Soon-to-be Parent needs digital camera advice

[fred_c1]

Tony, those Maxxum flashes do exist but are available only 2nd hand. Go to bhphotovideo.com and you will find the Metz I mentioned (for Sony Alpha of course.)

[diane_madura]

Tony, as someone above said, the DSLR is going to be much more responsive than the camera you have now. Before the baby begins to crawl, this feature will not be quite as critical, but once he/she is mobile, look out!

 

I'm guessing your camera is setting its own ISO, and a high ISO at that, and that's why your pictures have noise. There's probably a way to override that. You certainly will have that as an option on a DSLR.

 

I once brought a point and shoot to a one year old's first birthday party, rather than my DSLR. What a mistake! The point and shoot couldn't keep up with the little kids. I forgot how quickly kids move. Never again.

 

Just keep asking questions. There are people everywhere who know a lot about photography, and certainly consider using this forum for questions. You will find all kinds of answers just by searching this forum. Good luck.

[craig_gillette]

The Sony HVL-F56AM and Sony HVL-F36AM are the rebadges of the Minolta Maxxum Program Flash 5600 HS and Program Flash 3600 HS.

 

There are a variety of considerations. My wife isn't even close to interested in my dslr kit. Probably never will be. Just too big and cumbersome. One of my daughters has used my older digicam, similar in size/performance to the Z2. They are all happier with a Canon A640. It's smaller, handier, easy to put in a purse and with new eneloop AA batteries, the "price of readiness" is no longer my eternal vigilance in keeping several sets of batteries fresh and rotated.

 

Others have offerd info on flash - most cameras built in flashes aren't really satisfactory, even that on the dslrs is usually marginal. Even they can be shadowed by some lenses. Besides the poor look, lack of power (and so depth), flashes close to the camera lens can cause "red-eye" and that's bothersome at best. "Flickering" pre-flashes annoy others and may help, or you need to correct it in processing, etc.

 

The slowness of digicams can be a problem, not too much to do about that but learn to prefocus and and try to "pre-act" more than react.

 

You may have to trade things off periodically. External flashes can add another set of batteries to tend, add size, add some control complexity - and can add to the results. Smaller, handy, digicams may be somewhat slower and less responsive, so practice and "pre-action" is needed. Yet the more comprehensive the "gear" solution, the more gear you have, the less easily it's dealt with - and you will have plenty of other stuff to be shuffling about soon.

[fred_c1]

The Sony F36 does not have a swivel head (necessary for bounced, vertical shots). That's why I recommend the Metz 48.

[robert lee]

"... expecting our first child this spring, and we would like to purchase a new digital camera ... "

 

Any of the current generation, lowest end DSLR's will do an excellent job. They will all be tremendously more satisfying to use than the Z2: in image quality, speed of use, and simple responsiveness.

 

I'm most familiar with Canon equipment, so I'll give specific recommendations here.

 

1. Get the XTi with the kit lens.

 

2. Spend another $80 for the 50mm f1.8 prime lens. Put the camera on portrait mode. The subject will be sharply defined with the background nicely blurred.

 

3. Buy a Sunpak 383 flash, around $90. The most important things to look for in a flash is light output. You need lots of it in order to use bounced flash (or light modifiers). This alone will dramatically improve the look of your flash images.

 

Canon units have some cute gimmicks, but models with with output comparable to the 383 is much more money.

[kevin_krumwiede2]

I just want to reiterate what others have said in favor of a DSLR. The price of entry-level DSLRs has come down to the point where there's no excuse for not having one if you want to take really good photos. Their being "overkill" for a new photographer is no argument, as you will quickly learn to appreciate and use their superior capabilities if you put any effort into it at all. And no point & shoot in the world can match a DSLR with a 50mm f/1.8 lens for the kind of pictures you're looking to take. If you can afford only one lens, a 50/1.8 should be it. (And if you want to spend more, upgrade the lenses before the body. Lenses are an investment because optics don't wear out or become obsolete anywhere near as quickly as camera bodies. Buy good lenses and you'll enjoy them for decades.)

 

<p>I'm surprised nobody has linked you to this excellent article: <a href="http://vothphoto.com/spotlight/articles/forgotten_lens/forgotten-lens.htm">The Forgotten Lens</a>

[calarrick]

I want to add a couple points specific to the "new parent" angle. We also got a DSLR six months or so before our first baby was born, with that as at the very least the excuse (and certainly part of the reason) for going ahead with it.

 

To augment and amplify some of the advice above:

 

1) Babies are small, and at least at first they don't move fast. This means that the working distance from the 50mm being a little "long" on a DSLR don't matter. GET A 50mm PRIME. It will likely be your main lens for the first several months of baby, for this and for the reason below...

 

2) You will want a fast maximum aperture. Babies are indoors a lot, and it isn't that light. Even with flash, if you are bouncing, you'll want the lens fairly wide open much of the time. Also, see point "1" about babies being small... often you'll need/want even less depth of field than you would for adult portraits. Back to that fast 50.

 

3) Since you won't be shooting 'fast action' until the kid is a little older (say 6 months and maybe crawling) you *could* even get prime lenses instead of a zoom. That way you get speed, which the inexpensive kit zooms don't offer, but get away pretty cheap (fast zooms are expensive). We started with a D80 with just the 50mmf1.8 and a used 24mm f2.8. Together they cost barely more than the kit 18-70 (the better among the Nikon kit zooms) and are substantially faster for low-light photography.

 

4) GET A FLASH. One of the key advantages of a DSLR over (most) point and shoots for kid photography is going to be your ability to bounce flash off of the wall or cieling. Modern DSLRs automate a lot with the flash, so while it is still useful to know fundamentals you don't need to manually calculate a lot, and getting good flash exposures is not technically hard. My wife took this picture of me in the hospital room with the new baby... without a dSLR with a bounce-able speedlight, this would not have been possible. Flash was needed to balance the indoor and outdoor light, and on-camera flash would have looked bad on us, and glared off the window:

 

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/plumb-larrick/"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/163/423741061_6d105df47e.jpg"></a>

[calarrick]

er... doh!

 

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/plumb-larrick/"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/163/423741061_6d105df47e.jpg"></a>

[jcuknz]

Tony .... To get advice you need to post examples of your work where people will give you good advice rather than sychophatic comments .. I think the Australian site Passion for Pixels with its 'newbie album' is pretty good in this respect. Bear in mind that there are a lot of pro's on this site and they are fixated with DSLRs ... they need them to stand up to the work load whereas the digicam could wearout quicker so you are encouraged to get a newer and better current model.