Is it safe to use flash with a Newborn Photo Shoot? My strobe system in newborn photography

Описание: We all know,the best time frame to shoot newborn is within 2 weeks, sometimes can be as little as 5 days. Is it safe to use flash? How to safely use light without harming the baby? Of course as a newborn photographer, safety is our number one priority. Today I'm going to share with you my knowledge of using strobe lighting safely, and what kind of lighting is dangerous or may potentially harm our precious little human being. Let's dive straight in.

First thing first, let's understand my light.

I use eistein 640 with a 1.8 meters umbrella. the strobe is fitted invert which means it uses bounced light to lit my subject. The umbrella is covered with two layers of white cloth to soften the light.

Safe lighting, we need to meet 3 conditions.

1. Your strobe output needs to be able to adjust to a very low level. My model can go as low as 1/256 with an output of 2.5wats, up to 640 wats. Even the model light itself has a 250 wats output. During my shoot, most of the setting the level sits in between 1/64-128, meaning the amount of light is not even as strong as what you see right now. So a decent strobe model is the first fact of safety lighting.

2. You need a light modifier. The bigger your light modifier is, the softer your light will be.Theoretically, if your modifier is as big as your window, it can even achieve the same effect as your natural window light. I don't think there's such thing as natural light can damage your baby's eye.

3. This one is optional - Sleep. Newborns sleep throughout the day a lot. We put babies to sleep for shoot because it's more of a peaceful look and easier for us to percisely pose them. Not because it's unsafe to shoot with their eyes open. With the above mentioned lighting system, and where the light place, even if they are awake, the flash is very bearly noticeable to them. It's like you turn up your light in your room with their burry visions (newborns eyes can only reach 8-12 inches away after birth with a black and white blurry vision).


Now what is an unsafe way of using flash light?

No matter when or where, using your phone's flash to take a photo of your baby is very dangerous. The reason being when you shoot with your phone, generally we are very close to the baby's face and focusing on the eyes. Not to mention the immature infants, even you shoot this way for an adult, you will feel unconfortable for the eyes. However if you move your phone away from the face, and cover the flash with a piece of tissue, you will feel a lot less intense. I don't recommend you use this method to flash your baby, it's just an example for you to understand the phylosophy behind our studio strobe lighting system.