Yes God? You want me to stop killing mice?by
kawanaComment by NVPhoto: Ive seen your questions in the posts, hopefully a critique of this image will help a bit. don't take offense to anything.
Pros: Very nice subject, good pose, nice backdrop (could use an ironing though), pretty good composition.
Cons: Lacks details in eyes, focus is not sharp, most of his body is in shadows. Biggest drawback is the focus.
What could have helped? Your lighting was off. The light on the face is nice, but it needs something on his body. You could have used the flash to fill in the light (fill flash).
ISO 100 is great to use to reduce noise or grain, but you need to have enough light. For this, you didn't have enough light and you shot at 1/5 shutter speed. thats too slow for handheld. If you had more light you could shoot at a faster shutter speed, or used flash to achieve the same thing.
Aperature of 4.5. With that lens, its not very sharp at that aperature. Maybe used F8, but again you would needed more light.
The lack of focus looks like camera shake. At 1/5 for a shutter speed, its nearly impossible to get a sharp image handheld. You could have used a tripod to fix that, but then again the cat could move. Faster shutter speed would have made this sharper.
Shoot in bursts of 3. Take 3 pictures right in a row, real fast, your camera has the setting for it. This helps get one sharp shot if you have a living subject that can move unexpectedly.
Photographer found comment helpful.