I had my first go at photographing a newborn baby yesterday. More photos and larger versions of the better photos can be seen on my flickr photostream here. The full set of photos is on Picasa here.
What worked:
Bouncing flash off the ceiling with the 430EX flash. Emmy (The model) didn't seem to mind at all and it provided very flattering lighting. I just aimed the flash up and away at an angle to get nice diffuse light with a slight directionality to give some interest. You don't need a dedicated flash to do this but it helps. I used to fashion something similar to lightscoop out of paper/foil to get the same effect, much to everyone's amusement. Now, there's no fiddling: the 430EX just works.
High ISO. All these shots are at ISO800 and I can't see any noise.
Image stabilisation on my 15-85mm. Some of the shots are 1/5s @ 85mm zoom yet my 'keep' level was very high.
The model. Emmy was very well behaved :-)
The kit lens (18-55mm) for macro. I brought my clip on macro lens (DCR-350) but since the filter on my main lens is too big for it to fit I changed back to the 18-55mm to clip it on. I actually ended up using that lens for most of the time since its focussing distance is so close I could get the magnification I wanted without the clip on lens.
Getting in close. I like the look of these 'close in', 'show the detail' shots. All the other baby photos I'd seen were full length shots.
What didn't:
Composition. I found it very hard to get into a position that gave an interesting, clean composition. Despite what I said above, some wide angle, 'show what's happening around the baby' shots would have been nice but I just couldn't arrange them.
Bouncing the flash off the wall. Adults seem to look most interesting/attractive when the flash is bounced off a wall, but for this model all its little bumps and weird cranial features seemed to stand out if the light was too horizontal. You can see the fontanelle better in this image.
The 15-85mm lens for macro. A) the maximum magnification is only 0.21x and B) the filter thread is too large to fit my macro lens on to.
Group shots. There were lots of people in the room at the time but I never managed to an interesting shot with everyone in it.
What next?
Work on crowd/model control
Learn to use my slave flash for portraits with two controllable light sources
Think about wide angle lenses. (Buy a cheap one off Ebay to experiment with?)
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