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Photography Techniques

crkoller

I was just wondering if Ryan or anyone else for that matter could give some advice on getting the best quality photographs of plated food in a home setting . I love the lines and intensity of the items that Ryan was able to achieve in MC and am looking for anything in pursuit of getting the most of using my camera at home. Any tips on equpiment, flashs, light-boxes, etc. would be extremely helpful

I have a Canon 7d and a handful of lenses, but often times I feel my photos look a bit flat and don't achieve that vibrancy I want.

Big fan of Quentin Bacon and Francecso Tonelli's work as well

Cheers,

Chriss

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Mason_Perry_34060

I am also interested in doing this better.

Ryan_Matthew_Smith_2910

Examples are a bit easier to guide from but I'll try to give a couple of quick pointers to get you started.

*Gear

I keep my setup fairly minimal for shooting in a home setting. For most of the chefsteps content we are using 2-3 lenses per shoot:

canon 1.4 50mm

canon 2.8 20mm

canon 2.8 100mm macro

This lens set is fairly budget friendly and covers most bases for standard plating shots at home.

The MC style stuff was generally done with an f/4 24-105 and 1-3 off camera strobes. We had a bunch of specialized glass and light modifiers for unique situations but most aren't applicable for day-to-day situations.

*An on camera flash is always nice to have around....just don't point them at your subject. Even with a diffuser, they tend to be too harsh and in a bad position for light quality. Instead, try bouncing the flash off of the ceiling or the wall behind you etc etc...Bouncing off of a white surface is always preferred.

*Learn to use fill cards. A $3 white foam board from an art supply store can be your best friend. Say you are next to a window that's causing to dark of a shadow. Placing a white fill card opposite the window will fill in the shadow, bringing some nice detail back into the shadow areas.

*Get a tripod or find a way to stabilize your camera, this will help quite a bit in low light situations.

*Expose the brightest you can without blowing out and area (unless you don't mind that area being blown out). The 7D has a gamut warning that will flash when you've blown out all data, turn it on. The reason for this is there is more information allotted to the brighter portions of a digital image file. More info means more detail.

*Get a copy of photoshop. It's absolutely necessary to have an editing software, photoshop is the best. If you don't want to go in depth with editing, lightroom should be sufficient.

Hopefully that's enough of a start to get a dialogue going...

Best,

Ryan

seijoed

Thanks @Ryan!

I built a little lightbox a while back, the tripod and using a delay made a huge difference even on something as simple as an iPhone.

I found this on sale on Amazon later, it is 16x16 so pretty good for food, also easy to move around.

Mason_Perry_34060

Looks like I need to step up my photography game as well.....

Shannon_Barnes_68642

Me too. I don't have a proper camera, just my phone and iPad. I'm still trying to get caught up on cooking equipment and tools, camera comes after.

Mason_Perry_34060

My wife has taken some really good pictures with her iphone it has impressed me a few times.

seijoed

I take pretty much all my pictures with an iPhone4

Shannon_Barnes_68642

okay, good to know! So maybe I'll try using a white board will help me loose some of the yellow tint in my pictures, then.

Mason_Perry_34060

Even another ambient light source can help.

Ryan_Matthew_Smith_2910

http://www.outletpc.com/ed7272.html?utm_source=ed7272&utm_medium=shopping%2Bengine&utm_campaign=googleproducts&gclid=CICi9enM_7QCFSFyQgodPHEA1A

iphone tripods are easy to find for around $5-10 USD

Great write-up on understanding white balance; this should give you a good idea of where the yellow tint is coming from. Iphone has some free and 99c apps that will let you adjust white balance.

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/white-balance.htm

seijoed

Camera+ is great for stable pictures too.

Mason_Perry_34060

Thanks a lot @Ryan_Matthew_Smith I just learned about 6 new things.