Marco Equipment for Baby shots

[RadioPath]

My baby is currently three weeks old and all I have been doing during my lucid moments is take pictures. I can tell you that the close up lens options are not a good idea. Newborn skin is the not the perfect skin and they have a lot of blotches etc. With any kind of CA, the blotches become much harder to clear up and clean up. I realized that newborns don't look like the babies in enfamil and huggies ads. So post production is a lot harder if you dont get the skin tones correct in camera. This means both proper exposure and good equipment.

Also with photos of faces of babies, showing the eyelids very sharp adds quite a bit to the impact i think. I feel that most of the photo is soft because their features are soft. The only sharp thing on the baby are their eyelids (and their nails!). You want them real sharp and clear to give the most impact to the picture.

All of it means you need the sharpest lens with the least amount of distortions/CA. To me this is the 100 Macro L or the 135 mm lens.

I have been taking photos and the photos from the 135 mm are usable straight out of the camera with no post. I mean no post. No color rendition changes needed, no smoothening the distracting background needed, no unrealistic sharpening of the eyes to make them stand out.

I have been really happy with both the 100mm macro L and the 135.

I hear your point about non clear skin, my first one had it really badly, hopefully 2nd one will be less affected. I would LOVE to have the 100L Macro, it is definitely on my wish list. I don't think it is on my can-currently-afford-list Let's see what my tax return brings...
I always make sure the eyes are nicely in focus. Since I use low apertures b/c of the low light the skin gets smoothed out tiny bit anyway. Would just like to have some very nice hand and feet photos, although the 6D brought considerable improvement over the 400D already.

 

[xylus]

In my case, I used my EF-S 60mm Macro with MT-24Ex macro flash.....gave me some good results. But its not for FF sensor

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

Although I love my 100mmL because I use it hand held, this is one area where third party lenses are less expensive and excellent. If you want to keep the cost down, consider one of the many fine third party macro's.

The advantage of a longer focal length macro is the working distance. A 50mm Macro on FF must be very close to get 1:1 magnification. 100mm, or more gives a reasonable working distance.