Of course, I couldn’t resist taking my camera and decided to be a bit creative with the shots.

In particular I found the exhausts on the planes to be rather interesting.  The museum itself is very interesting and had quite a few planes for the kids to look at.  We wound up spending five hours there!

The kids had fun making paper airplanes and got a kick out of the former Airforce One plane.  Eitan in particular didn’t know what to look at first!

All in all it was a fun day at the museum and we certainly will head there again!

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As a result of this, I think I have a bit of experience from shooting at these places more times than I would like to count.

First some general things that I have noticed.  While there are a number of different attractions at these bounce houses, the slide is bar far the easiest and most interesting to photograph.  In general, it is where I have taken my favorite shots so far.  However, it is also worth your time to try out some other areas from time to time.

In my opinion, by far the best lens for these types of photos is in the 70-200 range, at least on a full frame.  A 24-105 lens may be helpful if you have a cropped frame camera.  Image stabilization won’t help you here, as it does not freeze action.  It can help when taking action shots, though in this environment they are very difficult to take because the action does not occur perpendicular to you.

I use the F4 version of the 70-200, which I believe works fine.  If you have a 2.8, that will obviously work too but I don’t think you need one.  Even with the F4 I often find myself wanting more DOF and I sometimes increase it to F5.6 in order to improve the odds that my shots are in focus.

In terms of lighting, I mount a 580EX on top of my camera and then use a Lumiquest 80-20 diffuser with a white card added.  This does a decent job with the lighting but I also increase the ISO to 3200 most of the time with my Canon 5D Mark II.  This allows me to improve the ambient light in the shot.  With some bounce houses though, they are noticeably darker and therefore more difficult to photograph in.

The 5D Mark II is certainly not known for its high end autofocus, but it does its job admirably here.  In low light situations though, it can be more difficult.  I take the majority of my slide pictures from two locations – either straight in front of the slide or at an angle.  However, in dark situations I often have to limit myself to straight on.

I always shoot these situations in AI servo and multiple shot.  With the Mark II, this enables me to get around three or four shots as they come down.  AI servo has a much more difficult time as the kids get closer, so most of my best shots are as they are on the most vertical part of the slide, versus when they are on the landing.

As always I prefer to shoot in manual mode.  In truth, I am not shooting manually as the flash is automatically determined.  However, I do not let the camera choose my ISO, shutterspeed, or aperture.  I have already discussed ISO and aperture, but shutterspeed is extremely important here as well.  I usually try to stay around the flash sync speed – 1/200 or 1/250 though if lighting conditions force me to I will shoot at 1/160.  With action coming toward you, you generally do not need to exceed 1/250.  Nevertheless, I do believe this is one occasion where you want to control the aperture and shutterspeed yourself and not let the camera figure this out or you will have OOF and blurry shots.

If you are not already very familiar with your camera, make sure you figure out ahead of time how to place your camera in multiple shot mode and AI servo.  Once I spent some time trying to help a Nikon user figure out how to set his camera to multiple shot, but was unable to figure out their user interface.

I am obviously not an expert in these shots, but I hope this advice has still helped.

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While the snow storm here would be a normal occurrence where I grew up in Western New York, here it really is something – the most snow I have seen here since I moved here about eight years ago.

We received about seven inches where we are – still tame to what I was used to back East.  However, here they are absolutely unprepared for any kind of snow.  They lack the snow plows and salt trucks and most people have no idea how to drive in this type of weather.  Also, the hills here can make things interesting.

It was rather funny driving places and seeing tons of people walking – often hauling a sled containing their kids behind them.  Many people here are just too freaked out to even get into a car.

The nice thing about the paucity of cars though is we turned the hill on our cul-de-sac into a nice sledding hill.

From a photography standpoint, I have switched back to take kids pictures in RAW format.  I had switched to jpg for my kids shots recently due to the huge RAW file sizes of the 5D Mark II.  However, due to shots like this it is a better idea to just stay in RAW.

I will probably spend some time later fixing this shot up in Photoshop – but if I took the shot in RAW in the first place it would have been much easier.

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My parents pulled down the toboggan I had used when I was little and amazingly it still worked!  My father would then pull them up the short hill that I used to go sledding down and let them go.

I used my 70-200 4L IS for these shots, as it has the quickest AF and was the best focal length to use here.  I shot most all of these using AF focus.  I probably should have used servo.

In terms of comparing the 5D Mark II with my old 5D, I do think that the AF is a bit better.  I do not think that the difference is huge, but there is a difference.  I’m sure that a 1D series body would be far better, but for my uses it seems to do the trick.

In the past with my 5D a number of shots like these would have turned out blurry and I would have deleted them.  I did get a few of these shots, but they were probably only ten percent of the total.  A number of the shots were not sharp at 100% – but for the sizes I will print these that is OK.  I would say about 40% of the shots I kept were sharp at 100%, or about a third of the total.  For me, that isn’t too bad of a ratio.

After this experience, we plan to pick up a toboggan ourselves and take them to the mountains for some more fun.  Unfortunately this time we had to quit after about twenty minutes because they did not have proper winter gear on and we feared they would get too cold.

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The two primary cameras for young children today are the following.  Please note that by ordering through these links you are helping to support this site.

Note that these are really just two cameras.  Each camera comes in either pink or blue.  Both cameras have been updated recently – but the update is strictly to add more megapixels to the existing cameras.  Everything else about them hasn’t changed.

We gave the Fisher Price camera to our older son when he was three years old.  He used that until losing it in Jerusalem, after which we replaced it with the VTech.

The Fisher Price is a more basic camera, but we felt that it took more high quality pictures.  Here is a shot that Eitan took with it while in Thailand.

The pictures are of a decent quality and generally it exposes quite well.  Here’s a shot he took indoors of his brother.

The camera is really no frills.  It does not have a zoom, the flash cannot be turned off, and obviously the exposure cannot be overridden.  However, for a young child it is extremely easy to use.  It is also practically indestructible as it did go flying on several occasions.

Eitan absolutely loved the camera and was heartbroken when he lost it.  Rather than buying the same camera, I decided to buy the VTech due to the higher megapixel count and the fact that it has video.

The VTech isn’t as good when it comes to pictures.  Although it has more megapixels than the Fisher Price, the optical quality isn’t as good and the exposure is often wrong – particularly when the flash fires.

Here’s an example shot from the VTech.  In general we have noticed far fewer ‘keepers’ from this camera.

You can see that the quality isn’t nearly as good as the Fisher Price, despite the fact that it has a higher number of megapixels.

The VTech does have the advantage that it supports video and has games on it.  For awhile Eitan played these games a lot.  In fact, I think he has used it more for the games than for pictures or video.

For video though, it can be quite funny seeing what happens when a hyperactive kid takes it out for a spin.  He took this video when we weren’t watching. (Note: if for some reason the video does not appear here you can also view it at http://www.flickr.com/photos/kirispupis/2993531665/)

He played around with the video for a bit, but no longer uses it.

Recently, Eitan has stopped using the camera completely because it doesn’t zoom.  Currently I help him take pictures with my camera, which he loves to do.  I have been eyeing buying him the Olympus SW1030, which is rugged enough for his age but is a bit high for our budget right now.

However, between the Fisher Price and the VTech kids cameras, in my opinion (and Eitan’s) the Fisher Price is the clear winner.  The VTech has more features and a higher resolution, but the Fisher Price is much easier to use and takes better quality shots.

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I’m still getting used to using the lights outside.  While I have found that using lights in shade works decently well, when it is very sunny I still find that parts are overexposed.  I suspect that the answer here is to hold an umbrella or other large diffuser over the kids but that is quite difficult to do when they are constantly moving!

Nelya is starting to get more into photography as well.  She loves taking pictures of the kids so perhaps in the future we can trade places holding the umbrella.  Of course, that becomes another point of interest for them so it’s likely that will have a negative effect as they’ll both want to play with the umbrella.

Here’s one of Nelya’s shots.

Finally, here’s some more bubble shots as promised.

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This picture was taken entirely by him, with his father only helping him to hold the rather heavy Canon 180L lens.  Still, I think it is rather impressive that at this age (a few months short of five) he is using the rule of thirds already.

Here’s another shot that he took the same day.  I rather like the thought with this one.  Thought it was a bit out of focus it’s very interesting that out of all things a four year old would try to frame the shot this way.  I know that he intentionally framed it this way because he rejected an earlier attempt that was off and retook the shot.

In other shots he attempted to be a bit more artistic.  I’m not sure what the story is behind this shot, but he was very determined to get it right.

What I found even funnier was later on when I was taking photos of them.  Eitan stopped in his bike and asked that I take a picture of him in this pose.

Is this a future photography great in the making?!

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Unfortunately I had never had the chance to use a Nikon before and I was rather confused at what all of the controls do.  For those not familiar with Canon and Nikon, they seem to pride themselves in their own languages.  For instance

These are just a few examples, but the camera might as well had Japanese written all over it because I couldn’t figure out how to switch to manual mode.  I did figure out how to adjust the aperture and shutter speed, but I also couldn’t figure out how to trigger the in camera metering.  I’m sure with a few minutes in front of the instruction manual it would not have been difficult to figure out, but I wound up blowing out every picture.

I also had the first look at the SB800 flash.  I have heard many people say that Nikon is generally superior to Canon when it comes to flashes, and this seems particularly true in

terms of Nikon’s CLS system for remote triggering.  I have heard of some real estate photographers who use a Pocketwizard on a Canon camera to trigger a Nikon flash, which then uses CLS to trigger other Nikon flashes.  However, in terms of just the flash, I have to say that I prefer the 580EX – in particular the controls seem much more intuitive and the 580EX II seems like a much better built flash.

Unfortunately I didn’t really get a good feel for the camera as I had it for only a few moments and I did not get much of a chance to try out different lenses or test the optics.  He used the 18-200 3.5-5.6 VR lens, even though I tried to convince him that the 70-200 2.8 VR would be better for events.  I know a lot of people like this lens, but I am highly suspect over a lens with such as large focal length.

In a bit of non-photography fun, I got a big kick out of the following series of events with my four year old Eitan.  He was fascinated by my wife’s cousin’s one year old daughter and decided that he wanted to buy the baby.

Eitan (to baby’s father): Can I buy your baby?

Father (playing along): OK.  Give me 100 dollars and I’ll give you the baby.

Eitan: I’ll give you ten dollars

Father: Surely you must have more money?

Eitan: Papa, do you have ten dollars?

Me (mean papa): No

Eitan: Ok.  Here’s ten imaginary dollars.  Take the money!  Come on! Take the money!

Eitan (much later upon driving home dejected he could not buy a baby): When I’m older my kids will only cost three dollars.

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Nathan had a lot of fun with an echo tube – going to it numerous times and clapping or yelling.

Both of them had a lot of fun with the giant bubbles, though for some reason they were difficult to get started that day.

Eitan used a robot to play tic-tac-toe and Nathan was obviously frustrated at how long Eitan was taking.

Nathan and Eitan both had fun touching the sea creatures.

Of course I couldn’t resist taking out the macro lens for some butterfly shots. I didn’t get any great shots, but it was a few minutes of fun. I actually wish that I had the 180mm because butterflies look much cuter when they’re not so up close.

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