Food Photography for beginners

<p>Hi Everybody. The reason why I am posting in a beginners section is because I am a beginner. But since the best way to learn is to actually try things out, I found a gig making the menu and banners for a sushi restaurant. I will photograph their foods and use them for the aforementioned menu and banners. I already went to the local booksotre and and checked out few recipie books for images and positioning but felt like I need more info on the issue. So people who have ever did food photography or have a good advice on the topic, would really help me out. Here is what i am interested in:<br>

- what lens should I use (silly question, but i am sure there are general good rules of thumb on that)? I will use my Canon XSI - told you I am a beginner<br>

- what kind of light and how to positions the dishes (I think I will photograph closer to the window, but there might not be enough light since the place is kind of secluded)<br>

- what kind of additional equipment should I bring along/rent?<br>

- what kind of setup (light, reflectors, etc) would work best<br>

- any useful resources people know of (web sites, books magazines)</p>

<p>I suggest a macro lens, such as the EF-S 60mm f/2.8 with one light in a medium softbox and a reflector. You can't do this with on camera flash, even a speedlight. If you don't have professional lights, rent them.</p>

<p>Position the light and softbox above and behind the food to give nice specular highlights (shiny spots) and use the reflector in front to provide fill so you can see the color and texture.</p>

<p>Sushi is difficult because it will change appearance quickly as the fish dries out. Strobes will be much better than hot lights for this but I've done it with video lights. You can't use CFL fluorescents because you'll never get the color of the fish correct.</p>

<p>Don't try to mix artificial light with natural (window light) yet, you don't know enough to make it work. Later when you are familiar with gelling light sources and changing color temperatures, you might try.</p>

<p>Practice in your own kitchen, shooting a bowl of cereal or your dinner, so you have the slightest clue of what to do when you get there.</p>

<p>I'm a big advocate of "don't practice on paying customers" so it would be good if you could get some experience under your belt before shooting this gig, especially if you know nothing about food photography. In fact you might consider hiring an experienced pro for the first shoot just to see how he/she does it.</p>

<p>Good luck,</p>

<p><Chas><br /></p>

<p>I don't know how long you have to do this, but <a href="http://www.ppsop.com">www.ppsop.com</a> has a wonderful course in food photograpy. If you go there, you could at least find the link to the instructors websites, and see what they have done.</p>

<p>You are jumping into the hardest type of photography there is. Food photography requires chefs, stylists, and a lot of skill with both light and camera. I'd suggest buying a book on the subject, and a lot of practice.</p>

<p>Ditto on the food photography course at <a href="http://www.ppsop.com">www.ppsop.com</a>. I took it, and it was fantastic! I'm about to take their new advanced course in a couple of weeks, and I can tell you I've come a really long way from where I started. It's alot harder than it looks, and it's especially difficult when you're working with fresh food that's not styled to last under long shooting conditions. It is one of the more challenging areas of photography.<br />Does your client know that you've never done food photography before? Because it's not something that you can just jump into without alot (ALOT!) of practice and education in technique. I did portraits for years, and when I started shooting food I felt like I was starting all over again. There are some things you can learn from reading, but a class will take you alot farther if you don't want to be guessing at everything. And are you going to have a food stylist for the shoot, or is a chef at the restaurant going to style the shots for you? That in itself is a whole other area of expertise that will affect your shots.<br />As Charles said, it's not a good idea to practice on paying customers, or even non-paying ones (i.e. friends, etc.) who are relying on you to know what you're doing. You're right, the best way to learn is to try things out, but try them out on your own and know what you're doing before trying to do it for a client! Since it sounds like you don't have much experience in lighting in general, this is not a task to take on as a beginner. Don't get me wrong--it's something you can learn with alot of time and practice, but since you're new to photography in general, it's going to take awhile.</p>

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<p>Talk to the restaraunt mgr and/or owner and make sure there is a very clear understaning of what they want to see in the picture. Nail that down first.</p>

<p>I think a great deal of appeal of food pictures depends on good color tones. You want your color tones to be spot on. That means you want your camera white balance set correctly so it matches whatever type lighting you choose to work with. If the white balance is not set correctly or if you set it one way and the lighting changes, then your pics will come out with a bad color cast which can then only be fixed in software.</p>

<p>In my opinion, the simplest way to do this is to find a nice sunny window that you can set a table next to. Set the table with a nice tablecloth, somthing that will look classy and will fit in with that type restaraunt. Wait for the time of day when the sunlight is coming in from outside and lighting up that whole area. You do NOT want bright harse direct sunlight as that will be too strong and will cause dark shadows as well. Go to a fabric store and buy a couple yards of white ripstop-nylon. That makes a good window diffuser. If the sky is clear and that day sunny, hang that white ripstop nylon over the window and tape it down at the edges. The white ripstop nylon will nicely diffuse the strong sunlight and give you ver nice soft warm light across the table. If the day is cloudy, just use whatever light you have coming through that window. Dont use the nylon if the day is cloudy cause the cloud layer is the natural diffuser.</p>

<p>Get the cooks to arrange the plate of food in exactly the manner they plan to serve it to the customers. That plate of food is your subject, so you want it to look GOOD. Try to have them arrange it on the plate so you have a balanced and colorful composition to look at.</p>

<p>Now place the plate of food on the table under the window diffused light. The light needs to be bright enough so you can make a good exposure, but soft and even so there are no harsh shadows. Thats why you need diffused light.</p>

<p>Set up your tripod (you do have a tripod dont you?) so the camera will be about 1 Meter from the plate. Position the tripod and adjust the height so you have a pleasing point-of-view when you go to frame up the picture of the plate. At this point, it helps to just walk around and 'eye-ball' the subject with your own eyes till you find t he position that you thin will look good when you frame it up. You want a position thats oing to give you a pleasing looking composition and where the whole plate of food pretty much fills the frame. If you dont have a tripod, you can buy a cheap one for this gig with the intention of getting a real tripod (a good one) later.</p>

<p>Prep the camera by setting the camera White Balance to 'Cloudy' so that it matches the diffused sunlight you will have coming through that window & the nylon diffuser panel. Again, if the White Balance is not set correctly to match the existing light, then all the pics will come out looking bad because they will have a 'color cast' (incorect color across the whole surface of the image). So its important to try and get the white balance correct before you take the picture.</p>

<p>If your camera gives you a choice between various options, like JPEG, TIFF, RAW, etc, then I would suggest you shoot the pics in TIFF. Selecting JPEG will give you a 'convenient' file size, but you ineveitably lose a bit of image quality during the compression. If you select TIFF, then you do not lose any image quality and the file format is still loadable and workable in a wide variety of image editing programs. TIFF pictures will be larger than JPEG but just bite the bullet and expect that. Ie, bring plenty of picture cards for the shoot. So, if you are able, set the camera to take the picture in the Large Size, Fine Quality, TIFF format, if possible. You can then load that TIFF image into whatever editor you like and do whatver post-processing you need, like cropping, sharpening, etc.</p>

<p>Your lens selection will be vital to give you just the right frame up. You want to AVOID using a wide-angle lens for any closeup shot since that usually results in a visual DISTORTION of the part of the subject closest to the camera. The parts closest look real big, the parts farther away look smaller, so the whole perspective is distorted. I would suggest taking a "normal" lens, mounting that on your camera, putting the camera on the Tripod, making final adjustments to the tripod head, and try 'framing up' the subject (the plate of food). If you cannot make the plate of food large enough to fill the frame so that you have a good composition, then either have to switch to a telephoto lens so you can zoom in tighter. Or you can try cropping the image in software so the plate of food fills up the image better. But cropping will reduce the size of the final image making it smaller and less resolution than an uncropped picture.</p>

<p>If you cant get a good frame up with the normal lens, try zooming in with the telephoto lens, like a 100mm.</p>

<p>Sometimes you run into a problem when using a telephoto where your camera is too close to the subject (closer than the minimum-focus-distance spec for the lens). This will evidence itself when the AF just wont get a good clean auto-focus on the subject. It will just fish in and fish out and then give up without getting good AF lock. In that case, try setting the telephoto lens to a SMALLER focal length, like go from 100mm back down to 80mm and try again. OR, try moving the tripod back just a little bit, to slightly increase the subject-camera distance until that distance is just greater than the minimum-focus distance. You'll know when you are outside the minimum-focus distance mark, cause the auto-focus will start working again, like magic.</p>

<p>Another critical camera setting will be the Aperture. You must select a small enough aperture that will result in large enough Depth-Of-Field so that the whole plate of food is in sharp detail. If the depth-of-field is too narrow because the aperture is too large, then the focus point of your subject will be sharp and clear, but the more distant parts of the plat will be blurred and fuzzy ... probably not what the customer wants to see.</p>

<p>An F-8 aperture is about in the middle of the aperture scale. An F5 aperture is about halfway between F8 and the end of the 'wide open' end of the aperture scale.</p>

<p>So, I would suggest you set up the camera to shoot in "Aperture Preferred Automatic" mpde (the A Letter on most D-SLRs). Set an aperture of say F5 or on up to F8. This should be small enough to get you enough Depth-Of-Field, but large enough to give you a good exposure with diffused sunlight from a window. Check your camera manual to see the specifics on setting the aperture when in Aperture Preferred Automatic.</p>

<p>The other major settings that determine exposure are the ISO Setting and the Shutter Speed. Basically, the higher you set the ISO, the more sensitive the sensor will be to light. For a table next to a diffuser-covered-window in afternoon sunlight, an ISO of 200 - 400 should be about right. If you shoot in Aperture Preffered Automatic, then you set the Aperture and the camera will select the appropriate shutter speed. This is OK in your case, because your subject - that delicious plate of foof - is a static object and not moving around. So as long as the camera is on a tripod, being held nice and steady, you dont mind if the camera selects a slow shutter speed like 1/30th or 1/20th. The subject and camera are stationary so the image should still come out nice and clear.</p>

<p>Also, when you focus in on the plate of food, keep in mind that about 1/3 of the depth-of-field will extend forwards of that precise focus point and that 2/3 of the DOF will extend behind that precise point. Knowing that helps you get the best possible sharpness across the whole subject by carefully picking the precise point of focus - try focusing about 1/3 of the way "into" the plate of food. The depth of field will then extend forwards of that point and behind that point, so that whole plate of food is sharp and clear.</p>

<p>Another good suggestion is to use the Self-Timer feature on the camera. Some cameras have 2 sec and some have 10 sec. The idea is to set the self timer, carefully compose the image in the view-finder, pick your precise focus point, press down the shutter button 1/2 way to activate the auto-focus and set the exposure, and the press the shutter down all the way to start the shot. Then take your hand OFF the camera. While the self timer is counting down, any vibrations caused by your hand will go away and the self-timer takes the shot. Doing it this way eliminates almost all camera vibrations and results in a very nice sharp detailed image. If the camera wobbles at all during the brief time the shutter is open, then everything in the picture will be blurred ... again, not something your customer wants to see.</p>

<p>While you are doing all this 'preliminary setup work', you can use some 'dummy subject' like a plate of KFC or maybe a plate of Dominoes Pizza. Anything that is about the same size, shape, and color as the actual subjects will be.</p>

<p>When you think you have it all set up and ready to go, use your dummy subjects to take maybe 1/2 dozen sample pics. You want to make sure you like the composition, the frame up, the size of the subject in the frame. You want to confirm that you are getting plenty of DOF so that the whole plate is really sharp and clear. And you want to make sure the color tones in the picture look as close to the real thing as possible. You want to make sure you are comfortable picking the right auto-focus point and that your self timer technique is ready. If everything is set OK, then the images should be nice and clear, plenty of detail and good colors, with no obvious flaws like camera wobble or color cast.</p>

<p>When its ready to shoot, you just replace the dummy subjects with the real plates of food that the mgr wants pics of.</p>

<p>You can do other simple things to help the lighting. You can construct a large 4FT x 4FT frame out of wood or even pvc pipe and position one frame on the left of the table and one on the right. Get some white foam-board from office supply store and hang that vertically in the frames. These will act like reflectors and will reflect some of the diffused sunlight back onto the plate of food. This will also help fill in any shadows. When you take the pics, they will be just out-of-frame on the left and the right. You dont want to see them in the picture, but they will be there helping make the subject just a little better illuminated.</p>

<p>Its important not to 'rush' this setup part of the process. Give yourself plenty of time to prepare the table, the cloth, the white nylon diffuser panel, the reflectors, etc. Think about what you are doing and what you want the light to do. </p>

 

<p>Sergey,<br>

How many items are you shooting, if you are shooting several I would stay away from windows, unless you want to battle changing light all day long. You want to control the light not the other way around. Do some research on how to keep food looking fresh for extended periods of time. There is definitely and art to it and it is one even talented sushi chefs don't know because they don't deal with it on a day to day basis. Food for shoots is normally done by a stylist and with good reason. Usually the #1 rule on a food photoshoot is don't eat the food. Napkins or cloth that compliment the color of the food are a good idea to make certain items pop. Being sushi they probably want a very clean look to the shots, that said I have been in enough sushi restaurants that look like they used to a Hardees, it would be a good idea to have a nice base or two to place plates on(bamboo cutting board, slate, low pattern granite or marble etc.) Get some molding puddy and some wood shims, these work great when you need to make something a little more prominent. Wood blocks with slots cut out combined with pieces of mat board wrapped in foil make great small reflector when you just need a little light in a very specific area. Well I am rambling, lastly always shoot raw.</p>