Food Photo 101-1
Posted on Nov 06 in Food Photo 101, Food Porn, photographyby NikaPrint
(Click here for a printable PDF version of this post)
Welcome to all of you following along!
I would like to thank each of you for writing to us about your interest in this project. Curt and I have been overwhelmed by the response, making us feel even more inspired.
Rationale:
As I mentioned in the first post in this series (Food Photo 101: Photography for Foodies), I strongly believe that there is quite a lot of capability in your average low-cost digicam or Point and Shoot (P&S) camera.
Why?
Because I was able to get some interesting images with my P&S by doing a few very fundamental things, other than pointing and shooting. For example, I shot the photo above with my 4 MP Fujifilm Finepix S3100 (bought the camera for about $250.00 in 2005, I think). Another image from the same series and camera is shown below.
I am going to use two different icons to indicate when I am referring to P&S or a DSLR:
– P&S
– DSLR
For the most part, assume I am referring to P&S operations. When I am talking about DSLR specific topics, I will pop up that DSLR icon.
Lesson 1: Objectives
- Learn the basics of any digital camera
- Explore white balance, exposure, and aperture settings
- Apply that experience to some food photography
The basics of any digital camera are:
- a light-tight box
- a lens that lets the light in
- a sensor
- a little computer that does things with the data from the sensor
With almost all P&S cameras, the lens is a permanent part of the camera, so you do not have the option of switching it out for a different lens. One of the ways that you control your image is by using the various modes on your camera, which in turn control things like how wide the diaphragm in your lens opens up, time that the sensor is exposed to light, etc.
There are many different P&S cameras out there that span the gamut of functionality, from barely more than a disposable camera to ones that begin to rival even mid range prosumer DSLRs. Because I have only used my kind of P&S (before that I used a Pentax K1000 film 35mm, now I mostly use a Canon 30D), I am going to have to use settings found in my Fujifilm S3100 (which is pretty basic) and my Canon 30D camera for our examples. If you can not find the analogous functions on your camera, post to the class forum and we will brainstorm it.
My Canon 30D camera has all manner of creative modes, customizable settings, etc. When I have it on manual, I capture in RAW format, I can turn the auto-focus off by the switch on my lens, I have direct control over the white balance, shutter speed, the ISO, aperture, etc.
My P&S camera has a movie mode, an auto still mode, a “creative” still mode (that includes night, sport, landscape, and portrait), and a manual still mode.
- The best place for those “creative” modes is for snapshots at a wedding, the theme park, or some other setting where you are not really going for studio quality images.
- For food photography, stick to the manual mode. Grab your camera manual or instruction book and re-read the section for manual mode for your camera.
First Project
Today’s activity is to play with some camera settings so you can get an intuitive sense for the effect each setting has on your photo. We are going to dive deeper into the manual mode to learn what it has to offer us. I know it’s painful, but right about now you need to get out your Instructions for your camera and turn to the pages on the various manual modes.
Grab these things:
- camera
- tripod, mini-tripod or a stack of books or some such to put your camera on
- pen
- paper
- some small object or even food, something that will not go bad from sitting around though
If you are looking to get a table top tripod, perhaps one like a GorillaPod by Joby would do.
Find these in or around your house:
- a clear window that you can put a table next to
- a table
- a comfortable chair
The time of day when you should do this experiment is around mid-day or whenever the sun is at it’s highest. Put your table near the window, but not in direct light falling through the window. If it’s afternoon and you are getting direct light coming in at an angle, your photos will have intense shadows, an advanced topic that we are not dealing with right now.
A cloudy day that is not too dreary should work also.
- Put your subject (banana, stuffed iguana, baby’s binkie, sea shells, anything) on the table and either mount your camera on the table-top tripod, a regular tripod, or lodge it on a stack of books or the like. The latter is not the best idea, but it works in a pinch.
- First, make sure that your camera is set to Manual mode (definitely do not want that nasty on-camera flash going off)
- Set your quality setting to the highest it can go. For my camera, that means a 2272×1704 pixels jpeg file
- Set your white balance to auto
For my camera, the instructions say this:
- If your camera has other manual setting, set those to auto also
- Focus on your subject and take a photo
- Making sure to record what conditions apply to which photo, take a shot at each of the different White Balance settings
- After you complete that, set the White Balance back to auto
- Next, do the same thing with Exposure Compensation, starting at the bottom of the available settings within EV to the top
- Set it back to auto
- Finally, keeping White Balance and Exposure Compensation at auto, take shots for each setting of the Aperture Priority selection.
Outcomes
Which settings did you find worked best for your subject? Notice how different your photo can look when you change just one of these selections slightly.
If you are shooting RAW (not available in most P&Ss), white balance is not as important because you can optimize this in your post-processing.
While your learning, you may want to go through this process for each new lighting situation that you encounter.
Take Home Message
It is possible, with a little attention to detail and knowledge of your camera’s manual settings (and never using the on-camera flash), to capture images of your subject that have good light qualities.
Second Project
- If you feel like you have found some settings that are giving you a good image of your stand-in subject, it’s time to put it to the test.
- Select a food that you have found challenging in the past (except for a bowl of soup which is inherently frustrating to shoot; more on soup later) and put it where your previous subject was.
- Do not use the tripod.
- Shoot the food like you have in the past, using settings you may have used then. Perhaps you would have used the flash and have it set to a “creative” zone like “portrait” or some such.
- Now shoot your food with the setting sweetspots you found in the first project above and with the tripod.
- See any difference? If not, be patient. Adjust the settings (one at a time) and see if it can get better.
- Post your before and after photos to the flickr Food Photo 101 group and then, if you wish, write a blog post about it (you can use the logo I have up at the group pool for your posts).
- Do not forget to trackback to this post (trackback link) so that we can get a notification of your post. I will then be able to include your hard work in the Sunday wrap up post. You can also simply email the link to me or Curt.
- Your after photos do not have to be perfect to share!!!
- We are looking for improvements right now, not the Ansel Adams of the food world.
Can’t wait to see what you all come up with!
I am putting together a glossary of photography terms on this Food Photo 101 Glossary page (sourced in large part right now from the English Wikipedia). I am adding to this over time, it’s not 100% complete yet.
Related Posts:
Resources:
- Curt’s Bucky’s Barbecue and Bread blog – Food Photo 101 page
- Food Photo 101 Index
- Food Photo 101 Class Forum
- Food Photo 101 Glossary
- Food Photo 101 Flickr Group
To register for the newsletter that reviews each week’s topic, fill out the contact form at the bottom of this post (or on the Food Photo 101 page) and type “Food Photo 101” in the subject field.
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[...] follows is the excellent work by Curt on this week’s first lesson (Food Photo 101-1). He was fantastically methodical in recording and discussing his experience. Read on to see what [...]
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[...] have begun to familiarize ourselves with our cameras with the last exercise (Food Photo 101: First Principles), putting your hands to work on the settings and knobs and dials and such. Its ok if it still feels [...]
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Wow! I’m very excited about taking this course. So much to learn already….
Lydia: glad to have you! Been away from the keyboard much of the day, have to now get back into blog mode
‘am absolutely flommoxed and lost…in the Manual setting my camera will only allow me to set the White balance to auto…all the other settings it wants a number or setting. So in Manual, I am unable to do Auto..or is it me? Olympus 550 UZ. Have worn out the batteries looking for the elusive “Auto” in Manual or the M.
Chloe
Chloeann:
I found a link to your camera’s instruction manual here http://www.olympusamerica.com/files/SP-500%20UZ%20Advanced%20Manual.pdf
its a PDF
I put the link in the forum too.
Your camera has A LOT of nifty bells and whistles! You can even shoot in RAW (if you do not know how to deal with those, stay tuned, we will cover that)
You even have a “cuisine mode” I would love to see what you get with that to compare with your manual mode.
If there is no auto, dont get stuck on that… just make sure to record your various settings as you experiment.
Start in full auto mode (see page 10) and do some test shots there.
Then go to your “M” mode on the dial.
Look at pages 48-63 and see if those help.
page 49 is for the aperture
page 50 is for the shutter speed
page 58 is for ISO
Page 59-61 is white balance
if you play with those you will waster the core of your camera’s key functions.
please let me know if this works for you!
Hi Nika, I have been out of town, in pretty much of a wireless dead zone so I’m playing catch-up at the moment.
I use a Cannon A640. How do I know if it is a DSLR? (and is that a good thing?)
I usually set the white balance to the custom setting, and not on auto. After looking at Curt’s photos, I think I need to start setting the white balance to auto.
Curt’s photos from lesson one seem to fluctuate more from adjusting the aperture than anything else.
Would an auto setting of the white balance get rid of graininess in a shot or is that more defined by the aperture and the exposure settings?
Curt’s last shot with the exposure on 0 and the rest on auto looks really great! Can we assume there was no photo-shop done to the photo?
Thanks, Kathy
Kathy, the aperture wasn’t on auto for the last one, but white balance and shutter were. I didn’t post process any of the photos at all (no Photoshop).
I take that back, Kathy… White balance in the last shot was set to Warm White in the last shot. The shot before was auto everything but aperture.
Warm white…hmmm…I don’t have that setting. I have eight choices that include things like cloudy, sunshine, fluorescent, tungsten, etc. I need to do the test the way you did!
Nika I still can’t believe you shot that horned melon with a P&S camera.
Was it taken in natural light?
Does that photo have any photo shop done to it?
(I don’t know how to use photo shop. I use the few settings within Picasa to crop, lighten and darken and that’s about it.)
BTW- The best part of Lesson 1 is that you really got me thinking!
I have a small bistro, and have to take pictures of food on a daily basis, I cannot aford the time to use natural light, it would be convinient for me to set up a space in my kitchen with a table, back grounds, tripod, camara ready and all, and before the food goes out to customers, take the pictures! what type of artificial light would you recomend for the first project setup?
Carlo: sorry for the delay! Been getting used to blogging and working (not at the same time, theres the rub
I think I would start with why you take the photos (as in, where are you using them? Printing them out? only online? using for advertising? etc)
If this is for cataloging and simple online use (like on a web page) but not for advertising a white or black background is good. White is best.
Also, what sort of camera are you using? Is it a DSLR? film? Point and shoot?
What sort of budget are you alloting yourself?
re: space for the set-up, will it be permanent and out of the way? (even a small closet with room for the lighting and the table with background would be better than setting up taking down or leaving the set up where people can run into it by accident.
re: If you are using a DSLR and can spend a bit of money, get an artificial light… get a daylight balanced strobe .. I have this one http://www.alienbees.com/b800.html and I put a softbox on it .. see this link:
http://www.alienbees.com/foldable_detail.html
None of this is “cheap” but not hugely expensive.
I can help you walk through the set up and using it.
If you are using a point and shoot, your options for consistent artificial light are a bit limited.
Since you are so very far away (Mexico!!) I cant drop by but please let me know if I can help!
You should always feel free to write back if you have any questions.
thanks you very much for the lessons tomorrowi will start with the first home work . i own a canon rebel XTi and i managed to set the WEB to auto however the rest are given with number and i have searched and read the manual over and over again trying to set the EV and AP to auto but i couldnt.
for the time being i will just try it out with my camera set to Av mode and WEB to auto and will see what happens.
thank you very much !
Sarah: Hope you enjoy learning more about photography! Definitely keep going back to the manual and learn the tools you have. Experiment!