Photographing babies

This is my first try at photographing babies. A friend of mine just brought this little guy into the world 7 days ago. Although there is room for improvement, I'm very pleased with the results:

Canon 5D, Canon 100 f2.8 Macro, Shooting mode Aperture Priority, Aperture f2.8 (for blurry background, 'artistic' look), Shutter-speed of 1/800 of a second (selected by the camera), Exposure compensation of +1/3 (the camera's meter wanted to make the scene too dark), ISO 400, Picture Style is Monochrome with Sepia Tone. (ISO 200 would have also worked.)

Canon 5D, Canon 100 f2.8 Macro, Shooting mode Aperture Priority, Aperture f3.2 (for blurry background, 'artistic' look) Shutter-speed of 1/1600 of a second (selected by the camera), Exposure compensation of -1/3 (the camera meter wanted to make the scene to bright), ISO 400, Picture Style is Monochrome with Sepia Tone. (Shooting at ISO 400 obviously was not needed, I should have dialed ISO down to 100 or 200),

I taped black paper to the wall for the background--this made a huge difference (I have to concede that this was my wife's idea.) I moved mom and baby in front of a window with light streaming though. I kept the subject pretty far away from the black wall so the 'blurry background' would hide the imperfections in my 'make-shift' black background. Although the 100 f2.8 Macro is excellent for Macro work, it's also an excellent portrait lens :)

The key ingredients that made these photos 'work' (in my opinion) are:

• The black background
• Moving mom & baby in front of the window
• Shooting a 'Sepia Tone' Picture style

If I had been shooting an APS-c body, the Canon 60mm f2.8 Macro would have been my preferred lens.

Although a studio would have been ideal for this shoot (I don't have a studio), my improvised setup worked pretty well.

When my kids were babies I photographed them using a point-and-shoot. The baby photos on this page are about 50 times better then the photos I have of my kids at this age. I now have no problem spending a little bit of money for a good camera and good lenses to document my kids growing up. You can't 'turn back time' and re-take these photos.

Here are a couple more photos from this session:

Canon 5D, Canon 100 f2.8 Macro, Av, f3.2, 1/3200, EC - 1/3, ISO 400, Picture style of monochrome with a sepia tone.

Canon 5D, Canon 100 f2.8 Macro, Av, f2.8, 1/2000, EC -2/3, ISO 400, Picture style of monochrome with a sepia tone.

I'm going to do another shoot in a couple weeks with the same family -- if you have any links to favorite baby photos, please share them.