Shot with my Canon Digital Rebel Xsi
Sigma 30mm 1.4 lens at these settings:
F 2.8
Shutter speed 1/100 – 1/125
ISO 200.
Image Post Processing in Adobe Lightroom 2.0

Even though Jasper has been sitting for over two months now, he’s STILL not so steady that I feel all that comfortable taking pictures of him sitting. Part of the problem is that he learned to crawl shortly afterwards and is MUCH more interested in being mobile and so never gets the practice in he needs to become a rock steady sitter! But I’m tired of taking pictures of him lying down, so props like this basket are a great solution!

I bought this one for about $10 at TJMaxx. My advice is to bring baby with you and actually try sitting him/her in various baskets to see which ones are tall enough, wide enough, won’t tip over etc. I found it really hard to visualize how he would fit without actually trying it.

The backdrop I used here is a throw from Ikea called “Ofelia”, but it is not the wooly Ofelia one that they have on the website (though I have that one too and love it!) but rather a lighter weight one with more of a honey comb type weave.. I can’t explain it, but I love how in these images it looks almost like waves.

Now for the educational portion of this post..

Please don’t take this the wrong way if you have done this before..but I implore you, do not take pictures of your precious children with a white wrinkly sheet hanging behind them!

I see this all the time on the bump messageboards… A perfectly adorable picture and instead of focusing on the face, my eye is immediately drawn to the wrinkles that looks like, well, dirty laundry. It would be MUCH better to find a blank wall, at least it won’t have wrinkles.

Or, an easier option (because seriously, who has time to IRON?) is to buy a piece of felt or fleece from a fabric or craft store. They may not be totally wrinkle free, but a lot less wrinkly than a sheet. Another option is a throw like mine from IKEA which has a texture already so can’t wrinkle or even a thick white cotton or linen curtain because it is heavier weight material and won’t wrinkle as easily either.

If you have none of these, it is still better to find a nice area of your house to photograph your baby than a wrinkly white sheet. I say this out of love people, so please don’t shoot the messenger :)

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So here’s where most of you who like looking at pictures more than taken them will want to stop reading.. what follows is long and fairly technical (boring?) but may be of interest to some of you so I will post it anyway!

I have often raved about/recommended my Canon 50mm 1.8 lens. It is simply put the best bargain out there for how much lens you get for the money. It is so far superior to the canon kit lens and will allow you to capture pictures in low light situations that you may have otherwise missed, and for that it is priceless!

But, I began to notice that a very high percentage of the pictures I took with this lens were out of focus.

Here is where it gets tricky because shooting in low light means you have to have the aperture wide open and wide open means softer focus overall.

It also means extremely shallow depth of field so for example you may find that the eye you focused on is in focus but the other eye is blurry! That is how shallow a depth of field you can get with this lens.. which can actually be desirable.. if the auto focus focuses on the right thing that is!

In my case, it seemed to often focus on something in front of my focus point (which is always one of Jasper’s eyes as it should be, you want the eyes in focus at the very least) or sometimes even behind my focus point.

For a long time I attributed it to user error, but as I began to read more about front and back focus (that’s what it is called when it picks up an object in back of or in front of the intended focus point) I began to also wonder if my copy of the lens suffered from it.

There are numerous focus test charts available online with instructions on how to use them. These are hotly debated and I include a shot or two of the test charts just to back up the results of what I found in real life shooting situations (by examining my images) which is what really matters after all.

As they say, a picture is worth 1,000 words, so here are a few examples of what I’m talking about.

This is a picture of Jasper in the tub. There was very low light, so the lens is open to 2.0, one stop down from the max aperture of 1.8:

A little soft overall, which I would expect at 2.0, but here is a closer crop that shows how the eyes are much softer than the little green toy and the corner of his mouth:

The problem is that I placed the center focus point on his back eye not the toy, so the lens in this case is front focusing which seems to be what happens most often. I have an occasional back focus problem with it like in the next picture:

You don’t even need a close crop to see that Jasper is out of focus while the bear behind him is in focus. I KNOW I was aiming the center focus point on his eye, so it should be the other way around, Jasper should be in focus and the bear should not.

There are so many people that will say that with such a shallow DOF focusing is soft etc, and it’s true except in this case the focus is there, it’s just in the wrong place.  I read so much of this that I truly believed maybe it was just me, or the nature of shooting wide open.

That’s when I decided to shoot a picture of the test chart with my lens and compare it with my friend Jason’s canon 50mm 1.4.

Here is my shot:

I put the center focus point on the text that says “Focus here” and you can see that even though that text should be perfectly clear it is completely blurry. Only at about 20mm does it come into good focus. (taken at 1.8)

Now this is the shot taken with the cannon 50mm 1.4 with aperture open all the way to 1.4:

It’s hard to tell without seeing it closer up, but even from this distance you can tell that it is much clearer where it is supposed to be.

So, by now I was convinced that my lens has an autofocus issue, luckily it is still under warrantee so I can send it to cannon to recalibrate. The thing is, this lens is AMAZINGLY sharp when it does lock focus correctly, see how clear the right eye is at 2.0 (straight out of camera, no sharpening)?

That’s what this lens is capable of, just not my copy on a consistent basis.

So what to do? I needed to send it in to canon but I didn’t want to be without a good lens for a week or two, so I took the opportunity to buy the Sigma 30mm 1.4 I’d been researching. I wanted to try something with a wider angle than the 50mm (nifty fifty as it’s known) because on a crop body camera like my Rebel Xsi, a 50mm focal length is the equivalent of about 80mm.

What that gobledegook translates into is that if you look into a 50mm lens on a full frame canon (like the 5D Mark II that I’d love to get my hands on – like when pigs fly!) It looks about how you see things in real life. But if you do the same on a crop sensor camera it is actually zoomed in, so when you look into the view finder you are seeing things CLOSER than they are in real life.

That is no problem at all unless like me you live in a very old house. A very old house with teeny tiny rooms and you can’t actually back up enough to get Jasper and that whole giant bear into the frame without chopping off it’s head! So a 30-35mm is considered “wide angle” on a full frame camera, but on the rebel or any other crop body camera it is actually closer to what a 50mm is on a full frame (ie ‘normal”).

So that’s the reason why the 30mm.. and of course 1.4 is great because all lenses are sharper when NOT open all the way, which means if I normally shoot at about 2.0, that’s close to wide open on my canon 1.8 lens, but farther away from wide open by two stops on the Sigma. Plus, you CAN shoot at 1.4 if you need to, which is amazing!

Now the downside: The Sigma doesn’t have the best reviews on amazon because there seems to be a bit of a QC issue, some copies of the lens are not very sharp and a few customers had to send it back to Amazon up to three times to get a sharp copy.  But when you do get one it is supposedly very very sharp.

So I decided that I would throw the dice and order the lens just to have while my beloved 1.8 is at the Canon hospital. If I got a great sharp copy of the Sigma and liked the 30mm angle I’d keep it. If not, I’d return it when my canon gets sent back.

Well, the results are in, I believe I got a very sharp copy! Shooting with this lens has also confirmed for me that my focus issues where NOT entirely user error because the same shots that would have caused my canon much confusion are right in focus with the sigma.

Here are some examples:

Wide open at 1.4 my center focus point was on Jasper’s eye:

There was plenty of stuff in the foreground of this image that the lens could have mistakenly locked focus on, but it was right on. Here’s a closer crop:

Granted it’s not the sharpest image in the world at 1.4, but at 1.4 you can’t expect razor sharp. The point is that it focused where it was supposed to!

Another example:

Again, it could have easily front focused on Jeff’s arm, but Jasper’s eyes are quite clear (it is really grainy though because of the high ISO, but that is to be expected and no fault of the lens!):

PHEW! Are you still with me? If you are, you probably are someone who thinks they might also have a bad copy of a lens because that was a lot to read through!

If you just skimmed to the bottom, here are some takeaway points I want to emphasize:

1) The canon 1.8 is NOT A BAD LENS, in fact it is a GREAT lens.  It is almost universally loved (read the amazon reviews) and I have rarely heard a complaint about front focusing or any autofocus issues so I’m pretty sure I’m in the minority here.

2) The Sigma 1.4 is a fantastic lens if you can get your hands on a sharp copy. But at $409 retail compared to the Canon 1.8 it SHOULD be a bit of an upgrade. If not, that’s a waste of over $300 :)

3) Trust your instincts. If you have a focusing problem with a lens it very may well be user error. But if you research on how to focus better and you are still not seeing improved results try borrowing a friend’s lens and using it at the same aperture and see if maybe you are not crazy after all.

This story is to be continued when my lens returns from Canon…

Oh my, so much to post I don’t even know where to begin… First there are these Easter pictures of Jasper. There are so many that they need their own post.

Then, there is how much I am LOVING my new Sigma 30mm 1.4 lens and the story of why I got it (a will be a separate post).

And how I am also becoming an Adobe Lightroom 2.0 convert! All of these images were edited SOLELY in Lightroom (no photoshop) except one or two where I edited in Lightroom and then did a quick cloning out of the tag on the bunny ears in Photoshop and then brought it back into Lightroom.

For those of you that don’t know what the heck Lightroom is, don’t worry, neither did I until about 2 weeks ago. And even after I got the program I still didn’t really understand it until I watched all of the excellent tutorials on Adobe’s website. This also deserves it’s own post which I’ll do later.

Lastly, Jasper is REALLY military crawling now. It took him about two more days after the last video to kick it into high gear and get where he wants to go in half the time. That new video will also be a separate post.

I predict you’re going to be sick of hearing from me this week!
;)

Yes, we like to start ‘em young!

Our overnight trip to Brooklyn required a stop at Irving Plaza so Daddy could pick up tickets to see the Drop Kick Murphys. The detour was the perfect excuse to drop by the East Village and visit uncle Justin who was working behind the bar at our old hang out 7B. We had hoped to see Nicole who’s family owns the bar to show her how cute Jasper looks in the shirt she gave him but we missed her by an hour!

Jasper of course got thirsty (it is a bar after all) and once he finished his bottle he still wanted another round… so I nursed him in the photobooth.

As my friend Amy put it: “That is not the first time that has happened there”.

“Huh? You think other people have nursed their baby in the photobooth?” I asked.

“No, I mean I’m sure that’s not the first time someone has put their mouth on someone else’s boob in the photobooth.”

Good point Ames.

Anyhow, it was fun to come back to the place we’d spent so much time as a carefree couple. How much change 5 years can bring!

In other news, Jasper seems to have completely unferberized over the past two days. Kill me know.

I’m sorry I didn’t post sooner, as you can imagine life with a newborn makes finding time to post more difficult. The birth story is also fairly lengthly as you are about to find out..

But first, the story in pictures:

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And now the birth story in short because most people won’t have the time or stamina to get through the full account (all 18 hours of it!)

The abbreviated version:

Monday August 17th I went into labor around 7pm. We were at the mall so we rushed home to pack our remaining items into the hospital bag. There had been some discussion earlier in the day with my midwives that my water had actually broken sometime that afternoon. (A high leak, not a full break though).

I labored for 6-7 excruciating hours of full on back labor making very little progress (Jasper was in posterior position) before deciding to get an epidural. This decision proved to be very wise because I had no idea that there were 12 more hours yet to come and a very prolonged pushing stage for which I would need to save my strength.

At some point during my slow dilation process Jasper’s heart rate started to decel to dangerously low levels between contractions. Unlike decels during contractions (which are the baby’s normal response to the contraction) these likely indicated a cord issue and the back up OB was called. He observed the decels and immediately booked an OR for a c-section.

Because he is an amazing and wonderful doctor, instead of sectioning me immediately, he allowed me to continue to labor as long as Jasper’s heart rate would return to normal before the next contraction. Part of this is also due to the fact that I started dilating extremely rapidly right at this point. It had taken me about 14-16 hours to get to 6cm but I went from 7-10 in no more than an hour. It was only because I was ready to push that they let me see if I could get the baby out before they needed to step in and do a section.

At around 11am Tuesday August 19th I started pushing. And I pushed and pushed but with the baby being posterior, he was having a really hard time fitting under the pubic bone. Then they turned off the epidural to make sure I was pushing as effectively as possible – Jasper needed to come out NOW.

The second (anesthesia free) hour of pushing was the most difficult and painful hour of my life. I seriously did not think I could do it. There was a point during the crowning where I started screaming to just get him out of me! The midwife actually attempted an epesiotomy (not to avoid a natural tear but to speed things along because the heart rate was such an issue) but later told me she couldn’t even fit the scissors in (sorry, way TMI.)

At 1:14pm August 19th with one final excruciating push I delivered Jasper’s head followed quickly by his body and our son was born!

The long and detailed version:

Monday August 18th.

2:45pm – Appointment with Midwife Lisha
At this point it is my third day of prodromal labor, I’ve woken up for 3 straight days with contractions thinking this would be the day! Three times that day before the appointment I felt a small gush and found bloody show and what I thought was left over thin mucus plug. I am devastated to find out from her internal that for the THIRD week in a row I am still at a fingertip – 1cm dilated and 50% effaced. Lisha does a fairly “vigorous” internal. She asks me why I think that those gushes weren’t amniotic fluid and does some litmus test strip that shows it was, but that could have been from the mucus. I am going over to the hospital anyway to see midwife Judy for a Non Stress Test. Lisha calls Judy and tells her to do the ferning test to see if my water has broken.

After a normal NST, Judy does the litmus test strip again which this time shows negative. ARGH! She also does the ferning test and does NOT see ferning, so no water. She still thinks MAYBE it’s a slow leak and asks me if I want to walk around for a couple hours and have her check me for dilation. I tell her I’d rather go labor at home for a while if I do indeed go into labor. We say goodbye and she tells me she has a feeling I might be back that night.

Jeff & I decide to go to the mall to walk around a bit, try to get things moving. We have an early dinner and walk down to old navy. I get my first real labor contraction, only it doesn’t last just a minute, its like one long 5 minute contraction. I am sitting down at a bench in the mall telling jeff I’m not sure I’ll make it out!

We make it home and start timing the contractions. They are about 7-8 minutes apart. I have another gush and call Judy who tells me to come in because she feels certain that I have a high leak.

I am FRANTICALLY packing our last minute stuff for the hospital, all the while pausing between the contractions to sit on the birthing ball. I realize that they are getting very painful very fast.

We finish packing and arrive at Phelps Hospital at 10pm.

Judy checks me and says I’m a “loose” 1cm and 80% effaced. She confirms that there is only a bag of forewaters meaning I did have a leak/break somewhere else along the way.

I am incredibly lucky that I got the best birthing room at Phelps, it is large and has a HUGE whirlpool tub that I promptly get in with the Jets aiming at my back. This is very soothing because I am having pretty bad back labor. I stay in the tub for about 2 hours at which point they need me to get out for some monitoring and to check my progress. After about 6-7 hours of labor I am only about 1-2 centimeters 80% effaced, but according to Judy the head is low at plus 1 station.

When I got this news something snapped. I have been having HORRIBLE back labor and all of the different positions we were trying weren’t doing a thing to make it even slightly more tolerable. The fact that I was barely dilating despite this excruciating pain was more than I could take.

Then the nurse uttered the magic words that the anesthesiologist was at the hospital to administer an epidural to another woman in Labor. The idea of letting him go home without also giving me an epidural was too much to bear.

My midwife tried convincing me to try stadol first, she thought it would allow me to get some sleep. But by this point, I knew I wouldn’t make it through this labor without getting an epidural at some point, and I told her I’d rather get just an epidural than an epidural AND stadol.

Best decision EVER!

The relief was immediate, and we were able to get a few hours of sleep.

At 7am the next morning, my midwife Judy came in to say she was leaving and that Sheila was coming on. She checked me one last time and pronounced me to only be at 3-4 centimeters but plus one station. So in 12 hours of labor I’d made a measly 3-4 centimeters progress.

When Sheila came in an hour or so later she checked me again and said I was three centimeters and zero station… so now I was not only progressing but REgressing!

The next part is a little blurry for me, but next thing I know they are waking me up and putting the oxygen mask on me. The baby’s heartrate is decelerating – not during contractions (which is normal) but AFTER each contraction which usually indicates a cord issue. They try chaning my position, but nothing seemed to help. The heartrate always rebounded, but Sheila called in their back up OB Dr. Mendellowitz (aka the OB from heaven). He watched the heart tracing and immediately opened the OR for me.

In the meantime, Sheila checks me again and lo and behold – PROGRESS. I’m at 8! They continue to monitor the baby’s heart rate after each contraction. At this point the midwife starts doing scalp stimulation on the baby’s head during every decel. A short time later at my next check I am pronounced to be at 10 – ready to push! I don’t remember exactly, but I’d say it took me about 14 hours to get from 1cm to 4 cms and maybe 2 hours (tops) to get from 5-10, and maybe just half an hour of that was getting from 8-10.

It was this rapid dilation that ultimately allowed me to very narrowly escape a c-section as it was clear the baby needed to come out as soon as possible.

The first hour of pushing went ok, but because the heart rate decels were getting more serious they needed to speed things along and it was then that I heard the most frightening words ever: “Turn off the epidural”.

Somewhere at this point they realized that the baby was posterior (explaining my horrendous back labor from the very beginning) and that pushing him under the pubic bone was going to be very difficult. (I recalled that during childbirth class they demonstrated this phenomenon with a model of a pelvis and a doll.)

The second hour (yes I pushed for two hours!) was the most hellish hour I hope to ever have in this lifetime. The epidural wore out with surprising speed and soon I was “laboring naturally” – just in time for the most painful part.

The pushing did go better once the epidural wore off and after what seemed like an eternity, I felt the baby start to crown.

Oh my god.

The point at which the head starts to come out and stays part way out between contractions is when I totally lost it. I don’t really recall everything I said, but I do know I started crying that I couldn’t do it and to please just get the baby out! I also remember thinking there was NO way I could push through that pain.. they were going to have to just cut it out somehow.

No sooner had I thought that than Sheila started coming at me with the scissors. I literally screamed “No! No episiotomy!!” and started writhing on the table. Perhaps motivated by the sight of the scissors, I gave it one more push and this time the head came out followed pretty much immediately by the rest of his body.

I can’t even describe the feeling of relief that I felt at that moment. Relief that labor was over, relief that the baby was healthy, relief that I had made it through it one piece with only a 1st degree tear, and a huge relief that my caregivers gave me and my body the opportunity to labor rather than section me at the first sign of trouble.

And then I saw my son for the first time.. and my world changed.

“He’s so beautiful!” were my first words when they put this precious little being on my chest.
(I had been prepared for him to look like a wrinkly old man like so many newborns do!)

He latched on right away and we managed to get a few minutes skin to skin before they whisked him away to be evaluated by the neonatologist… due to the long labor and my water having been broken for so many hours both Jasper and I had a fever.

Our fevers meant that instead of Jasper being able to room in with us at the hospital he would have to go to the special care nursery to be monitored around the clock and administered preventative IV antibiotics.

The news only got worse when they told me that because my blood type is O positive and Japser is A positive, we have ABO incompatibility and tested coombs positive. This meant Jasper had a much higher than normal chance at becoming severely jaundiced. He would have to spend at least 24 hours under the bili lights and then would have to be tested again.

They told us it was unlikely he’d be ready for discharge when we were.

I could write a novel about all the events and happenings those 36 hours in recovery, but that’s not really part of the birth story, and this post is quite long enough as it is.

The long and the short of it is all the cultures came back negative for infection and Jasper’s biliruben levels were normal so we were cleared to take him home with us after all!

And that is the long and short story of Jasper’s birth..and the beginning of a whole new chapter.

Thank you all for sharing in our joy :)