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Didn't think I was going to take any shots when I visited friends and their 5 day old daughter last night.. But I thought, what the hell, and chucked some gear in the car. And by "some gear" I really mean a D200 and a 50/1.8

Conditions were pretty ordinary - lighting was one single light bulb of dubious brightness so I was shooting at ISO 1100 and f/1.8. What this means of course is lots of grain and next to sod all depth of field. Most of the shots weren't as sharp as I'd like either due to compromising a little on the shutter speed.

with those limitations in mind, I thought I'd use some of them as "creative choices". In the first and third shots, I sharpened to exaggerate grain and in the second, I used noise reduction to soften it quite a bit. Then I pushed down the saturation to minimise the effect of colour noise and then decided to go with a high contrast look.

As I said, I hadn't even really planned to take any shots, but I hope I got a couple of nice casual ones. I tried explaining about the noise and the lighting and the DOF and whatnot... but the parents are pretty happy with them, which is all that really matters I suppose

Any suggestions and tips etc on how to maximise keepers in lousy conditions welcome

Hey Des,

Softness isn't so much of an issue with baby photos IMO, and #2 is a good example of this. This is a lovely shot.

Only thing I don't really like in this set is the muted colour - especially in #3 - it seems very cold. I would go for B&W or Colour here. You could go a bit warmer as well, I think.

#3 probably doesn't lend itself to the soft/grainy look as well as the others, since the focus is really on the foot/hand. I would have preferred to see a bit more light and more emphasis on the texture of their skin here. That is what that type of shot is about for me, and there just isn't enough detail there.

Cheers

The last one would work better as a really tight crop on the baby's foot in the dad's hands. The OOF elements don't add anything to the image and agree with just a nice and clean b&w conversion.

try the tight crop on the foot.
#2 is a great shot. Works for me.