Skip to main content

Photography 101: Food Photography

I was lucky enough to dine with Steamboat F&B Director Liz (and our husbands) earlier this month to shoot some of the great dishes at Hazie's on-mountain Restaurant. We had a long sunny evening to work with and some interesting photo results that made me realize this would be a great Photo101 post.

From Hazies Food 7.31.10

When photographing food there are some key settings that your digital camera can improve your shots with. If you've been reading the other Photography101 posts, you'll already know I vehemently urge you to take the Auto Setting training wheels off and shoot in manual modes to make the most of your camera's technology and artificial intellect, which IS smarter than you (deal with it).

In regards to lighting, I prefer natural lighting to flash, and an attached flash to the standard on-camera flash. The on-camera flash will make your photos look unprofessionally blown out or ill-exposed, so my tips below are focused on NOT using that standard flash. By using a tripod and the camera's 2-second timer (just so you don't have to wait as long) eliminate shake and a need for the flash all together.

Key points for shooting food indoors on manual modes (P, Av, Tv, M on Canon):
  • Set a high ISO (800 or 1600 if you have it) to give yourself advantage on lighting
  • Play with the light balance/WB settings ("Trunsgten" for a lot of interior lighting, "Cloudy" or "Sunny" for natural lighting)
  • Meter/AV settings usually require a +1 or +2 adjustment to fill in the light on the food
  • A note on shutter speed- the rule of thumb is your hand is shaky at any speeds less than 1/60 (1/30, 1/15, 1/8, 2", etc), so make sure your shutter speed is higher than that. If not, bust out the flash (accessory flash, not on camera flash if possible)
  • A note on F-stops: smaller #s mean less in focus, so choose f10 -f2.5 to focus on the food creatively
  • Always try multiple angles
  • Watch what's in your background and make sure objects out of focus or cropped so focus is on the food
  • Watch for window glare

Tips for attached flashes:
If you DO have an attached flash, use it. If you do not, find a tripod or something like a stack of books to steady the camera on and set the timer.
  • Bounce the light off the ceiling or a nearby wall to have creative lighting and no glare on food
  • Return ISO back to 100 and Speed to 1/125
  • Leave focus/f-stop low

From Hazies Food 7.31.10
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Gluten Free for Psoriasis

Recently I've been putting my researching brain cells to work on studying the Gluten Free way of life. Since the age of 14 I have had psoriasis, and recently it's been showing signs of progression to psoriatic arthritis, a progression that occurs in about 20-40% of the cases (studies are still incomplete, although the reverse is 80% of PA patients have had psoriasis, so the two are definitely linked). I've been tested for allergies in the 1980s (none), and I'm a pretty natural consumer as well, so I don't use body products with harmful ingredients like parabens or sulfates. Herbal and homeopathic remedies and dead sea salts have all helped reduce my inflammations, but have never eliminated the disorder completely. I was vegetarian for 7 years in the 1990s, and that never cleared up my psoriasis either. Because of its progression I've started researching the diet and how it relates to the disorder, and stumbled upon several articles and studies that now link...
18 comments
Read more

DIY Bath Salts

A few weeks back I added two posts for making your own face products. Along that same home-factory-idea line is the typical bath salt. I laugh when I see them in the store for $15, when it's often only $1 of Epsom or Sea Salt and a few drops of essential oil, plus $10 of preservatives you DON'T want on your body! I making salt baths more regularly after a car accident several years ago that left my back in a pretty poor state of health. I was taking a pain-bath about 3-4x a week and it helped immensely. Now I take them for all sorts of reasons: relaxation, menstral cramps, headaches, chest colds, aching muscles, and psoriasis flare-ups. The salt is the base to this so let's start there! SALT First, all salts are sea salts either mined as rock or evaporated from the saline solution. Sea salt is sodium chloride, and is used in cooking and cosmetics. "Dead Sea Salt" is proven to have the highest content of body-healing minerals it it, from the Dead Sea. Table s...
Post a Comment
Read more

Gluten-free Sourdough bread adventure

Throughout my decade of being gluten free, I had never heard this before, but recently at a friends house, I heard a rumor that the gluten in bread breaks down in the process of fermentation with sourdough. The study that this rumor has seemingly sprouted from was done on just 15 subjects in Italy. I won't get into how the wheat in the US is far different from the wheat in Europe, but suffice it to say, it's not the same. At first, this rumor was exciting. Could I actually have bread again? I was sure willing to try! So I took a chunk of my friends long-aged sourdough starter, fed it for a few days (that's the fun part!), and made some sourdough bread! Much to my dismay, the answer is no, I can not, but it sure was an exciting thought! I've been GF long enough to know the immediate physical sensations when I'm going to have a reaction, and I don't press my luck. I had a small piece of this DELICIOUS bread and gave it away, knowing full well tha...
Post a Comment
Read more