Indoor studio lighting recommendations?

I'm very new to Newborn Photography and need some input on lighting indoors. I do not have a lot of natural light at my place. I need a lighting kit to start me off at but that will last for a while until I get up and going. I want the lighting to look as natural as possible.

Must be Nikon D5200 compatible.

Please advise what kind of kit i should buy that i can get the most out of. I don't really want to spend over $200 since i still need to buy a few more lenses.

Thank you,
Jessica

Added (1). Also, If you have a Top 3 recommendation for lenses to shoot newborn pictures with would be greatly appreciated.

In general, you are going to want soft lighting for newborns. Figure it's much the same as any portrait setup. A smaller flash for background, a stronger main light and a diffused fill light. Try for something with modeling lights just so you don't have to take too many pictures to get the balance correct.

As to lenses, go for a short telephoto. NEVER use standard or wide angle lenses to photograph people.

I don't know your camera and don't have any specifics on lenses for Nikon.

I'll answer the last bit first! My 'go to' portrait lenses are the 50mm f1.8, the 85mm f1.8 and the 24-70mm f2.8.

I would suggest a flash system rather than continuous - this gives you the option to blend flash & ambient light or to kill the ambient completely. It will also allow you faster shutter speeds (up to your max sync speed, around 1/200 sec). If you were to use continuous lights, you'd need pretty powerful ones to get a fast enough shutter speed.

Ok - you have 2 options - mains powered or battery powered. Mains will give you faster recycling times, but will be heavier & cumbersome. Battery powered speedlights will be portable & give you the option of taking on location

Either way I'd suggest radio triggers to fire the lights - I use RF602's. More reliable than an optical triggering system and no trip hazards from trailing cables from a wired system.

A cheap manual flash (I assume you know how to light & shoot manually?) like the YN560 will cost you £40. RF602 triggers will be £20 a set. A 24" softbox or umbrella around £35 plus a light stand for £15 - double it up for a 2 light setup & that's around £170 (you could get away with one set of triggers & run one of the lights in optical slave mode). I use this kind of combo on my D300. These are the sort of results I get;

(I tend to prefer low key lighting as you can see!)

"I want the lighting to look as natural as possible" - that depends on your skill with lighting. You can make flash look like natural window light if you make it big enough (ie bounce it off/through a LARGE surface) and blend in some room ambient.

A word of advice - don't set yourself up as any sort of photography 'business' until you are confident about exposure & lighting. If you are charging for shots this brings a whole new legal side into what you are doing with the prospect of being sued if things go wrong. If you are setting up a studio, whether it be in your home or in a purpose built building, there are certain legal things you need in place - at the very least you need a business licence or planning permission to operate; you need certain Health & Safety (particularly electrical safety) checks to be done; Fire Certificates and most importantly, public liability insurance.