Pregnancy & Birth Announcement Blog

We get more requests for information about how to take great pictures of newborn babies than all other topics combined.   We will try our best to cover this vast topic as it regards to newborn baby pictures for birth announcements. 

 First, you have to know your equipment.  What are you using for a camera?  Are you using a digital or film camera.  If it is digital what megapixel is the camera?  If it is a film camera, do you really know how to use it?  My guess is, if you are using an actual 35mm you know what you are doing.  If you don’t know how to use a 35mm camera or you have an old automatic I strongly recommend you start with a new camera.  The newest cameras are all 5 megapixel and above and will create pictures with a high enough resolution for just about any project.  We will talk more about “resolution” later and what that means exactly.  Best Buy has 5 mexapixel cameras starting at under $100 dollars.  Even the most basic digital is going to allow you to create better pictures in the long run. 

Ok… so you have a camera but other than the button that takes the picture, do you know how to use it?  Does it have a white balance feature, can you adjust the aperture, zoom, and shutter speed?  Is there a auto focus and manual focus?  Is the zoom optical or digital or both?  If you are confused and couldn’t answer these questions…  go find your manual and read it.  You are going to be shocked at what you learn about that great Christmas present.

Stop reading… I said go find your manual and read it… Really!

Ok… so you read your manual and you know how to what kind of camera you have, how to use it and what all those little buttons and menus do.  This is the first step to great pictures…  Just like any artist or craftsman, you have to know your tools.  Luckily, the average digital camera today on the normal “snapshot” setting will take great pictures.  I would recommend keeping the megapixel level at 4 or above but 3 megapixels will do for birth announcements although it will restrict your ability to blow up pictures.  If you have a 2 megapixel camera or lower… upgrade if you can…

 Let me say, that it is not important to have a super expensive camera with lots of functions.  Especially if you don’t know how to use them anyway.  Like I said earlier, a modestly priced digital camera will do fine…

Now you are ready to take some pictures.  In part 2 we will discuss how to frame the picture, angles, light and its effects, portrait or landscape, focus, and some other tidbits on taking great pictures.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 19th, 2007 at 10:40 pm and is filed under February 2007. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.