As a grandfather myself, I think your shots are great, and especially the last one. Technically, they are far from perfect but does that really matter to you?
You've made technical errors, not least of which is shooting at just 100 ISO, forcing you to shoot at too large an aperture to create sufficient depth of field and too slow a shutter speed to freeze movement, and even to guarantee the absence of camera shake. But you can try again, at 1600 ISO, which will allow you to shoot at f/8 and 1/125th, which is less prone to error. There is however a risk of flicker at /125th, you'll just have to try it and see.
The only real issue here (as so very eloquently explained by
@Phil V ) is your lighting equipment. It's incredible value for money but will drop to bits very quickly. I know the man who made it, he employs hundreds of people, works incredibly hard and is extremely successful, making a tiny profit per unit (most of which goes to Amazon) but his priority is quantity, not quality,
As Phil pointed out, the name of the game is to create the right shadows in the right places, not to avoid the shadows. And, as I pointed out earlier, you don't even need soft lighting when photographing young kids with perfect complexions, soft lighting comes into its own when photographing their elderly relatives
- which is just as well, because those pathetic softboxes cannot produce even lighting, partly because there is only a single layer of diffusion and partly because the diffusion is wafer-thin and ineffective. Also, the light is pretty much impossible to control because the diffusion is right at the front, it needs to be recessed. You can check the veracity of this statement simply by using your camera meter to check the brightness at the centre and at the edges, it should not vary by more than half a stop (maximum) at any point, but the actual variation will be massive. Or, so that you can let the rest of us see the variation, you could photograph a softbox square-on, exposing for the centre, and post the result here. And of course, the power can't be adjusted either.
At least, you didn't go ahead with your LED worklights, so that's a plus - your poor CFL lights are so much better.
If you really want to persevere with continuous lighting (but please don't) then much better ones are available, such as the Godox SL-60W COB LED Continuous Light, which accepts modifiers, is fully adjustable and has a reasonable CRI. But, continuous lighting is ideal for video, not still images, and flash is better in every way.
Flash has so much more power, but it's an unobtrusive power that your victims will hardly notice at all, because it comes and goes so quickly. That power will allow you to use the aperture of your choice without increasing the ISO, which helps with image quality, and with an effective shutter speed (flash duration) of 1/1000th or thereabouts, subject movement and camera shake become non-issues.
The main thing that you (and untold numbers of other people) need to understand is that good lighting is about creating the right lighting effects for the shot in hand. Many (most?) people seem to think that it's about having sufficient
quantity of light to produce correct exposure, and the opposite is true.
So, the starting point is to learn about lighting, decisions about equipment should follow later. I don't know which of my books you have, hopefully it's
Lighting Magic, which I believe gives a good introduction. And, when you've outgrown that I recommend Light: Science and Magic, which is at an entirely different level. That's the book that I go to for ideas.
:banghead:
