I’ve made it one of my primary goals in life to get her to laugh as often as possible. And it would be the icing on the cake if I could catch it on camera!

The other evening the kids and I were lounging around on the bed, and I was probably occupied with folding laundry or something. It suddenly occurred to me that The Serious One was laughing hysterically. It turns out that the baby had turned my bathrobe into a sort of tent, and he was attempting to play peek-a-boo by himself for one of the first times.

I ran to get the camera, which had the kit zoom lens on it and was set in aperture priority mode (Av on Canon’s dial). At the widest aperture I could get under the circumstances, f/5.0, the camera chose a shutter speed of 1/13. That is far too slow for a crisp shot of a laughing preschooler.

My dear daughter is beautiful, but this shot of her is terrible!

So I switched to shutter priority mode (Tv on Canon’s dial), to be sure the shutter speed would be fast enough. I set it to 1/125. The camera didn’t have the option of choosing a wider aperture to let in more light, so the picture was underexposed (dark).

The camera tried to compensate by making the ISO very high (3200). This resulted in a grainy picture, especially when I lightened it after the fact. I used some of Pioneer Woman’s Photoshop actions to make the graininess look halfway purposeful…

Finally I just turned the camera to auto (the green square on Canon’s dial) and let the flash do its job. It was sheer luck that I didn’t end up with a shadow on the back wall, just a bright reflection from the flash.

For the most part, this was a missed photo opportunity because I couldn’t get my camera to do what I wanted. I’m giving myself credit for taking the photos to record a memory, even though the lighting wasn’t great!

Oh… and the bed wasn’t made, and my bathrobe was dirty… in case anyone was interested. But I still took the pictures, imperfections and all.

Several evenings prior to that, I was trying to capture some memories of my eldest feeding the baby Cheerios. I had an external flash already set up on a stand with a shoot-through umbrella. I really am trying to get away from using flash, but sometimes I find it so helpful.

Somehow I still ended up with shadows behind the boys.

Wasn’t this a sweet moment, though? My older son can be such a good big brother.

In this case, I was using a 50mm f/1.4 lens. I had it open wide, between f/1.6 and f/1.8, to let in maximum light.

The trouble with a wide aperture is that is gives a shallow depth of focus. Even when my older son’s face was in focus, the baby’s face wasn’t.

Before I make everyone wish they were giving themselves paper cuts instead of reading about my mistakes, I’ll end with a set of indoor photos that I do like:

My husband decided we needed to clean out the pantry before we move, so he pulled out several bags of dried beans that we’ve hauled from house to house ever since our early days of marriage. He used them to make the most enormous vat of chili ever.

This made for a sweet father-son moment. I like these pictures quite a bit, even though the focus isn’t spot-on. (The aperture was around f/1.4 to f/1.6, no flash.)

By the way, we froze most of the chili. We will probably haul it to our new house now.

The point of all of this is that I don’t know how to get a properly focused, well exposed picture of active children indoors in the evenings without using flash. And then, with the flash, I often end up with shadows behind the subject.

I’ve been thinking of various options:

1) Use the on-camera flash and just be content with shadows and washed-out areas.

2) Buy a Gary Fong Lightsphere, which a photographer friend recommended for diffusing an external flash. This would be used on-camera for quick candid shots. It’s comforting to think that a new, relatively inexpensive piece of equipment could solve all my woes. Is it too good to be true?

I need to save my pennies for a while before I can find out, anyway. Hauling dried beans from house to house several times over the years has taught me that moving is almost always more expensive than expected.

3) Learn to shoot with large RAW files (instead of JPEG) so I can adjust the exposure more easily after the fact, minimizing graininess.

A final option, and the one I like best, is to ask all of my family members to please confine their sweet, memorable moments to daylight hours so I can take advantage of the better light.

Do you think they would comply?