Having becoming a happy father for the first time over the weekend, I will spare you gushing pictures of the new bundle of joy. However, I will let you know how she has forced me to brush up on some rusty skills.
You see, a Linhof panoramic camera is useless when it comes to close-ups, particularly those involving hyperactive babies. Instead, I have rummaged through the camera cupboard and have unearthed the superb 50mm f/1.4 and 100mm f/4 macro lenses. Combined with a Speedlight flash and a suitably silly looking Lightsphere, and I have assembled the perfect setup for the task at hand.
And what a task it is.
Babies like to move, yawn, cry and dribble at the drop of a hat and this provides very little leeway to get that life-defining image. In addition, one has to cope with the incredibly shallow (yet pleasing) depth of field at f/1.4 and also the tricky problem of white balance.
Shooting indoors with either fluorescent or incandescent light sources will mess up a camera’s view of ‘white’. Therefore, a grey card and a custom white balance has to be used (I use a gel filter to get the flash to match the ambient light and then set the white balance accordingly).
It’s obvious that I’m reacquainting myself with a lot of old tricks and techniques at the moment and although landscape duty will be resumed soon, there is no doubt that the joy and frustration will continue for some time yet… :-)
