Food Shutter Bug Club (Part 1)

[doctorandchef]

I wish I had more time to play with all this. For the doctor- for those of us who don't have lightboxes could you suggest a way to rig up some sort of lighting situation? I am experimenting, but it is hard to figure out at what angle the lighting should be and how to reduce glare.

Thanks everyone, keep those beautiful images coming!

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If you don't have a lightbox, you could use some type of translucent white cloth with a really strong light. With my light box I had to use really strong 500w halogen lights which are ultra bright and ultra hot, so safety is a big concern.

I used to have some fluorescent lighting and I diffused it with some opaque panelling, you know the stuff you see in office ceilings with flourescent lighting? The whole point is to create a large light source. I think a pro like Ellen Shapiro would be way more qualified to explain this properly... it has something to do with harsh bright spots and sharp shadows. You may notice that on my salmon "crostini" photo the shadows are very soft and subtle yet present. IF one were more technically sophisticated I think the effect is acheivable using photoshop.

Then again, I'm a computer idiot......

[jayt90]

If you don't have a lightbox, you could use some type of translucent white cloth with a really strong light.  With my light box I had to use really strong 500w halogen lights which are ultra bright and ultra hot, so safety is a big concern.

I used to have some fluorescent lighting and I diffused it with some opaque panelling, you know the stuff you see in office ceilings with flourescent lighting?  The whole point is to create a large light source.  I think a pro like Ellen Shapiro would be way more qualified to explain this properly... it has something to do with harsh bright spots and sharp shadows.  You may notice that on my salmon "crostini" photo the shadows are very soft and subtle yet present.  IF one were more technically sophisticated I think the effect is acheivable using photoshop.

Then again, I'm a computer idiot......

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If you think of a flash as a point source of light, like the sun, then you can expect harsh shadows. A lightbox or softbox, or umbrella will diffuse the light source, and the shadows will be softened. This is much like photographing outside under cloud cover. There are accessories to attach to a flash, such as Lumiquest, which may help in a restaurant situation, but you can do better at home with a lightbox or softbox.

However, one point source of light that works well with food is late afternoon sun. The long, lingering, warm shadows are not at all harsh. Tripod and long exposures will capture this.

The reason I am intrigued by the use of six 23 watt fluorescent coiled bulbs is that they can be configured into a rectangle or circle much smaller, and more intense than 4 foot fluorescent tubes. And they don't throw off tremendous heat like the halogens.

[jayt90]

I just remembered that there is another type of flash available to SLR cameras, the 'Ring" flash, which will kill harsh shadows, and provide bright, clear shots. It is a circular flash tube, attached arround the edge of the lens. There are dedicated units from the major 35mm and digital SLR lines, but Vivitar makes one for about $100. Diane Arbus used one for a lot of her Mamiya based portraits. These units are also used by nature and scientific photographers when they have to get close.

This might work for quick and easy food shots, as in a restaurant.

[fifi]

I used to use a ring flash many years ago for scientific photos. I was just getting way into macro 35mm when I kind of dropped it due to other priorities. Now I am wondering. I don't remember about the ring flash in the lab. Is a ring flash less "intrusive" so that I wouldn't feel bad about using it in a restaurant?

[jayt90]

I used to use a ring flash many years ago for scientific photos. I was just getting way into macro 35mm when I kind of dropped it due to other priorities. Now I am wondering. I don't remember about the ring flash in the lab. Is a ring flash less "intrusive" so that I wouldn't feel bad about using it in a restaurant?

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A flash is a flash is a flash...

The ring light is more natural than a regular flash, or perhaps a Lumiquest, as there is no apparent shadow. It is just one more option but not as good as 'cloudy-bright ' daylight.

I guess you would need permission, and a back table, in a restaurant...

[jayt90]

What's the best way to take pictures in a restaurant?  If I'm in a dimly lit dinning room with no natural light and no tripod, what should you do?  Especially if the restaurant doesn't allow flash photography...

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Use a longer shutter time, and get creative with your props there. I have used wine glasses, empty plates, or my purse to steady the camera. You might get some interesting angles, as an added benefit. Nothing is as boring as a shot of food taken from overhead, and flash photography in restaurants should be a ticketable offense.

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Natural lighting in a restaurant can make for an interesting shot, but the camera work is more difficult. I looked over a range of high ISO cameras and films this morning, and I did not find much that will work well in a low light setting.

There are a few digital SLR's that go up to ISO 1600, or even 3200 with a 'boost' (read=noise): Canon 20D, Nikon 70D, Pentax digital SLR, Maxxum digital SLR, and all of the very expensive pro digitals.

Most of the point and shoots, or 'all in one' digital cameras stop at ISO 400-800, and that probably is not high enough.

You can also drag out the old 35mm SLR, and use several high speed films without flash: Fujicolour 1600 135-36; Konica 1600 135-24; Ektachrome 1600 135-36 (this one can be push processed to 3200, the others cannot.) These are daylight balanced films, and would need colour correction afterwards, or select a table with window light. The grain inherent in the high speed would not be worse than the noise of a high ISO digital.The fastest lens available (i.e. f/2.0 50 mm, should be better than a zoom. A lot of planning should bring in some good shots.

[kitchenmage]

i am feeling a bit nervous about posting pitures here, there is so much actual talent, while i am but a neophyte photographer with a sweet camera...

i bought a Nikon D70 a few weeks ago and have been taking lots of pictures of all sorts of weird and wonderful things... i have learned three things: a newfound respect for photographers who learned with film, that's nowhere near as easy (or cheap) as digital; if you take enough pictures something will turn out okay; a really good tool can make the person who wields it look better...oh, and a fourth, i am way over my head with this camera... but in a good way...

so here's a few shots, some of bagel making, others of herbs in my garden... i've been doing more process/ingredient photos than finished food... there are a few more photos at my blog-- including the long version of the bagels--from flour to lox...

the aforementioned bagels

and again, later...tasty too...

crust...

...and crumb

getting up close

and downright personal

and a couple from the garden...

so, thrash away... my "technique" so far consists mostly of using the Auto or Macro settings and messing around with various focus points and angles then hacking it with a handful of tools... (remember what i said about my newfund respect for trying this with limited film? no way would i have turned out a single shot i'd dare post here with film...not for many, many months) color me clueless and learning as quickly as possible...

did i mention i'm having a blast?

[robyn]

My husband got me a book for my birthday - Digital Food Photography by Lou Manna. It's excellent - and I recommend it for anyone who wants to take pictures of food. Robyn

[FoodZealot]

kitchenmage-

nice photos! I recently got a D70s myself, but I haven't had time to cook, much less document it. BTW, is that the kit lens you're using, or another lens? Looks like much shorter depth of field than I thought it would be capable of.

~Tad

[Susan in FL]

My husband got me a book for my birthday - Digital Food Photography by Lou Manna.  It's excellent - and I recommend it for anyone who wants to take pictures of food.  Robyn

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Thanks for the tip, Robyn. I ordered it.

[fifi]

kitchenmage-

nice photos!  I recently got a D70s myself, but I haven't had time to cook, much less document it.  BTW, is that the kit lens you're using, or another lens?  Looks like much shorter depth of field than I thought it would be capable of.

~Tad

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I got the D70 with the kit lens and also the 60mm macro. Once you learn how, you can manipulate the "film speed" and f stop and vary the depth of field just like you would with any other camera. The trick is learning how. This camera can do the tango and slice a mango. I just have to take time to figure it out. I am retired and can't find the time.

BTW . . . The kit lens is a heck of a deal. The camera store guy talked me into it. I am really glad he did. It is 18mm - 70mm and you can do some really good food shots with it. The tech reviews I read on it are amazing.

Another thing I am glad I did was upgrade Photoshop Elements from 1.0 to 3.0. (I have never been tempted to shell out the bucks for the full blown Photoshop.) Then I got the Scott Kelby book The Photoshop Elements 3 Book for Digital Photographers. This is truly the most really helpful book I have seen on the subject. It steps you through several tricks that are really useful for fixing those food shots taken in less than ideal situations. (Kelby is the editor of "Photoshop Users" magazine and some others. He also has other books on Photoshop.)

If things work out, I will be going on an excursion in a few weeks and will be giving myself a "crash course" in camera before I do. (That means reading the instruction book that came with it.) I will try to take some notes on settings and such and post here. (Oops, I just realized that I won't have to take notes. The camera records a load of metadata for each shot. Cool.)

I am thinking that whatever I find out about the D70 will apply to any of the other "prosumer" digital SLRs.

[Behemoth]

kitchenmage -- I love the composition of your photos but I am noticing that you may have the same problem I was having with my D70 when I first got it -- indoor shots come out much too dark. Reading their user group website, it seems like they did this for some reason that made sense when I read it but I've now forgotten what that reason was. In any case, I find that lightening my pictures afterwards gives good results. Play around with the manual settings a bit -- I really like their auto setting outdoors but not at all indoors. The night setting works really well if you're careful about keeping the camera steady. Which reminds me, I really need to take some cornfield photos soon, they are so nice and golden in the afternoon...

[kitchenmage]

kitchenmage-

nice photos!  I recently got a D70s myself, but I haven't had time to cook, much less document it.  BTW, is that the kit lens you're using, or another lens?  Looks like much shorter depth of field than I thought it would be capable of.

~Tad

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Tad, Thanks. Yep, that's the kit lens--and given that the date on the images is about two weeks after I got the camera, the photos were probably just shot on Auto. It took me at least a month to get to the point that I started twiddling things.

Behemoth, I see what you mean. I am pretty sure those were shot as JPGs, and now that I am shooting things in RAW the interior shots aren't so dark. I'll have to try the night setting with a tripod and see if that makes a difference.

Fifi and Robyn, thanks for the book tips, will go check them out.

~km

[Behemoth]

Oh, I just mean the night setting is good for parties! I've gotten some some really cool shots that way. For food I just mess around with a manual setting. tripod can't hurt though.

[Susan in FL]

I'm in the market for a new digital SLR camera. Does anyone have the Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D, or know someone who does? I would love to hear about this camera from someone who takes food photos before I make a final decision.

[helenas]

My husband got me a book for my birthday - Digital Food Photography by Lou Manna.

i was waiting for this book for a long time - but id didn't live up to my expectations - i guess the best way to learn is to shoot as many pix as possible and then some more...

anyway, the blunder of the day - i wish i switched off the flash - so much for baby blue hubbard

[Toliver]

anyway, the blunder of the day - i wish i switched off the flash - so much for baby blue hubbard 

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I hope you don't mind but I ran your picture through Photoshop and came up with this:

Is this color more true?

Post-production can sometimes save a photo. If you can afford it, a program like Adobe Photoshop Elements, which is geared towards the non-professional, has just about everything you need to help rescue a photo gone "bad". I also recommend routine checking for Adobe Photoshop Elements on web sites like Amazon. They will periodically offer rebates or lower prices for such software (when I bought Photoshop Elements, version 2, for my sister-in-law they were offering a 50% rebate off the price...such a deal!).

Also note that some cameras will have filter settings depending upon the type of light being used. Incandescent lights generally cast an orange-ish hue and fluorescent lighting sometimes adds a blue hue. The proper filters can compensate for this.

[helenas]

thanks Toliver, i would say this is too much blue - the truer color is below:

but yes, i have photoshop, i just need to install it.

[mrbigjas]

little buddy seems very curious about that squash there. maybe s/he needs reminding that cats don't like vegetables.

[BonVivant]

i'm thinking about making a DIY 'rig'. for 2 years now i've been using an old coffee table and a couple of lights. need to do some research...sometime.

taken with a simple Fujifilm, no natural light whatsoever [at F2.8 but would love another non SLR camera that can do F1.8. sounds impossible though]

[snekse]

As a long time lurker of this thread, I wanted to share my thoughts about my new camera. I took a week long trip to the San Francisco bay area and took pictures of almost everything we ate. I've posted a review of the camera here:

Equipment Review - Sony CyberShot DSC-T9 @ Gastronomic Fight Club

But if you wanted to jump straight to the sample pictures, I've posted 125+ photos on Flickr at full resolution with EXIF data. The pictures are untouched, for better or worse. Please feel free to leave any feedback comments on Flickr or here.

Sony DSC-T9 Sample Shots @ Flickr by Snekse

[robyn]

As a long time lurker of this thread, I wanted to share my thoughts about my new camera.  I took a week long trip to the San Francisco bay area and took pictures of almost everything we ate.  I've posted a review of the camera here:

Equipment Review - Sony CyberShot DSC-T9 @ Gastronomic Fight Club

But if you wanted to jump straight to the sample pictures, I've posted 125+ photos on Flickr at full resolution with EXIF data.  The pictures are untouched, for better or worse. Please feel free to leave any feedback comments on Flickr or here.

Sony DSC-T9 Sample Shots @ Flickr by Snekse

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The camera seems fine (judging from the pictures). But I have a suggestion (it's not personal to you - it's for everyone). It's so easy to take digital photos. We take dozens of them - hundreds - thousands. But very few people seem to take the time to edit what they've taken (either in terms of individual pictures or groups of pictures). Which is why you direct us to a site with 125 pictures - or I get a "vacation photo album" from a friend which contains 100. There's no editing - no narration.

I was guilty of the same thing myself - keeping and sending stacks of pictures - the good - the bad - the ugly - all together.

Now I try to go through my shots - throw out the bad ones - edit and keep the good ones - and organize them into coherent "albums" (complete with captions if appropriate). It is definitely a "rainy day project" - and I am far behind in organizing what I have - but I'll get to most of it eventually - and I think it's worth it.

Note that I recently went through my mother's non-digital photos. Thousands of them. Lots of bad pictures - duplicates - nothing in chronological order. Couldn't edit them individually. But I did throw out the dogs and organize what was left into albums. I don't think anyone had looked at the stuff for over 20 years - but now it's worth looking at (and I often look at the album I kept for myself).

Pictures should tell a story - and we have to edit and arrange them to tell that story. Robyn

[snekse]

The camera seems fine (judging from the pictures).  But I have a suggestion (it's not personal to you - it's for everyone).  It's so easy to take digital photos.  We take dozens of them - hundreds - thousands.  But very few people seem to take the time to edit what they've taken (either in terms of individual pictures or groups of pictures).  Which is why you direct us to a site with 125 pictures - or I get a "vacation photo album" from a friend which contains 100.  There's no editing - no narration.

..

Pictures should tell a story - and we have to edit and arrange them to tell that story.  Robyn

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I understand what you're saying, and I agree to some extent, but...

The reason the pictures were not edited, is because that photo set was supposed to be a raw sample of the pictures that were taken to strictly show what the camera is capable of - not of my photoshop skills. The 125+ photos that I posted for that set is a small sub-sample of the 1,200+ photos I took that week. So all the photos in that set should be considered nothing more then samples from an equipment review. Also, the only reason any of the photos in that particular set have captions on them is because I was grouping those photos together to be included in another album

If you'd like to peruse some of my other sets, you'll get a better sense of my story telling philosophy.

Snekse's Photo Sets

For an in depth story, check out our visit to Blackbird in Chicago. There's only 11 pictures, but each picture is heavily commented to let you know my thoughts about what you see.

Dinner at Blackbird - Chicago

[Susan in FL]

Snekse, your photography is awesome. I enjoyed looking at your blog as well. It's evident that you are way far ahead of many of us. Thanks for sharing your shots with us.

Robyn, I appreciate the point which I think you were trying to make. I've been working on my editing skills. On the other hand, there sure is something to be said for photography with no editing whatsoever, like those sample shots. I am most proud when I get a spectacular photo out of hundreds taken and do nothing to it afterwards. I guess it's the purist in me.

Snekse, I hope you're out of your lurker status on this thread!

[natasha1270]

Hi all!

I am a novice at food photography and would like to play with it more. I'm still working my way through this thread. Some of the pictures here and elsewhere on eG are just fantastic!

I’ve had my camera (Sony DSC-W1) for several years now and sometimes it gives me great unexpected shots and other times I can’t coax anything out of it worth keeping. But alas, a new camera is not in the budget at this time so I must try to make it work. The nice thing with digital cameras is the instant results but sometimes I think I look backwards too much and should just stay in the moment and take as many pictures as possible and edit later. So equal parts equipment & operator error, I suppose. A work in progress.

Here is one of my most recent pics (from the marshmallow thread):

I am pretty happy with the composition but suspect there may be a little too much zoom. Any additional comments on lighting, positioning, etc to improve would be very welcome.

Another issue, that I think has plagued many others as well, is my eyes… Honestly, I can’t really tell if it is even focused well. Thinking it might be my monitor, I made prints on two separate printers and the results are mixed. I think one is compensating. Any opinions?

Thanks!

N.