In case you didn’t know, we received a new baby into our family last week.  She is a beautiful and healthy little girl.  Both mother and daughter are doing well.  We have been very blessed.  She is already sleeping through most of the night and has been a joy to us.  I am thrilled to have her join our little family.

A little Tech Talk:

During an infant portrait, it is important to keep in mind that flashes and loud camera equipment can interfere with the portrait session itself. The equipment matters to the point that it does not interfere with the portrait session.

I shot all of these infant portraits with the Canon 1D Mark IV, a pro level camera, that offers an incredible 12800 ISO, which allows for very low light photography.  This ability was absolutely invaluable as I photographed our new little baby.  I hate using a flash during an infant portrait session and especially during the documentation process at the hospital.  It is just a bad idea to use a flash.  So shooting at a high ISO with a fast lens is the right way to photograph an infant.

In addition to the high ISO, one other invaluable option on the new Mark IV is the silent shutter mode.  Those who shoot with smaller, consumer or pro-summer cameras will find that the sound of the shutter is not too loud to begin with, still perhaps enough to wake the baby, but not too abrasive.  However, pro camera bodies have much more durable shutters and they make a lot more noise when they fire.  This is not good for weddings or infant portraits.  If you want the baby to continue sleeping, you can’t start snapping a loud shutter a few feet from her face.  And even when she’s awake, that shutter can startle her.  But the ever so quiet “silent” mode on the Mark IV work nicely.  It softens the noise made by the shutter movement by slowing down the movement of the shutter and by separating out the two movements of the shutter.  Pushing the shutter release button trips the shutter to expose the chip, but the shutter reset movement only occurs after you release the shutter release button.  It is a fairly ingenious system and helps to mitigate the noise coming from the camera.

While the baby was sleeping, I put the camera in Silent mode and when I was ready for her to wake up, I took it out of Silent mode and sure enough, she started to stir as a result of the sharp noise from the shutter on the camera.  So the noisy shutter turned out to be useful as well.

If you have shot with the 1D Mark III, you will have used this feature as well.  They seem to have improved it in this model.  It feels even quieter.  Still not anything like a leica and the 50D and other pro-summer models are just as quiet in normal mode as the 1D M IV is in silent mode, but their shutters are not nearly as durable.