Using a 50mm f/1.8 for Children Indoors and Outdoors

Abetz0314

I got this lens mainly to take portraits of my wiggly kids. It takes awesome close ups. My goal has been to take photos in the manual mode (M) and I was struggling with taking outdoor photos of my kids just playing or riding bikes.

Also, all of my indoor photos in the evening turn out with a yellowish glow? All that being said, my biggest question is what should I place the f/stop (aperture) on while outside to get everything in focus? And while indoors, how do I get the yellow glow to go away?

Moose

Howdy @Abetz0314 - I don't recommend photographing kids in manual mode (M). Stick to either Aperture priority (A) or Shutter priority (S).

If you're kids aren't posing for portraits, where they're "trying" to remain still, I would shoot primarily in Shutter priority and keep the shutter speed above 1/250, both indoors and outdoors. If using Shutter priority, I recommend enabling Auto ISO.

If you're kids are somewhat still and you want to capture a nice portrait, then switch over to Aperture priority and adjust your aperture to f/1.8 to f/2.8. Again, in most situations I would just leave your ISO set to Auto.

As for the yellow tint, that is your white balance. You'll need to set your white balance to incandescent or fluorescent depending on what type of light you're shooting under. If the color still looks off, then you'll need to take a custom white balance reading. For that, all you need is a white sheet of paper. Depending on your skill level, you could also shoot in RAW and then edit the white balance in post processing.

Hope that all makes sense and happy shooting! :)

Adelphos

Times two on RAW files. If you have any editing software at all it really helps the post processing.

kravattisolmu

White balance is not that big of an issue. Even in freeware Picasa 3 I can adjust white balance in most cases. Of course lightroom is much better but for me picasa seems to be enough for the majority of my photos.