Baby photography has its own set of unique challenges and rewards. Getting great photo’s requires a lot of patience, luck, and good technique. For those readers who are parents – most of your photography will likely be done indoors (at least during the first few weeks) under low light conditions – and with a baby who may be sleeping, or may be waving his hands wildly.
Some tips for making sure you have the right equipment for this once in a lifetime experience:
- Make sure you have a camera that is good at taking pictures in low-light; ideally an SLR that has great noise control in the 400 to 800 range. DSLR’s from Nikon, Canon, Pentax, Olympus are now doing well at this range. Nikon and Canon outpace the competition at the 1600/3200 ISO range, the D700 is especially good at noise control at these high ISO’s if you are willing to pay for the highest quality. I’ve been very happy with a D80 at ISO 400 and a good fast lens – which brings us to the next point.
- Use a fast lens (F2.8 or faster) to catch low light shots with no blurring arms and legs. Using the right lens will have a huge impact on your end result. Nikon’s 50 mm f1.4 and 1.8 lenses are great for close-up work, the new 35 mm f1.8/G and older f/2 are great for low space situations and the APS DSLRs. These lenses also have great bokeh, which throws the background out of focus in a pleasing collage of creamy colors; perfect for baby photographs.
- Make sure you have a camera tha will let you take photographs in RAW and convert the ones you like to JPEG. This last tip is crucial to having great colors in your baby photographs. Indoor lighting is variable and unpredictable unless you have a full studio, which is rarely the case when doing on-site baby photo’s. I’ve saved many a photo with RAW processing that I never could have touched had it been in JPEG.
So, there you are – 3 tips to putting together a great kit for shooting those once in a lifetime baby shots.
