Learning Center
Using Fast Aperture

After several weeks of nonstop rain, we had nice weather the day Sydney and I met up for our photo shoot. We started the day by taking the little red wagon down to the beach. She played with some shells for several hours and we returned back to Sydney's house for dinner. Though Syd can't really cook yet fortunately her dad can and with moms help driving the wagon and taking care of wardrobe, it made for a fun and relaxing day of taking photographs.

Kids run through a gamete of expressions over very little time, therefore I recommend taking a lot of pictures in many different situations. Trying to get a two year old to do something twice is often a challenge. In fact trying to get a two year old to do something once can equally be a challenge. I just let kids be themselves. I never wait for the "right" moment to take a photograph. There are so many "right" moments that your best bet is to try to capture as many as possible.

When shooting children, I often experiment with the cameras perspective. Rather then always looking down on them, photographing kids at their level or even looking up to them often gives children much more presence and makes for engaging imagery.

All of theses images, taken two years ago, were photographed digitally using the Fuji S-1 SLR and the Tamron SP AF28-105 f2.8. Tamron has 2 newer fast aperture lenses available in the SP AF28-75mm F/2.8 XR Di and the SP AF90mm F/2.8 Di 1:1 Macro. The effective focal length of the 28-105 lens on this digital camera in 35mm terms is 42-158mm. Having this slightly longer perspective works quite well for portraits. I almost always set my camera to aperture priority. This allows the best control for the depth of field and in lower light situations, shutter speed control. For the portraits during the day I set my aperture around f8 and the effective ASA to 320 (which is the slowest on this particular camera). This blurred the background slightly while allowing enough depth of field to keep the subject in focus. Additionally, the shutter speed was up to at least 500th of a second, which is quick enough to freeze most quick movement. By dinnertime there was limited light on the back porch where over some barbecued swordfish and crayons, I took some more images of Sydney. I set the effective ASA at 800 and had the advantage of using a fast f2.8 lens wide open. That got my shutter speed up to between 60th and 180th of a second, which luckily was fast enough to stop most kid actions, especially after a day at the beach. At f2.8 especially with longer focal length lenses, focusing becomes critical because of the narrow depth of field that this combination permits. During the course of an hour I shot about 60 images. The collage was created in Photoshop where the images were also converted to black and white (and I retouched out the "binky" marks from her face).