's why the noisy background, though I was able to remove lot of other distracting clutter by cropping.

I faced two problems in getting a tighter shot:

Problem:1
Zooming in would have closed down the aperture to f/5.6, 2 options to overcome that:
1. slower shutter speed: resulting in a blurry picture due to motion blur (he was constantly moving). So far, this is biggest problem I have faced while photographing him.
2. bump up ISO: I was already at ISO 1600 at f/3.5 and the resulting noise is obvious.

Problem:2
He was sitting at a distance of 1-1.5m and you can not get any closer to such a dangerous subject, he would have simply grabbed the camera / lens!!!!

Getting in tight will also decrease your DoF and blur your background more.

18mm with f/3.5 or 55mm with f/5.6: in which case will DoF be less?

[kdoc856]

I totally understand, Bedanta, and suspected the same. Much easier from here than there!