How Good is my Photo..?? Discussion.. Any tips, Criticisms or Ideas Please..!!

Good morning Longk and N/G many thanks for answering my post,its much appreciated,I rarely use Auto.mostly Manual/ AV setting depending on the available light usually f8/f11,al servo,mostly 100/200/ISO,yesterday was 400 /ISO,don't like going to high as it creates quite a bit of noise.My camera is the Cannon 600D/lens is Tamron AF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 SP Di VC USD (EOS) ,the weather was overcast the sun was just a little in front ,the subject was very shy and took off almost immediately,but I will try to under expose by a few stops if I get the chance

Ps

I used to be a wedding photographer back in the dark ages my camera then was a yashica mat 124 and developed all the proofs in a dark room,must say I never under exposed the white wedding dress, but that was when cars had solid tyres

 

Good morning Longk and N/G have taken your all your info on board yesterday it was set on evaluative metering to day it will be on spot metering I also have partial metering and center-weighted average .I will shoot in Raw &Jpeg

Thank you again my friends

ps thanks N/G I will take a look now

 

I have tried to produce a similar shot with my Pentax DSLR on a tripod, i.e. attempting to get the black background. Apologies for the subject, I now realise I should have found something with a bit of colour rather than a great big white bloom, but my photo is more about the technique of getting the background to disappear. Initially I tried this set up:


but the white walls are reflecting too much light, so I draped an old curtain on the door:


The following has been cropped, white balance set to auto and tweaked the shadows in Lightroom:


Pentax K-m in Manual mode
f/16
Shutter Speed 1/60
ISO 800
Flash compensation -1

Full Exif info here


That took me the best part of 30 minutes faffing about with the flash settings etc.

Then I used my cheap Olympus compact handheld and got practically the same result first attempt. Again it's been cropped, white balanced to auto and tweaked the shadows in Lightroom:


Olympus XZ-10 in Aperture Priority mode
f/8
Shutter Speed 1/500
ISO 200
Flash compensation -1/2

Full Exif for the Olympus here


So I'm struggling to achieve that crisp black background @longk , maybe you are closer to the subject? Are you in Macro mode too? Maybe you don't have bright white walls everywhere ?

On another note I am really pleased with my little Olympus, I can do just about everything with it that the bulky DSLR can. Mainly I take portrait style snaps of my grandkids and because it has such a fast lens the flash rarely fires, so I can get up close without them pulling faces or blinding them.

 

Thanks for that Keith, it explains a lot.

 

The ISO on that second photo is 1600 according to the Exif (not 400). I doubt the ISO has caused the difference though. Another difference in the Exif is the first (brighter) photo has an "Exposure Bias of -33/100 EV" whereas the second (duller ) photo you've got "0 EV". Probably your camera applied these EV values due to the different metering mode you selected.

 

Also your first (brighter) photo has White Balance: "Daylight" whilst the second (duller) photo has White Balance: "Auto". I shoot in Raw format then I can correct the white balance afterwards.