A couple of shots of my son. C&C welcome.

barbossa3127 · Dec 28, 2013

First, let me start by saying that portraits have never been "my cup of tea" but with a newly adopted son, I find myself snapping away when I can. It's usually with my cell phone, but occasionally I'll lug out my 7D. Christmas day/afternoon was one of those days. We had just changed him into his pajamas and I noticed some great catch light coming in through the windows on the front of the house and hitting his eyes. So I slapped on my 28mm f/1.8 lens and snapped away for a couple of minutes. Thought I'd share these and get some input from you guys that may have more experience with portraits.

The face of pure mischief!

Hearing a new noise....my camera clicking away.

Oh....Why hello there. I didn't know you were taking my picture!

--
Life is tough, but it's tougher if you're stupid.
-John Wayne as Sgt. Stryker in Sands Of Iwo Jima

Klaus dk · Dec 28, 2013

Sorry to be so blunt, but how on earth did you manage to make such a mess with a 7D? Is this excessive NR and/or sharpening? Where did you place your focus point?

There's no EXIF, so it is difficult to guess what went wrong, but IQ-wise these pictures are really bad.

Sweet kid, though.

ktownbill · Dec 28, 2013

First let me applaud you for using your 7D instead of your cellphone! Second, let me applaud you for asking for advice.

I agree with Klaus that these photos are a mess. It looks like you had a very heavy hand with NR and sharpening adjustments in post-editing. Hard to tell but it looks like the camera focused on your sons sleeve leaving his face out of focus.

There are many many things you need to learn.

What were the camera settings and what post-editing did you do?

barbossa3127 · Dec 28, 2013

ktownbill said:
First let me applaud you for using your 7D instead of your cellphone! Second, let me applaud you for asking for advice.

I agree with Klaus that these photos are a mess. It looks like you had a very heavy hand with NR and sharpening adjustments in post-editing. Hard to tell but it looks like the camera focused on your sons sleeve leaving his face out of focus.

There are many many things you need to learn.

What were the camera settings and what post-editing did you do?

edispics · Dec 28, 2013

Try it without Topaz denoise. I use Topaz denoise a lot for night shots and I can tell you for sure that if it is set too aggressively the photos end up looking just like your photos - smoother than a baby's bottom! LOL So I think that is your culprit. But easy to test. As I said, just try doing everything the same without denoise.

Surb · Dec 29, 2013

barbossa3127 said:
ktownbill said:

First let me applaud you for using your 7D instead of your cellphone! Second, let me applaud you for asking for advice.

I agree with Klaus that these photos are a mess. It looks like you had a very heavy hand with NR and sharpening adjustments in post-editing. Hard to tell but it looks like the camera focused on your sons sleeve leaving his face out of focus.

There are many many things you need to learn.

What were the camera settings and what post-editing did you do?

Click to expand...

daRRski · Dec 29, 2013

Hi

Great looking kid

Yup..Topaz DeNoise would be the culprit ...I do use the Suite but that's what you get when you push it too hard ..by the way...I do like the composition ...just crop the empty space above the head to fill the frame ...and ...specially using F/1.8 ...focus on the eyes ..razor thin DOF .

Not sure what if you had shoot RAW...if you did...you can re-do it using some of the great advice from the replies to your post

Klaus dk · Dec 29, 2013

I would like to see the pictures as they looked out of camera or, if that is impossible, as they look when converted in DPP with neutral settings. Any camera will deliver its best at base ISO, but ISO 2000 on the 7D is not that bad.

You can see which focus point was used in DPP.

When shooting portraits with wide open aperture, you need to select a focus point which is over the nearest eye to get good results.

Surb · Dec 29, 2013

Klaus dk said:
I would like to see the pictures as they looked out of camera or, if that is impossible, as they look when converted in DPP with neutral settings. Any camera will deliver its best at base ISO, but ISO 2000 on the 7D is not that bad.

Very true... I hate noise and am a self admitted pixel peeper because of it though lol

Klaus dk · Dec 29, 2013

Surb said:
Klaus dk said:

I would like to see the pictures as they looked out of camera or, if that is impossible, as they look when converted in DPP with neutral settings. Any camera will deliver its best at base ISO, but ISO 2000 on the 7D is not that bad.

Click to expand...

Very true... I hate noise and am a self admitted pixel peeper because of it though lol

I'm no friend of noise either, but in this case the cure was much worse than the disease IMHO.

Surb · Dec 29, 2013

Klaus dk said:
Surb said:

Klaus dk said:

I would like to see the pictures as they looked out of camera or, if that is impossible, as they look when converted in DPP with neutral settings. Any camera will deliver its best at base ISO, but ISO 2000 on the 7D is not that bad.

Click to expand...

Very true... I hate noise and am a self admitted pixel peeper because of it though lol

Click to expand...

I'm no friend of noise either, but in this case the cure was much worse than the disease IMHO.

Agreed...

Speaking of which, Barbosa... are you going to repost any of the changes you may have done?

RaajS · Dec 29, 2013

barbossa3127 said:
First, let me start by saying that portraits have never been "my cup of tea" but with a newly adopted son, I find myself snapping away when I can. It's usually with my cell phone, but occasionally I'll lug out my 7D. Christmas day/afternoon was one of those days. We had just changed him into his pajamas and I noticed some great catch light coming in through the windows on the front of the house and hitting his eyes. So I slapped on my 28mm f/1.8 lens and snapped away for a couple of minutes. Thought I'd share these and get some input from you guys that may have more experience with portraits.

The face of pure mischief!

Hearing a new noise....my camera clicking away.

Oh....Why hello there. I didn't know you were taking my picture!

--
Life is tough, but it's tougher if you're stupid.
-John Wayne as Sgt. Stryker in Sands Of Iwo Jima

Your son is a beautiful and happy baby. Congratulations!

While these could be technically better, most images could be. I wouldn't apologize for these, they capture the essence of your son, technical perfection in the image be damned.

cheers,

- raaj

--
'Change is not Mandatory, you don't have to Survive...'
SeekingLight.net

RaajS · Dec 29, 2013

Klaus dk said:
Sorry to be so blunt, but how on earth did you manage to make such a mess with a 7D? Is this excessive NR and/or sharpening? Where did you place your focus point?

There's no EXIF, so it is difficult to guess what went wrong, but IQ-wise these pictures are really bad.

Sweet kid, though.

Really? So let's see examples from you of images that are not "bad"...

cheers,

-raaj

Graham Meale · Dec 29, 2013

I find the background distracting. The fairy lights especially.

Klaus dk · Dec 30, 2013

RaajS said:
Klaus dk said:

Sorry to be so blunt, but how on earth did you manage to make such a mess with a 7D? Is this excessive NR and/or sharpening? Where did you place your focus point?

There's no EXIF, so it is difficult to guess what went wrong, but IQ-wise these pictures are really bad.

Sweet kid, though.

Click to expand...

Really? So let's see examples from you of images that are not "bad"...

cheers,

-raaj

--
'Change is not Mandatory, you don't have to Survive...'
SeekingLight.net

I have pictures in my dpr gallery and there's a link to my flickr photostream on my dpr profile, so I'm not exactly trying to hide. Whether you think my pictures are "bad" or not is for you to decide.

I sometimes show my own pictures when answering other posters, but it tends to derail the conversation or hijack the thread, so in this case I abstained from that.

If the meaning of your answer is that one should not offer critique unless one has work to demonstrate superiority, I disagree. I have eyes in my head, I own a 7D and have some knowledge of photography, so I feel perfectly qualified to write what I wrote, and justified in doing it since the OP requested input from this community. Overlooking the obvious seems to me to be a disservice to someone seeking advice.

I totally agree that these pictures, if you ignore the IQ issues, are fine snapshots of a sweet kid, which is why I asked the OP for the unprocessed versions of the shots.

ktownbill · Dec 30, 2013

RaajS said:
Klaus dk said:

Sorry to be so blunt, but how on earth did you manage to make such a mess with a 7D? Is this excessive NR and/or sharpening? Where did you place your focus point?

There's no EXIF, so it is difficult to guess what went wrong, but IQ-wise these pictures are really bad.

Sweet kid, though.

Click to expand...

Really? So let's see examples from you of images that are not "bad"...

cheers,

-raaj

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A couple of shots of my son. C&C welcome.

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