> Take tons of photos, they change a lot very quickly.
Speaking of photos, make sure you have an SLR/interchangeable lens camera with a good fixed ("prime") portrait lens.
The image quality of large sensor cameras is way ahead of compact cameras (not to mention camera phones). Given that young babies spend most of their time indoors, you need a fast lens to use natural light and avoid using the flash.
Slowmo Guys actually have a video detailing some of the challenges of filming in high speed (most of which have to do with light - or lack thereof): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lZvF-YyP0s
I'd like to see a shutter-speed race. My last 2 (inexpensive) cameras were slow on the draw and I frequently missed good shots of my kids. If I tried to take an action shot, it was nothing but blur.
(One trick that I use for family photos is to use a delay of 1 second, to avoid the movement when I press the shutter. (It's not useful when there are kids. One second later they are in another room.))
> But when someone is moving closer/further away from you (as probably happens when you're a stationary photographer among dancers) the ability to not worry about what's in focus right now seems huge.
But the subject is still moving quickly - the Lytro can't compensate for that.
Dark, high movement indoor scenes (dancing, sports, etc) are always some of the toughest situations to shoot in, and are probably one of the times where gear can make a substantial difference between getting a "passable" shot and getting a completely unusable one.
Stop down as much as you can, zone focus, push the ISO up to maintain the minimum shutter for the activity at hand and shoot. You can get push ISO higher if you're not looking to print big (as in, 16x20" and up) too, which can help give you more breathing room.
> Lastly, from a technical perspective, sensors and lenses
> on cheaper cameras are pretty good these days, and
> generally when you shooting you don't want full manual.
True, but focus speed and low-light performance are still very lacking compared to SLRs. And I'd say these two are quite important for family stuff: just try to take photo of playing kids with camera which is slow to focus or has substantial shutter lag. Not all family dinners are brightly lit either.
I'm not the OP, but nighttime street photography would be great, such as walking around NYC at night. Right now I am having to handhold at 1/10th second and 3200 ISO, which makes any moving subject a blur (in addition to the shake from my hands).
Nice little project and writeup! I thought about using my SLR but I don't want to bump it's shutter count too much, and since I have young kids in the house, there's no good place I can set it up on a tripod for long periods of time without it taking a tumble :(
Yeah I usually just use exposure comp too, it works pretty well most of the time but candids when everyone's moving and the background is changing can be pretty hard without a fill flash to help out a bit. Thank god for iso invariance though.
You know how strobe light photography lets you 'freeze' very fast moving things so you can study what they look like mid motion. This is used for basically that, except for much much smaller things moving much much faster.
I have a Canon T3i and 2 young kids. AI servo is the right idea in theory, but on even a lower-end DSLR it just doesn't help much. If a kid is running towards the camera, it will keep refocusing as the subject moves, but it's always focusing on where the kid was a split second ago.
IIRC the higher-end cameras have algorithms to track the subject and predict where the subject WILL be and focus accordingly. However, I have many friends with Mk III's and they say it's a very hard problem that even the high-end DSLR's don't solve. As you can imagine it's not actually a solvable problem with the present AF latencies as the subject can change course after the algorithm guesses. And when you're shooting shallow DoF even a small mistake will kill the focus on the shot.
The question is whether the Lytro can operate at 1/200 or faster to solve that problem. The specs say 1/4000 is max shutter speed, but IIRC the actual capture speed isn't that fast...
I think they mean fill flash, which can help a lot. You can use a built in flash for that, if you look up "fill flash" tutorials you can find info. appropriate to your camera. I use a speedlight for fill flash, since I tend to shoot things that are a ways off, but the built in works well enough for close subjects.
True HDR is bracketing shots with different exposures, so the camera and subject need to be still. It requires a tripod for best results, though I've set the camera down on a flat surface and used a remote to do HDR. Without a tripod it's very limiting since you have way less control on where the camera can be placed.
They don't stay still and talk so you need something that does high ISO or good lighting.
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