Food pics with a consumer level digital camera

[phaelon56]

Those pics look great Jason - really, really good. I think I need to redirect one of my halogen spots to hit my peninsula more directly or better yet, add a few new ones. I'm still going to look into some sort of makeshift diffuser for the halogens - perhaps a framed sheet of frosted mylar that I can clip to the track and hang when needed. I like the results of the halogens but still find the hotspots annoying. Sometimes I can deal with them by using the clone stamp or burn-in tool in Photoshop but that's not always a good fix.

[Ellen Shapiro]

It's really the available light issues under restaurant conditions that I'm struggling wit the most.

I'm sorry to report that you're going to run up against the technical limitations of your camera if you're trying to do available-light photography in low light with a consumer digital camera. If you don't have a digital SLR with an F/1.4 or F/1.0 lens, and you're not shooting with a tripod, you're never going to be satisfied with your results if you don't have an artificial light source or access to bright natural light through a window.

In terms of diffusers, let us know how your experiments go. There may be a way to make it work, but my own experience has been that you can't effectively diffuse the light from a tiny digital camera-mounted strobe. It's too small, and the metering is too thick-headed to work with those conditions.

As I mentioned before, the nice thing about digital is that you don't have to care very much about your light source's color temperature because that's one of the easiest things to fix in postprocessing. So any light source will work pretty well for digital, even a standard clip-on desk lamp if you distance and aim it properly. Not that you can bring one of those to a restaurant.

[Ellen Shapiro]

Phaelon, one other thing I should mention: don't get too bogged down by the film mindset. Remember, most digital photos will never be printed but will, rather, be viewed on video screens. This requires a different type of appearance. A look that might not be appropriate for larger high-quality film-based prints may be the best one for on-screen and for cheap-quality snapshot prints at 4x6 or 5x7. For me digital photography isn't so much about capturing the exact image I want but is rather about capturing the maximum amount of image-information possible. This is what often allows you to create the most satisfactory product when you process your images.

[lueid813]

It might be worth keeping in mind that in many cases professional photos of food (used in magazine advertising, for example) are usually not actually photos of real food dishes. Food photographers substitute or combine lots of other items (food or non-food) to create what can only be called "artist's conceptions of what food should/could look like".

One obviouse example: the "Got Milk?" ads featuring celebrities with milk moustaches over their lip. That's not milk (milk wouldn't show up in a photo that well), it's heavy cream or something else.

http://saucecafe.com/feature_printable/feature30.html

[Ellen Shapiro]

lueid813, most of the food photography we see in the better magazines and cookbooks is substantially real and doesn't employ latex, chemicals, and the like. That's one of the reasons the ads in those magazines look different and in my opinion worse than the editorial photos.

While there are some tricks that are worth knowing, especially the use of sprays to cut glare, it should almost always be possible to create beautiful food photographs from real food. Chefs are great to work with in that regard, because they are in many ways their own professional food stylists: they are very concerned with the appearance of dishes. If it looks great on the plate to the naked eye, a photographer should be able to capture that.

[AzRaeL]

I can't afford a MacroRing light just yet, so in dark restaurants, i use a minitripod and long exposure time.