Shooting Food Photos in less than optimal light
May 21, 2017 14:02:06 #
AP wrote:
Thank You, yorkiebyte for your observation and response, you made me smile. If what you see through your camera look good, snap that shutter or your photo is gone forever! AP
Yeah, I have pressure at home...the wife or guests want to eat...not wait for the idiot (me!) with the camera (usually my cheap Nikon D3100 with a 50mm 1.8 G) to set a shot up with the first plate of food!!
I'm betting you have had that challenge also - whether at home or a restaurant!!
May 21, 2017 14:12:55 #
yorkiebyte wrote:
These images are all in my kitchen - south facing ... (show quote)
Nice shots. And that's all real food, right? That's not motor oil being poured onto pancakes, I hope.
May 21, 2017 14:33:06 #
[quote=boberic]Some "food" photos that you see in magazines or restuarants or other places aren't really food. They are props made to look like the food that they represent. I many restaurant food dis[plays in cases are plastic models. Nex time you see a glass of beer in a case notice that the head never changes, and the food in those cases never goes bad.[/quote]
Props are often used as a stand in for the real thing. It is not uncommon to mix Crisco shortening with confectioner's sugar and powdered food coloring to make it look like scooped ice cream. It doesn't melt. When the test shot with the "stand-in" is acceptable the plate is swapped with the best looking scoop (there may be as many as 20 or more sitting in the freezer) for the actual shot. There is truth in advertising rules that prevent fake stuff from showing up in real food imagery. Companies have lost lawsuits over misrepresentation, so it is not as common as one might think.
On the other hand, the beautifully bronzed turkey that often adorns the front covers of food and lifestyle magazines hasn't been roasted to perfection, nor is it edible. Typically it is basted with a mix of dishwashing liquid, water and caramel coloring (Kitchen Bouquet or burnt sugar if you shop at Jamaican grocery stores). The soap is to enhance the evenness of the color - turkey skin has lots of fat that prevents the color from evenly penetrating and the soap is a surfactant that dissolves the fat and diminishes the surface tension of the liquid, allowing good penetration.
If you look at cereal shots, the liquid is usually a hair product, like a white creme rinse. The advertisement is not selling milk, so that is ok. The creme rinse does not make the cereal soggy. The ice cubes in the tall cold drink are usually acrylic, and the water drops on the outside of the glass are sprayed on diluted corn syrup, oh, and the drink is at room temperature. And so on. . .
That glass of beer with the head is most definitely beer, but it ain't cold.
Props are often used as a stand in for the real thing. It is not uncommon to mix Crisco shortening with confectioner's sugar and powdered food coloring to make it look like scooped ice cream. It doesn't melt. When the test shot with the "stand-in" is acceptable the plate is swapped with the best looking scoop (there may be as many as 20 or more sitting in the freezer) for the actual shot. There is truth in advertising rules that prevent fake stuff from showing up in real food imagery. Companies have lost lawsuits over misrepresentation, so it is not as common as one might think.
On the other hand, the beautifully bronzed turkey that often adorns the front covers of food and lifestyle magazines hasn't been roasted to perfection, nor is it edible. Typically it is basted with a mix of dishwashing liquid, water and caramel coloring (Kitchen Bouquet or burnt sugar if you shop at Jamaican grocery stores). The soap is to enhance the evenness of the color - turkey skin has lots of fat that prevents the color from evenly penetrating and the soap is a surfactant that dissolves the fat and diminishes the surface tension of the liquid, allowing good penetration.
If you look at cereal shots, the liquid is usually a hair product, like a white creme rinse. The advertisement is not selling milk, so that is ok. The creme rinse does not make the cereal soggy. The ice cubes in the tall cold drink are usually acrylic, and the water drops on the outside of the glass are sprayed on diluted corn syrup, oh, and the drink is at room temperature. And so on. . .
That glass of beer with the head is most definitely beer, but it ain't cold.
May 21, 2017 15:44:54 #
Kissel vonKeister wrote:
I know I'm off track here because you didn't ask about camera choice. The foody shooters used to use 8x10 view cameras all the time, Forget that, Now the food and product photographers use a lot of Olympus E-M1ii and E-M5ii set to the Hi Res Shot mode. Outstanding resolution, with huge files.
Interesting info, never heard of those cameras replacing 8x10s.
May 21, 2017 16:20:03 #
Kissel vonKeister
Loc: Georgia
tdekany wrote:
Interesting info, never heard of those cameras replacing 8x10s.
I don't know if they've replaced 8x10s, but a lot of product photogs (catalog shooters) have switched to them. I forget which, but one of the neutral YouTube sites was extolling the OMDs with High Res as a substitute for view cameras in food photography. It IS impressive! As long as your tripod is handy. You can't handhold for a High Res shot. I may get some argument on that, but you can't.
May 21, 2017 16:22:27 #
Kissel vonKeister
Loc: Georgia
jerryc41 wrote:
Nice shots. And that's all real food, right? That's not motor oil being poured onto pancakes, I hope.
Mashed potatoes are transformed into ice cream.
May 21, 2017 16:38:01 #
jerryc41 wrote:
Nice shots. And that's all real food, right? That's not motor oil being poured onto pancakes, I hope.
REAL maple syrup! Yep! All of my food shots are the real thing (and better be delicious - or it's my fault!) and very few chances to come up with a decent (not perfect by any means!) shot. Working commercially in past years, we did all kinds of crazy stunts to recreate food mainly because the lighting in the studio or on location would be hot and ruin most food!
Interesting to hear about the 8x10 thing ... in our commercial studio (70's, 80's and 90's) we mainly used 4x5 cameras so we had perspective as well as depth control for food/catalog work. If an ad agency demanded 8x10 we could do that also, but for economy reasons, 4x5 worked very well and the ad agencies liked the lower cost!
I don't use perspective control lenses on my Nikon/Olympus/Lumix cameras because - Who Cares! I'm not selling any of my images - jus' havin' fun!!
May 21, 2017 17:39:46 #
Kissel vonKeister wrote:
I don't know if they've replaced 8x10s, but a lot of product photogs (catalog shooters) have switched to them. I forget which, but one of the neutral YouTube sites was extolling the OMDs with High Res as a substitute for view cameras in food photography. It IS impressive! As long as your tripod is handy. You can't handhold for a High Res shot. I may get some argument on that, but you can't.
I do have an em5II. On the em1II FB page I saw just today that someone shot the Milky Way hand held.
May 21, 2017 18:00:41 #
wolkodoff1 wrote:
It seems no matter how hard I try, I can't duplicate the hero photos that restaurants have of their food. I use a Canon SX60HS, a pretty good bridge camera. I suspect that in these staged photos the light sources are arranged just so to make it optimal and just walking into a restaurant, especially at night limits the ability to shoot these types of photos well. Any advice or ideas are appreciated.
Yes, of course, they are all shot using flash, they don't want to take chances, so they use light that gives them the results they want and are repeatable each and every time!!
Jun 2, 2017 23:10:30 #
[quote=wolkodoff1]It seems no matter how hard I try, I can't duplicate the hero photos that restaurants have of their food. I use a Canon SX60HS, a pretty good bridge camera. I suspect that in these staged photos the light sources are arranged just so to make it optimal and just walking into a restaurant, especially at night limits the ability to shoot these types of photos well. Any advice or ideas are appreciated.[/quo
If you see a food shot and like it then take 10 steps back and see all that's done to get that shot you would instantly understand how much equipment went in to that image. Plus all the tricks of the trade, like marbles in soup to make the veggies come to the surface.
If you see a food shot and like it then take 10 steps back and see all that's done to get that shot you would instantly understand how much equipment went in to that image. Plus all the tricks of the trade, like marbles in soup to make the veggies come to the surface.
Jun 3, 2017 06:47:33 #
This was my end to my meal the other night. No flash, F2.8 1/40s. This was also after several drinks, so I was happy that it was fairly level and properly exposed :-)
Jun 3, 2017 10:04:52 #
Cdouthitt wrote:
This was my end to my meal the other night. No flash, F2.8 1/40s. This was also after several drinks, so I was happy that it was fairly level and properly exposed :-)
Looks yummy!
If you want to reply, then register here. Registration is free and your account is created instantly, so you can post right away.