According to the Chinese calendar, 2016 is the year of the Monkey, so for our holiday card this year, we dressed our little one up as a monkey. This is the shot we used, although I did manage to get a few more good ones.
Shooting babies is tricky. She can’t sit up yet, so we propped her up with pillows and gave her a banana to play with. It wasn’t easy to get her in the perfect position and everything ready, and then I had to get myself and the camera back in the perfect position.
Monkey Baby – XT1
For this shot, I used the Fujifilm XT1 with the 56mm f1.2 lens. I only used one light: the Einstein E640 flash unit with a 48″ Westcott Rapid Octabox. What ended up happening was even with the power turned all the way down on the flash head, it was still too bright, so I had to aim it up and partially bounce it off the ceiling. I think it’s one of the drawbacks of Fujifilm’s lowest ISO, which is only 200. The Einstein was just about one stop too bright when shooting wide open on an f1.2 lens. The good part about ISO 200 is that even if you are overexposed by one stop, you can always recover that information.
I believe I used a Kodak Ektar simulator, but I can’t remember exactly. It was something in VSCO’s Film 5 Pack. It’s pretty much the only pack I use these days.
