Really new at this, feedback appreciated

The subject is a little to close for my taste, as the wide angle close up is not to faltering. DOF is a little bit of a problem, eyes in focus, but the mouth is not. It throws off the shot. It works if the ears are blur a little, but having the mouth blur does not work well.

What were your camera settings? I would suggesting down a little and keep the focus where you have it for the eyes, as that did turn out well. and it should give you less blur on the month area. Also the shot is a little under expose in the eyes. As it is a bit dark and that it draws attention, but the details are lost.

But you are off to a good start,

 

Yeah... the DoF is a small problem but you can never see that when your framing up a picture of an animal. It would be great to see that with a bit more contrast, theres almost too much grey in there for me, but it's a great shot.

 

Don't cut the poor kitty's ears and try to avoid composing the subject in the center. To me that shallow depth of field does work pretty well and the soft look of the contrast as well. But as you know, we all have different likes.

 

The focus on the eyes is good but foreground blur is difficult to make work. I like to add more contrast and sharpness then I would normally when working in B&W.

 

You've also got a lot in the middle of the greys and not so much at the ends, so it looks more washed out than if you'd used higher contrast. (This is a default color->B&W transformation, looks like.)

 

The white point needs to be reset in a Levels adjustment. Easy done in free software - ask if you'd like a quick tutorial.

 

Welcome aboard.....
Nice cat photo...hmmmm get that sig off it... it draws the eye away from the eyes....
shooter

 

Happy, as I wrote to you in my PM, I've moved your thread in here into Image Works which is our members only "members helping members" forum with some really great threads, that sticky above A primer on Aperture, f stops, ISO and EV compensation and more. If you haven't read that sticky thread, you should because all that stuff is extremely important. Learning how to use any new camera is pretty important when it comes to being able to get the kind of image one wants. Believe me, I know - when I started down this digital road, I didn't even know that the camera had something that controlled white balance and I knew little if anything about "post processing" digital files... Fortunately there are a whole bunch of very helpful and very knowledgeable members here.

What sort of software are you using for your pictures with this E-PL1 and which lens did you use to take your cat's portrait?

 

This is my attempt at buffing it up in Lightroom (other software has the facilities to do what I did here):



The problems were in the nose, neck and whisker stems where there is almost no detail captured. So you either have it all soft (which may be the better option) or as here a contrast in sharpness where you don't want it.
You might get a better result just by being a bit further back and cropping if you want the face that close.

 

The picture looks a little underexposed to me, and the eyes look really dark. Some of that is probably in the processing, but I am guessing some of it is because the light was flat.

Cats can take a lot of patience to photograph well, but they do like to sit in the sun and they do like to look out the window. When I grab my camera to take a picture of my cat it is usually because she is in some interesting light. The light in the eyes is especially important; a cat's eyes can be very expressive, and they are usually the first thing I look at.

 

Reminder - it is very important to ask permission before editing anyone's photographs unless they've got the option "Image Editing OK" showing up - or they've mentioned its being OK within their post. I know you meant well, Spuff and chances are really good that HappyEisentrout will be just fine with this, but it is my duty to bring this up.

P.S. Image Editing OK (or not) is changeable via one's User Control Panel.

 

Sorry, I forgot it was an option.
I'll take it away of course if anyone wants me to, I don't want to disrupt the thread of the thread now though.

 

Let's see what HappyEisentrout hast to say, I'm guessing it's fine with him, Spuff. Didn't mean to come down on you - we all need to remember this stuff.:smile:

 

I think it's a lot underexposed. Bump up the exposure compensation if you can by at least a stop. Depending on how you were metering, it's possible that the white face of this stately feline has fooled the meter to underexpose by a lot. I'm also assuming that m43 cameras (mine's in the mail) operate the same as DSLRs as far as metering and exposure compensation.

Compositionally, I think it's just fine. It could use more depth of field, but the focus is where it needs to be.

 

Do you like that shot? I do. I might reduce the contrast a little, since the dog is SO black and then SO white (I've got one too)... but it's fine as is to me.