Feedback please on some dog pics

[GoingUp]

http://www.facebook.com/album....4&l=34846&id=605222789

I think that I have some white balance problems. Now, I've done no PP on these images. Here is my dilemma. There was a patio door with sunlight shining in, plus we had some of the inside lights on, but the lighting was still crap. I slapped on my EX 580 and alternated between fill and bounce flash as well.

Can anyone give me some pointers on what kind of white balance to set in that sort of situation? I'm using a Canon 40D.

Also, it appears that I have some DOF problems in some photos as well. Is there any sort of handy take along calculator that will tell me what my DOF is when trying to take a picture?

 

[Krioni]

Well, I can't comment on the lighting because I'm new to photography.... BUT, I will say that I think several of those pictures would greatly benefit from the rule of thirds so that you're able to see what the dog is gazing upon, etc.

Everyone else... do you agree with this statement?

 

[Fardringle]

I'm not sure which built-in white balance option to use in that situation. Personally I would probably set a manual white balance point on the brightest part of the white blanket on the couch behind the dog. That's the only thing I did to this picture and I think it looks much better.

Of course you could do even more to make it really finished/polished, but it's not all blue now...

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

That's kinda strange. Mixed lighting can confuse a camera, but I've never seen a camera's AWB get that confused. Did you accidentally have it set on a set WB, like fluorescent, incandescent, etc?

Anyway, fixing it should be pretty easy if you shot in RAW. A lot of the time the AWB or a set WB isn't what I want, so I end up changing the WB in my RAW editor anyway. Because of how easy it is to change WB in software, I don't ever both setting a custom WB. I just set a WB that gets me close to what I want the picture to be, and I just shoot.

There are DOF calculators that you can load onto a pocket PC and stuff.

There are also DOF charts:

http://www.dofmaster.com/doftable.html

 

[Billb2]

Jeeezzz! Light up the dog with some fill flash, we're not looking at the background, he's the star.

 

[soydios]

easy to fix the mixed lighting is to put a filter on the camera flash. use the fluorescent gel filter, that way the color of the flash matches the interior lights, and the white balance doesn't get confused.

either that, or use a different reference point for white balance, or try manually adjusting it.

 

[corkyg]

DOF is easy to check - there is a button on the side of the cameras that will put your aperture setting effect in the viewfinder. Greater DOF means smaller /f stop and slower shutter at any given ISO.

 

[GoingUp]

I had it set to flourescant WB when taking the photos.

FBB, thanks for the wonderful link! I wanted something exactly like that for my upcoming trip. It will be perfect to be able to print that off and take it with me when I'm in the mountains.

Corky, I understand how aperature works, I just didn't know how deep the actual focusing planes would be. Thanks to FBB, now I'll always have a handy guide along

Edit: And I unfortunately realized after I took the photos, that I had the damn camera only taking jpgs instead of raw.

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

Since you were shooting on fluorescent WB, this is probably the cause of your blue-ish looking photos. Next time do AWB.

As for the DOF chart... I don't use one personally. f/2.8 is good for blurring out the background while still keeping the subject in focus. Anything larger than f/2.8 like f/2.0, f/1.4, is best reserved for subjects that have a flat field of focus.

ex. You have a person and he is directly facing you. His eyes are on the same plane of focus. In this case you can focus on the eyes and use a shallow DOF like f/1.8 if you think your focus and lens sharpness are up to the task. But if your model is facing you at an angle, so that one eye is closer to your camera than the other eye, using a shallow DOF like f/1.8 might not be such a good idea. This might result in just one eye being in focus, or no eyes being in focus if you focus accidentally on the nose, etc. In this case use f/2.8 and smaller.