My first granddaughter was born today, at 03:22. Addison Margaret May Shepherd-Willems, weighing in at almost 7 lbs.

(1/125 sec, f/3.5, ISO1000, probably with flash assist)

I had to shoot these in a very dark hospital room. Today I used a combination of:

• High ISO, large aperture, no flash (I had an f/1.4 lens and an f/1.2 lens, as well as an f/2.8 zoom)
• Medium ISO, flash
• High ISO, flash assist

(1/100, f/1.4, ISO3200, probably without flash)

The thing is: I am not sure which ones I used flash for. And that is a key lesson to take away from this: good flash photos can often look like no flash photos.

(1/125 sec, f/4, ISO 1600, with flash assist)

Another key lesson: exposing to the right makes for low noise. I call this Willems’s Dictum: “Bright Pixels Are Sharp Pixels”. Shooting at high ISO is fine as long as you expose brightly: exposing to the right is as important as ISO.

In other words, a dark shot at 1600 ISO looks grainier than a bright shot at 3200 ISO. Noise, like cockroaches and politicians, hides in the dark. Do NOT under-expose. Even worse, of course, is under-exposing and then pulling up (thus increasing the noise). Exposing to the right *(i.e brighly) is good; exposing to the right and then darking is even better, if you have that luxury.

(1/250 sec, f/1.4, ISO 1000, flash)

A final note: of course you realize that shooting at f/1.4 means that you have to focus accurately, and that you had better be sure what is important in your picture. But clouds have silver linings: I use the shallow depth of field as a benefit. It allows you to choose one subject to emphasize and to blur out the rest.

Toronto residents: Saturday I teach at Vistek. Studio lighting and portrait lighting. Join me there, a great opportunity to get small class help from me! https://www.vistek.ca/events/ and sign up now: limited space.