Photography. Baby. Help!?
Saturday, June 5th, 2010 at
5:18 am
My sister is going to give birth to a baby girl soon, and I want to get the best pictures that I can with the camera that I have. I own a Nikon D40, with no additional lenses. My question would be, what settings should I set my camera to so that I can take the best picture I can of a baby.? Please help.!!
thank you screwdriver, that was very helpful, just what I was looking for! You Rock!:)
and thanks ireland for the congrats:)
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Tagged with: baby girl • best picture • congrats • ireland • nikon d40 • screwdriver
Filed under: Baby Photography
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I presume you mean a shot while Mother and Baby are still in hospital.
A Nikon D40 is more than capable of this, obviously don’t use flash.
Set your camera to Aperture Priority, and select the smallest aperture that will allow a reasonable speed, If you use the focal length of the lens as a guide to shutter speed then you should get a good sharp shot, so if your lens is set on 50mm don’t go any slower than 1/50th of a second. Adjust the aperture till your camera is showing a shutter speed faster than 1/50th of a second. This will optimise the depth of field with the available light.
If it is night time (and it usually is) and your shooting under artificial light, read your manual about calibrating colour balance use anything white in the room to set it. If that’s not possible don’t use Auto white balance, just set it to daylight and adjust later in Photoshop or whatever.
All this gets easier when the Baby is home, of course, then select a ‘soft’ light (from a North facing window for instance) it will be more flattering to both Mother and Baby using the same technique as outlined above, most Babies have blotches just after they’re born, I’m considerably older and I’ve still got mine. LOL.
Chris
I suggest leaving it on automatic. There will be so much going on that you won’t want to fuss with the focus on different shots. The lens the camera came with is great for these shots. I would wait until after the baby is born to use different settings, this way you’ll have time to fuss about the little things. Take lots of shots and have fun. Congrats on becoming an aunt.
I agree with the others. You don’t need to get a new camera. just take as many as you can, from all sorts of angles, of EVERYONE there. As one who has been in your sister’s *ahem* position, use your zoom if you want to get up close and personal. When you get home, you can play with the composition, colors and such through Photoshop to make things look more professional.
It is a real experience being present at the birth of a child.
Unless you are *very* familiar with all the settings of your camera, put it on Auto.
Playing around with buttons and dials is the best way to mess up pics.
The single best thing you can do to improve your pictures is buy an external flash like the SB-600.
Tilt the flash head to bounce light off ceilings and walls.
HTH
V