Beginner Home Studio/Indoor Photography

Hey all! I've just begun digging through the forum, and I know I'm breaking the rules a bit by posting right away as opposed to getting familiar with all the beginner threads. But, I'm drowning in information at the moment so I figured I'd get a thread started and see what the general responses were for at least where to start looking.

My wife is now 14 weeks pregnant, with twins, and I'm looking to setup something in the house to make an ongoing chronicle of the pregnancy, and then have the ability to take some posed photographs of the kids once they make their grand appearance.

I'm shooting with the Digital Rebel XT, with just a few lenses at the moment: a 20-35mm EF wide angle lens, the 18-55 EFs that comes with the camera, and an older 75-300mm EF that I wouldn't expect to get much action in this environment.

My first question is on lighting: should I try to get some kind of external lighting with an umbrella or would getting the 430EX Speedlite be enough? My second question is on lenses: is there one "go-to" lens that I should look at getting for this kind of work?

Thank you for any help, I look forward to getting to know this forum more!

if you're serious, find some strobes, the flash isn't fast enough or powerful enough, and you'll probably want more than 1, and multiple strobes are easier to work with than multiple flashes.

see my sig for the resources page, download the "show us yur studio"PDF, that shows how many others have set up their own studios.

you'll probably want a fast prime lens, 50mm f/1.8, 50m f/1.4, 85mm f/1.8, 135mm f/2L, 100mm F/2, etc. stay higher than 50mm, less than that will give distortion to the model. Longer than 135 will result in really tight crops