You should experiment with off camera flash, or at least on camera while bouncing. Your only options in low light are to use an aperture like F2.8 F1.8 or F1.4. Depending on the focal length and aperture setting the depth of field will be minimal which makes focus much more critical. Taking pictures of a child that moves around will become even harder at wider apertures for the auto focus system to deal with. Even if you shoot wide open this still may not be enough to obtain a fast enough shutter speed to freeze the child so blur is not present.
Using a flash will making freezing the child while at the same time having enough light to properly expose the image possible.
I suggest a Canon 430EX II. Bumping your ISO up I feel is not ideal when dealing with babies. They have very smooth skin and any grain introduced by a high ISO tends to take away from the image. Post processing the grain out will help but it's another step you need to do and the results will not be as good as a photo where it was done right in camera to begin with.
Working with flash is not as hard as it seems. With todays advanced metering, ease of setting changes and seeing what your getting instantly makes the whole process much easier then working with film when you are just starting.
|