Caged

[Alison]

Some more practise with my new lens and flash bounced off the ceiling.
This is straight from the camera.
I'm really happy with the DOF but I would have liked her fingers clear as well as her eyes.
Any idea how I can acheive this.

My settings were for this shot:-

TV Mode
1/80
ISO 100
Aperture 1.8 (I can't change this in TV mode can I?)
Auto white balance
Metering Mode Evaluative

[SmartWombat]

If you're in Tv mode then you control the shutter speed (Time variable) and the camera calculates the aperture.
So if you compromised on the shutter speed you could get a smaller aperture.

Since you're using flash, you could perhaps go even slower shutter speed?

[Alison]

Okie dokie. Would I get clear fingers then?

[dmm96452]

A slower shutter speed will result in a smaller apeture which will result in greater DOF.

If you want greater control of DOF I suggest AV mode. That way you will control the apeture and be more able to control DOF. Just be aware that closing the apeture down further will result in slower and slower shutter speeds and camera movement may become an issue. Your camera should have a DOF preview button that closes the apeture down to whatever it is set at allowing you to see exactly what will and will not be in focus.

[gahspidy]

Alison, this is fine. I don't see anything wrong with the hands being slightly out of focus. If you did close down the aperture, the background would come into sharper focus moreso than the foreground elements, which would be undesireable here.If you really wanted to sharpen the hands up some, you could focus in between the face and the hands and close the aperture down to sharpen up the face and eyes. This shot also may be interesting with a -exposure compensation and a + flash exposure compensation.
any reason for shooting in TV mode. most photogs, at least that i have known or read about use aperture priority. Keep up the good work

[Alison]

I usually use AV mode but babies are so fidgety. I'm tired of taking blurry pics of my babies so I thought TV mode would help eliminate this.

For my older children I usually use AV. Because they stay perfectly still.

And no, Gary, There's nothing wrong with her hands being out of focus but I would like to know how I can acheive it if I wanted to.

Thank you so much for all the advise you are giving me I shall do some more shooting today ;)

I love my new gear

[Sebastian]

One way to get sharper hands would be to stop down, and therefore lose the shallow DOF in the back. Other way would be to get farther away, as the DOF gets shallower the closer you get to infinity focus, but once again, that affects all the DOF. We're all bound by physics, not much we can do about that.