A recent wedding

[TwinII]

I was a guest at a wedding on the weekend and tried my best to get some decent shots as I always love wedding photos. C&C Welcome

1
http://martincanning.myphotos.cc/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=9817&g2_serialNumber=2

2
http://martincanning.myphotos.cc/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=10102&g2_serialNumber=2

3
http://martincanning.myphotos.cc/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=10132&g2_serialNumber=2

4
http://martincanning.myphotos.cc/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=10255&g2_serialNumber=2

5
http://martincanning.myphotos.cc/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=10576&g2_serialNumber=2

6
http://martincanning.myphotos.cc/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=10618&g2_serialNumber=2

I shot with a 400D and either Canon 10-22, Canon 70-200 f2.8L IS, or Canon 50 f1.8

More photos can be seen here --> http://martincanning.myphotos.cc/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=9716

I would really appreciate C&C as I would really like to improve!

Thanks,

Martin

[dragonsfan]

Hi

in my humble opinion:

4. Has a bit of a blue tinge to it. WB not correct?
5 and 6, once again WB looks a little off. A bit to warm?
5 isnt sharp at all.
6 is to grainny?

i like the idea of 6, but the chick in the background and the door on the right hand side detract from what could have been a great capture.

[Carrot]

The problem with nearly all of the images is their lack of sharpness - they're all quite blurry and the overall effect of the images would be much better if they were a bit sharper. I don't know what you can do to fix this in Photoshop as I don't have it on this computer and therefore can't experiment for you, but is there anyway you can make the photos sharper?

Everything else is really nice about the images though, I really like the composition of the images, especially the 4th.

But yeah, the only CC I have is that none of the images are sharp enough for me. :)

[DG77]

White balance issues ruin it more for me.
Did you shot raw ?

[TwinII]

Yeh I shot in RAW and I know the white balance is off in some - I have fixed it in some but haven't reposted them.

w.r.t sharpness I dont know why they aren't that sharp! It was my first (real) time shooting with my 70-200 f2.8L IS. I thought it would have been sharp given the price I paid. Quite a few were zoomed in at 200mm so I probably need to work on holding it still. Having said that it does have IS. I did shoot most at f2.8 which is probably not at its sharpest. I did shoot some shots at f4 and could notice the difference! Any help would be appreciated.

On another forum someone asked me to post some photos of a cereal box and they were going to have a look and see what the deal was but they havent replied to the post. Would this help?

So help would be appreciated!

Edit: Photo 5 isnt that sharp and it was shot with my 50mm f1.8 which is usually quite sharp. Could it be the body? It could be the fact I was shooting ISO 1600 for photo 5 and 6.

[DG77]

I find wide open at 200mm you need to shoot at 1/250th to get consistantly sharp images with the 70-200 2.8L IS. I will occasionaly drop my shutter speed to as low as 1/125th, but amount of keepers drop drastically.
More expensive bodies with more focus points certainly make a difference, but you should still be able to get decently sharp images with the 400D if you have a decent technique... unless you are one of the unlucky ones to have got one of the dud 70-200 2.8L IS lenses that seem to be floating around lately.

[TwinII]

Hmmmm I hope it isnt a dud. I had a look and only two of those shots were taken with the 70-200mm. Both at f2.8. One was at 70mm with a shutter speed of 1/60 (image 4) so that isnt too bad but the other was 200mm with a shutter speed of 1/100 (image 2) which is obviously too slow. I also think there is some resizing compression or something in there as when I look at image 4 at full size it doesnt look as bad. Its something I will have to work on. I find generally that a lot of my images are quite soft. Its probably my technique. I have another wedding on the weekend so I'll see how I go.

[DG77]

The 70-200 2.8L IS is a big and heavy lens, so some of it may be camera shake if you're not used to it.... - The IS helps, but not at 1/60th !!
I find with mine stopping it down to f3.2 makes a noticable difference to the sharpness of an image.
Looking at those photos again I think it may be more user error than anything.
Are you selecting focus points manually, or simply allowing the camera to do it's own thing ? Image 2 looks like the focus point is somewhere near the necklace, and image 4 somewhere near the brides breasts.
I'd be selecting a focus point close to the eyes/face and running with that - mind you having 45 to choose from makes life a tad easier than the 7 of a 400D.
Was there any particular reason why you shot these wide open at f2.8 ?
It's a bit hard to tell the exact lighting conditions, but I would have thought you'd easily get away with ISO 400, f4-f5.6 and probably about 1/250th or more.
Those sort of candid moments shot with a long lens are best done around f4-f5.6 where possible so getting the focus point is not as critical as it is when you're shooting wide open. At f4 a slight shift in the focus is not going to be anywhere near as noticable as it would at f2.8, and if you're shooting towards 200mm you'll still get reasonable background blur.

[TwinII]

I actually set the centre point as the focus point and focussed where I wanted to and then recomposed to get the composition I wanted. This is the first time I have done this - in the past I have just let the camera choose and as you would expect get images where the wrong thing is in focus.

I did actually shoot some shots at ISO400 and f4 and I could notice the difference in the sharpness. For some reason I wanted to shoot as ISO 100. I know with the 400D high ISO is terrible but I suppose its only 800 and 1600 that you really notice it. It was a bright day and the wedding was in shade so the lighting wasn't really an issue. I didn't use a flash.

My brother-in-law is getting married on the weekend (in a church so the lighting could be difficult!) so I'll see how the lens goes. I might have a flash by then so it could also assist.

Thanks for your help DG77 - much appreciated!

[Ausnapper]

I actually set the centre point as the focus point and focussed where I wanted to and then recomposed to get the composition I wanted. This is the first time I have done this - in the past I have just let the camera choose and as you would expect get images where the wrong thing is in focus.

Did you lock the focus through your menu and use the rear AE Lock button for recomposing the shot ? This can work well providing there is not much movement or did you have it set an AI as well ? I am playing around with this at the moment so I am curious as to your settings as well.

Aus

[TwinII]

No I didn't use the AE or AF lock or anything like that - well at least not to my knowledge.

EDIT: I was using AE and AF lock. It was set as a default setting on my camera.

[DG77]

I actually set the centre point as the focus point and focussed where I wanted to and then recomposed to get the composition I wanted. This is the first time I have done this - in the past I have just let the camera choose and as you would expect get images where the wrong thing is in focus.

IMO this method is not ideal for shooting wide open and probably goes some way to explain slightly OOF images, but given you only have 7 focus points to choose from and don't have the little joystick toggle thingy to select them from it's probably the best way to go about it.
The main problem with this method is that if the subject moves slightly, or you don't use the AF lock function properly, the camera will refocus when you press the shutter button, resulting in a focus shift.

Don't worry too much about noise at higher ISO, most people would prefer a sharp noisy image than a clean blury one.

[Ausnapper]

The main problem with this method is that if the subject moves slightly, or you don't use the AF lock function properly, the camera will refocus when you press the shutter button, resulting in a focus shift.

I am not sure on the 400D but the 40D when I set it in my menu it will not refocus until I press the AF ON button again and my understanding was that once I had the focus lock and if I had AI set then it would maintain focus is this not correct ?

As Twin was recomposing the shot if he was in manual focus it would not refocus either would it. Providing he was in manual that is.

I am a little confused. As I always wonder how do you lock focus and then recompose I thought that was the correct technique. :confused:

Aus

[DG77]

The focus wouldn't shift if he was in manual focus, but I'm pretty sure he wasn't using manual focus.
Lots of people swear by the focus and recompose technique and how Aus. has explained it is basically how you go about it, but if your lucky enough to have lots of focus points to choose from the method isn't as accurate IMO as selecting a point over which part of the image you wish to be sharpest, especially when shooting wide open where focusing has to be very accurate.

[Smorter]

Last shot is great!

It looks like a lot of the softness has been induced by how the images were compressed and uploaded, that may also be an avenue to explore

[TwinII]

Last shot is great!

It looks like a lot of the softness has been induced by how the images were compressed and uploaded, that may also be an avenue to explore

Yeh I was thinking that also. My site does it using ImageMagick and I think it may be playing a part.

[vqscorpions]

i like the last one.
but it is not good with lay-out. the people on the left side should be cropped out

thanks for sharing