Food Shutter Bug Club (Part 1)

[Blether]

Sorry to those of you who saw the photo in Lunch - what'd ya have ?, but - huitres Ansel Adams:

Edited November 8, 2010 by Blether (log)

[heidih]

Blether- the stone counter plays beautifully with the colors and pattern of the oysters

[Rico]

blether, I had a bad oyster experience in New Orleans a few months ago during March Madness (completely my fault; when you're with college buddies and drinking huge amounts of beer, eating 100 oysters at $.25 a pop seems like a good idea), and this is the first time since then I've wanted to eat them again. That's the highest compliment I can think of. That's a great photo.

[Dakki]

The sun came out today so I thought I'd give this photo business a shot.

Tacos YET AGAIN. Will the madness never stop?!

[tino27]

I recently upgraded my point and shoot to a digital SLR (the Canon T3i) which came with a standard kit lens (18mm-55mm f/3.5-5.6). While I have already taken some amazingly sharp photographs using the kits lens, I realize that there are probably better lenses with which to shoot food. I primarily shoot at the restaurant itself and while I am enjoying the range of the zoom lens that came with the camera, I find myself mostly shooting in the 18-28mm range, with an occasional zoom to frame the food better.

I am considering upgrading to this lens and don't mind dropping some cash, but I figured I'd ask some of the other food photographers on eGullet which lenses they preferred to shoot with (or, if you have an opinion about the lens to which I linked).

Feel free to post a picture or two taken with your lens if you feel it would help illustrate the capabilities better.

[hathor]

I use my Compact-Macro Lens 50mm most of the time. Flickr stream here.

[SobaAddict70]

^I was just wondering because it looked (to my eyes) like the brightness had been adjusted just a little, compared to SobaAddict70's picture of the scrambled eggs, which looks like the brightness (and maybe colour) has had more of an adjustment.

I love the composition of the photo (was that David Chang's recipe?). It seems to me that a lot of really talented chefs (pastry or savoury) tend to have excellent composition when it comes to photography. Makes sense if you think about the artistic side of cooking.

(I don't just mean professional chefs, but also home cooks/bakers, "serious" or otherwise.)

The brightness was adjusted a little bit but the color is as is. Lighting was from an overhead studio lamp. Those eggs really are that yellow. They're not from the supermarket.

[tino27]

I use my Compact-Macro Lens 50mm most of the time. Flickr stream here.

Is that a prime lens? In a lot of the food shots I am doing, I'm trying to get the entire plate of food in the frame while still sitting at the table. At 50 mm, I would've needed to back up a few feet in order to achieve that.

You have some nice photographs on your Flickr page.

[Moopheus]

Okay, for laughs, I will post a few. Here's one I like:

 

 

 

 

[Moderator note: This topic continues here, Food Shutter Bug Club (Part 2)]

Edited July 27, 2014 by Mjx
Host note added. (log)

[Prawncrackers]

May I submit these to the panel - A study in Brown Crab...

I took the first photo off the cuff really, just before scrubbing these two hen crabs clean and dispatching them with a skewer. They were all tensed up and looked like they knew what was coming. Anyway I took one shot, light wasn't great and they were still moving a little, hence the shot was a little soft:

I don't usually do much post-processing, maybe just the odd brightening here and there but I thought this shot looked interesting. So I decided to apply some sharpening and up the contrast. It really surprised me how it made these creatures pop out of the picture. Especially the hairs on the legs, you really get a sense of the texture of the shell, don't you think?

These crabs were destined for linguine, but that's one thing I find tricky to get right on the plate/in the bowl. I made this dish twice in the past week and just can't decide which is the more appetising presentation and gave the better shot. The first dish had the linguine wrapped around a carving fork and placed carefully in a cheffy way into the bowl. This one was taken with flash bounced off the ceiling:

The second was taken with natural light and here the pasta was just dumped into the bowl for a more natural look:

So what do you think? I can't decide which shot I prefer, I'm not really that happy with either. Will a smaller or differently shaped bowl help perhaps, and is there anything else I can do with long pasta to get a better composed shot?