Baby Photography - Portraits

[SnapperG]

Hi there,

I am new to the forum and this is my first thread. I am looking for some good advice on shooting portraits of my 4 month old son. I have a Nikon D300 and have been struggling to get sharp images. I read a book that suggested using aperture priority mode with an aperture of f11, I set this up on my D300, using my SB-800 attached to the camera which in turn was mounted on the tripod, problem is the pictures are blurry!

Any ideas what I am doing wrong? I set the flash to slow rear fill and used Live View in tripod mode, auto focus etc.


Regards
SnapperG

[missjerrica]

Hello and Welcome!

Its really hard to tell what is going on without knowing more infomation.

I am not sure if you can post a picture in here, but a link to a sample picture and the exif data will help us answer you better!

One way I helped get an ideal of what I should be setting my manual settings for was look at the auto settings and see what the computer outputed and then work from there. (Im still learning my camera and the full manual)

[ttosifa]

Originally Posted by SnapperG

Hi there,

Any ideas what I am doing wrong? I set the flash to slow rear fill and used Live View in tripod mode, auto focus etc.

f11 is a pretty large aperture number to use (pretty small hole).

I wouldn't use slow rear fill either. Without an example, what might be happening is that your camera is setting a really slow shutter speed to properly expose the background (compounded by the large aperture number), and then at the very end of the exposure it is popping the flash to fill in the foreground. This means your baby is moving around during the exposure, creating blur, and then there is a flash that (likely) gets some but not all of the features somewhat sharp. Slow rear fill is great for some things (such as night-club shots), but less useful for general baby shots.

I'd actually use shutter priority instead, and set it at about 1/100 or 1/125. I shoot manual nearly exclusively, so I get confused about the various auto flash modes. But maybe try setting the flash on TTL mode? Someone else might suggest better.

EDIT: I have taken thousands of pictures of my daughter, who is now 28 months old. My best success comes with using manual mode, keeping the shutter speed faster than 1/100 at an aperture of f6.3 or f7.1, and using manual flash to properly adjust the exposure. The fast shutter speed prevents motion blur, the aperture setting generally prevents focusing problems associated with my daughter's movements, and the flash gets the right exposure and -- due to the fast flash speed -- helps to prevent motion blur.