4 Tips for Taking Great Baby Pictures - Even If You're Not a Professional by Alexis Dawes

4 Tips for Taking Great Baby Pictures - Even If You're Not a Professional by Alexis Dawes

When my daughter Layla was born I had a hard time putting the camera down.
And apparently I wasn't the only one. The cashier at the photo developing
shop told me that new parents comprised a fairly sizable chunk of their
business.

We can't help it! Babies are such beautiful creatures that you want to
capture every new movement and every fleeting smile that comes along.
(Even if that smile is attached to a smelly gas bubble!)

However the problem many parents have is that their lack of good photography
skills can translate into pictures that are too dark, too bright, blurry,
out of focus, uncentered, and so on. Perhaps this describes you.

If so, don't sweat it. These problems are easily fixable. An album full
of mishaps can quickly be transformed by following these 4 tips...

1) When taking pictures of babies lying on their backs, stand directly
over them and shoot straight down.

I used to take a solid color baby blanket and place it on the floor
in a bright, sun filled room. When I was ready to take a picture I would
put Layla on the blanket, and adjust it around her, making sure not to
put her directly in the sunlight. Then I'd get on my knees right over her,
aim straight down and snap away.

This technique will allow you to center the camera properly and you'll
get some great close-up shots. The natural sunlight will often give you
just enough light so your picture isn't too dark or too bright.

2) Capture a range of emotions.

Smiling babies are cute. But so are crying babies and pouting babies
and messy babies and sleeping babies.

Be sure to take pictures of your little one in all phases of his or her
emotion filled life. You'll be amazed at how truly beautiful they are
in non-traditional picture taking situations.

3) Make bath time picture time.

While there are some babies who don't like water, most love it. They often
become very expressive in the bath tub - laughing, cooing and splashing.
So bath time often becomes a great opportunity to capture a few precious
shots of your little one.

I've personally used the bathtub to document how Layla has changed
over her 2+ years. Every couple of months I take a few close-up pictures
of her in the bathtub. Then I take the best one and place it in a special
section in the photo album.

It's truly amazing to see how her face changes so dramatically with each
new picture.

4) If you use a disposable camera, choose a good one.

I purchased 3 dirt cheap disposable cameras before I had Layla. When we
brought her home these were the ones we used for the first week of
photo taking.

Boy was I disappointed! The pictures developed horribly. And as a new
mommy with hormones still raging, you know how sad this made me. Those
cuddly little moments can never be relived again.

I learned a good lesson though. You get what you pay for.

Now my disposable camera of choice is the Kodak Max HQ. It's one of
the more pricey disposable cameras. However the quality is fantastic
in comparison to other disposables I've used.

You can usually buy them inexpensively on eBay. Popular retailers like
Target and Wal-Mart also run sales on them quite frequently.
About the Author
Alexis Dawes is a real mom (not a professional photographer) who runs
the Photograph-Your-Baby.com web site. Check out her free 20+ page tutorial
that teaches parents how to take better pictures of their little one
(http://www.Photograph-Your-Baby.com).

Cell phone cameras by Jakob Jelling

Cell phone cameras by Jakob Jelling

A lot of myths exist regarding as to whether the cell phone cameras are any good or not. The fact that people require to admit that these cameras are also digital cameras and they exhibit the same facilities irrespective of the fact that their sizes are much smaller and their functionalities are curtailed due to this particular reason. Hence some introspection needs to be done regarding the digital cameras and cell phones in their joint venture together in the technological world!

Looking back into the initial stages of development the availability of low-cost, low-power CMOS imaging modules helped to charge up the popular craze camera enabled cell phones in today's world that primitively began in Japan. That proved to be contagious for the rest of the world. From young students to even busy business people avidly annals photos of colleagues and whatever else passes in front of their phones. The popularity has touched sky high and the reason being the good quality that people seek at grass root level endeavors of photography. Americans have the urge to seek betterment in these areas also. They go about to seek cool new digital camera phones that all have VGA resolution 640 x 480 pixels. This is considered a safe bet that this phone is the most expensive model.

Much of a kind of ignorance exists apart from all this regarding the cell phones cameras and it crops from the fact that no benchmarks exist for objectively comparing picture quality in image sensors, camera modules, or end products. The helpless consumers thus have to rely upon advertisements to tell them much. Yet this is not a correct way to knowing a technical device. Considering the technological portion it can be said here that in the cell phone cameras some of the VGA handsets offer fairly good image quality. When you consider that the resolution comes from an imaging module that measures only 6 mm square, its actually pretty amazing quality. That square includes an imaging chip, a digital signal processor (DSP) that supports the VGA format, and a double lens that's packaged in a light-tight module. Finding room for this module is easy. Plus, power consumption is low because the imaging chip is CMOS.

Considering the further improvements in the cell phone camera technology it can be stated here that some cell phones have incorporated conventional CCD imaging units that are still used in most digital cameras today. These devices require high voltage and a bigger a battery. As a result, CMOS has taken over in VGA-resolution applications. It provides increasingly good image quality. All this discussion shows the various achievements in the technology. However it must be stated here that the cell phone cameras are really good but they are nothing compared to the actual digital cameras. The sole reason being that they are much larger and contain far more features. It must be admitted here that such comparison is irrelevant because they are definitely two separate areas of work in spite of the fact that they are both digital cameras. Yet they are diverse in 100% of all their aspects. Hence the comparison is irrelevant.

Considering all the important points discussed in the above lines regarding the various areas of the cell phone digital cameras it comes out to be something that is worth appreciation. Leaving aside all comparisons they cell phone cameras are digital cameras that are certainly good in their areas of applications and mass acceptance and popularity would some day make them as advanced as their pioneer professional digital cameras.
About the Author
Jakob Jelling is the founder of http://www.snapjunky.com. Visit his digital camera guide and learn how to take better pictures with your digicam.