Best Lens for Baby Pictures.

[Scott Stephen]

You may not have had time to get familiar with your camera, and the "feel" of different lengths on your zoom lens, as you are still within the 30-day return window. Take your camera and "zoom in" all the way with your kit lens (to 55mm). Do this outside, pointed at a bird or squirrel-sized target 30 feet away in the yard. Now back it up to 34mm. It will feel VERY short. That is the amount of "free" telephoto you have with a crop body, and which you lose with a FF.

Now, look at the price of good f/2.8 telephoto Canon lenses. $7,000.00 or $13,000.00 is about the neighborhood. You would need that kind of lens JUST to regain the length lost by dumping the crop body for FF if you want to keep the wide bright 2.8 aperature. Telephotos aren't even cheap if you go with a smaller aperature. This may not seem alarming unless you have an above-average level of interest in squirrels or other distant small-ish things, but you do constantly find other situations where you will wish you could zoom in more, and certainly not less, I promise.

And this effect is even more noticable at 200mm than it is at 55mm. I bought a 1.4x tele-extender to screw onto my 1.6x crop body for use with my 70-200mm lens. And that is just about enough zoom to shoot a groundhog (which is the size of a large housecat) from a distance that feels comfortable to me (and to the groundhog). And the tele-extender robs you of a full stop of light, so your 2.8 lens becomes an f/4 lens.

If you do go FF, consider seriously keeping the crop body for longer shots. With the kind of money involved, a $600 or $800 extra body is small potatoes.

[Joel Eade]

Sure, my pleasure!

I guess it depends if I had a crop body or FF. But I would say the 35mm works great on both! Remember that 50mm is pretty close to what we see with our eyes. So, 35mm on 1.6X crop body is 56mm.

You will have the normal view with the crop body and the not too-wide environmental view on FF.

+1 .... also you can always go "old school" and zoom with your feet.

This an image of my wife and our newborn grand daughter taken with the canon 35mm f/1.4L on a 1DMKIV which is a 1.3 crop sensor. This is nearly a full frame image, it was barely cropped.

[Jayson]

That really depends on how serious you are. If you are just documenting your kids growing up the crop body will do a good job for much less money.
When my kids were young, I wouldn't even think about spending $3,499 for a new 5D III and in a month or two when the new 24-70mm L II is released spend another $2,200. Kids cost to much, but at this point in my life I would go the Full Frame route because I can afford it and I enjoy photography as a hobby. If money isn't an object in the discussion of course go with Full Frame. You will get better IQ and better a Auto Focus system.

I think this is a great point that is getting lost in this thread. If you have the money, then by all means do what you would like to do and get the best of the best. However, little guys and gals are expensive and if you are just purchasing to document your babies first year I think the Rebel will be more than adequate to take care of that. In addition, I think any of the consumer primes or zooms will do that job just fine. Your camera has high ISO capabilities that are just fine for pictures say up to 8x10 at ISO3200 if you do some noise reduction. If you are going to print monster prints, then I think that is a topic that needs to be discussed.

If you are just getting into photography then I believe it is going to be pretty hard to tell a photo you would take with the 50mm f1.4 compared to a 50mm L series. People that have been doing photography for some time and have seasoning can make the L sing, but for your needs I think the non-L lenses will suit you just fine. Don't get in over your head on gear you may or may not ever use because if you decide that all of it isn't for you, you won't get all of that money back selling your lenses. Best get the needs you need now and worry about upgrading later when that little one starts running around. I was in the same situation you were in when I had my first and it has grown from there. I purchased the 7D when the kids were getting too active that the AF of the current rebel I had couldn't keep up. Purchase when you need, not everything at once because like what was said babies are expensive!

[shutterdown]

I don't think anyone has mentioned one lens that is great, and that's the 15-85. It's sharper than the 17-55 and has a wider zoom range. I have both lenses and use the 15-85 much more often. I've used natural light to take pictures of babies and toddlers in my family, and I couldn't be more pleased with this lens.
It's not quite as fast as the 17-55, but an inexpensive on-camera flash will fix that. A 430EXII and the 15-85 will be less money than the 17-55 alone.

I would consider this option. I would agree with the others on the 70-200. Hold off on it for now.

[Scott Stephen]

In seven (7) pages of "answers" no one has addressed the OP's titular question: What lens would be best for a baby trying to take pictures? Just about nothing comes to mind, given the typically awful coordination and strength of the average baby. I know I wouldn't trust my own 7-month-old with a disposable camera, much less a good body and "L" lens. Weatherproofing is no match for drool, I can tell you. Geez. Let the kid grow up, THEN train him up for photography.

[Magijr]

Thank you all for your responses, the information is appreciated. With each response I have enough new information to research for an hour.
If you have any more suggestions or points you would like to make on; 1) FF vs. Crop, or 2) Lens options for taking baby pictures -not babies taking pictures", then please send them my way.

I am going to a local photo shop (Milford Photo, Milford CT) on Monday to discuss if a FF is a better choice / investment than a crop camera for me now, or am I getting in over my head as some of you have suggested. And what lens best suites my needs - new father taking baby pictures.

Thank you again,
Bruce

[Richard Lane]

If you have any more suggestions or points you would like to make on; 1) FF vs. Crop, or 2) Lens options for taking baby pictures

I am going to a local photo shop (Milford Photo, Milford CT) on Monday to discuss if a FF is a better choice / investment than a crop camera for me now, or am I getting in over my head as some of you have suggested.

Hi Bruce,

FF is definitely not over anyones head. In the past, when people bought an SLR film camera it was called a 35mm camera which is what FF is. The 35mm sensor set the standard for the film. Now with the new digital cameras we aren't limited to 35mm film anymore, so it's easier for the companies to produce smaller, less expensive digital cameras with crop sensors. Another advantage of a crop sensor is that it allows for longer reach of your lens, so you can shoot from farther away with the same lens. A 100mm lens on a 1.6X crop camera will shoot similarly to a 160mm lens. The same 100mm lens on a FF (35mm) camera will shoot at 100mm. Photographers that shoot wildlife and sports from far away prefer the crop sensors for the further reach.

The effect of the crop sensor is similar to how we used to blow up photos to be larger during developing. The down side of the crop sensor is that it is smaller, therefore it will capture less light than a FF sensor. When you capture less light without a flash, in light limited situations (your house) then you will have more noise in your images, which is not desirable, similarly to when a photograph was blown up to larger size, it became grainy. You don't need the reach of a crop sensor camera, but you will be penalized with the greater image noise in lower lighting. You could also buy a flash and/or a more expensive faster lens, with a larger aperture that will let in more light (example 35mm f/1.4). I'm not a big fan of flash for babies and there is also an additional learning curve to allow the flash to look natural, as well as avoiding red eye.

So, FF cameras are more expensive, they let in more light which provides for higher quality images in lower light situations and they have less reach.

You don't need the reach, but you could benefit from letting more light into the camera. So, it comes down to price! Is FF necessary for your needs, no, not really, but if you have the money to spend and you like the best of the best, and you see yourself pursuing this as a hobby into the future then a FF camera could be a good choice for you. Also keep in mind, that many professional photographers use crop cameras all of the time, and they can produce excellent results. You should also be aware that there are less expensive crop cameras as well as more expensive crop cameras. The Canon 5D MKII which is full frame starts at around $2000, the newly released 5D MKIII is around $3500 probably cheaper on Amazon, and FF can go up to $7000.

You will first have to decide which camera you want; Crop vs FF, before deciding on a lens, because as I mentioned the sensor size will affect the field of view that your lens choice will render.

Rich


Edited: Canon will be having a photography convention around September, called Photokina. They usually announce new products at these events. There is some talk that Canon may introduce a less expensive FF camera in order to compete with Nikon. So, if you're not in a rush, I would wait a little longer before making a decision.

Edited-Edited: I also added info about a flash. Also be aware that most photo editing software can also remove noise in the images.

[Magijr]

Thank you for your reply Rich. I am going to look in to the Photokina, great idea. You stated that Canon has rumored a release of a less expensive FF camera to compete with Nikon at the Photokina. What Nikon do you think is the cheapest FF camera? I am guessing that this less expensive Nikon is the one that Canon will compete with, and if so, what price do you think Canon will sell their FF camera for?

It seam counter productive to me that Canon just released the Rebel t4i and the 5D MKIII in the past 6 months, and they will release another camera? Is this standard in the industry?

You have certainly got me thinking and I appreciate that, thank you again Rich.

Bruce

[HDNitehawk]

It seam counter productive to me that Canon just released the Rebel t4i and the 5D MKIII in the past 6 months, and they will release another camera? Is this standard in the industry?

If you are waiting on Canon to release a new camera based on a rumor you may be waiting until your daughter/son graduate high school before you get a camera at all. You can't trust rumors you hear about Canon. In the past we have only seen a small percentage of the rumors ever materialize as the real thing. You could almost attribute the rumors that were correct to random chance, enough guesses and someone will get it right. Some could claim accuracy because they did predict the release of a 5D III, but most of those people also predicted the release of a 1Ds IV.

In the past you could predict that the next generation of Canon cameras would have a much higher pixel count since for the past dozen years each new release had a higher and higher count, those making those predictions in the last round of cameras failed miserably as Canon lowered the pixel count with the flagship camera.

My advice is ignore the rumors and choose from what is available now.

Anyway, if you decide to go Full Frame I would go with the 5D III. Cameras are just like computers after three or so years they are old news. The 5D II is old news now, where the 5D III should have a good two or three year run. The 5D II is still a good camera, but it is technology over three years old. You will not have a problem using either 5D, as it will have a setting that is automatic and lets the camera decide all the settings. You will only have to point it and shoot to get it to work. You can take control of the settings more and more as you learn.

[Steve U]

This site has some of the best advice around, a lot of it usually ends up costing you more money. Which is OK, but if you haven't done your first photography course yet, maybe the priority is to learn first and spend later. As detailed on the first page, your great camera would benefit from the addition of the 17-55mm Canon lens, I wouldn't be thinking of switching to FF for a little while yet, but it might be worth considering down the track a bit.

Formal photography lessons usually return better image quality than a new lens, if you are a beginner in most cases.
Good luck with it, I look forward to you sharing some images with your new gear.