pregnancy and child shooting???

[jjaenagle]

hey, so i have a friend who is pregnant and wants me to take some portraits. She has a 2 year old child and i think her husband will be with her.

I have a canon xsi and kit lens so im kinda limited to what i can use. Do you think a 50mm f/1.8 prime would help with these kinds of shots?

She knows i just got the camera and there is a lot of learning and she isnt looking for serious pro portraits done, so i dont plan on setting it up that way, but i will be taking lots of pictures and probably shooting them in raw & jpeg mode.

do you guys have suggestions and tips on what i can do?

It will be shot during the daytime and in her house and outdoors, parks, and whatever we can think of.

thanks in advance for your inputs!

and if i should ask this somewhere else, please let me know!

[TheHoff]

I think your kit lens would likely do fine. If you want to swing the $100, pick up the 50/1.8, and that will give you more possibilities with limiting the depth-of-field so you can blur out the background... but consider if you have more than 1 person in the frame, you can't use too wide of an aperture as you need both in focus.

The best suggestion to get ideas is just to browse the threads in this forum and find shots you like!

[jjaenagle]

ok thanks hoff! Yea.. i have been thinking of some ideas and looking at pictures...

What settings do you think would look good for natural lighting? i have a hard time of when to use the flash and when not to lol... but i am still reading about it all.

[TheHoff]

It depends what your light looks like.

Is it directly overhead? Wait until later.

Is it cloudy or dull out? Use your flash to give it some contrast.

Is it bright, coming in from an angle? Use it to your advantage. The key is to put the subjects in the right spot to either use the light to flatter or use the light as part of the subject matter by including the sun and doing something more abstract with silhouette or flare.

Settings? What else but manual? :D Anything else and the camera is making some decision where you're actually much smarter about it.

[jjaenagle]

cool thanks!!! i'll be messing around with it more in manual before the weekend.... i find myself using aperture priority mode most of the time and i think i should step away from that for a while :-)

Thanks again!