Food Photography Tips?

How would you like to get food photography tips?

  • Text and lots of photos

    Votes: 27 62.8%

  • Video podcast, with recurring podcasts

    Votes: 1 2.3%

  • Slideshow with audio

    Votes: 6 14.0%

  • Video showing set up, etc.

    Votes: 7 16.3%

  • Other (please explain)

    Votes: 2 4.7%
  • Total voters
    43
Professor Salt said:
You might wanna ping Thawley on this conversation. He's a photography instructor.

Here's a few of my own tips (in text, no photos)

Invest in a tripod. Keeping your camera steady will improve your photos guaranteed. Especially true for indoor still life type photos. Doesn't need to buy an expensive one, either, but it should be stable enough for the size / weight of your camera.

Light your subject as well as you can. If that means turning on room lights, opening drapes for indoor shots, do that. If you're outdoors, sometimes you have the opposite problem and you have too much harsh sunlight creating harsh shadows. Sometimes, shooting outdoors means taking your subject out of direct sunlight.

Learn how to use your flash modes. It's usually AUTO mode, and the camera will decide when the flash goes off. For indoor shots, that's often not wanted, so force the flash OFF. For outdoor shots in harsh sunlight, you want to use "fill flash" to soften the harsh shadows on your subject, so force flash to the ON mode.

Learn about white balance. Shooting under fluorescent light gives your photos a greenish blue tint. Shooting under halogen light gives it an orange tone. Your camera has settings to compensate for these light conditions so your whites show up white, not blue or orange. Even basic digicams have some sort of white balance feature, and it's well worth using.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the tips professor...so...what good is the "auto" mode on a point and shoot if it won't do all that stuff (tripod excluded) for you? If I tell my wife I need a fancy dancy camera to take pictures of food she'll just tell me "tain't happenin'":lol: :lol: :lol:

JD
 
JD McGee said:
Thanks for the tips professor...so...what good is the "auto" mode on a point and shoot if it won't do all that stuff (tripod excluded) for you? If I tell my wife I need a fancy dancy camera to take pictures of food she'll just tell me "tain't happenin'":lol: :lol: :lol:

JD
Click to expand...

Good point. The autoflash makes an estimated guess for when there's not enough light overall to get a decent shot. Most camera's software seems to operate on a general sense of "there's not enough light in this frame overall, so I need to turn on the flash for this shot under these conditions."

That means it won't turn on the flash for harsh outdoor light conditions because there's plenty of illumination (overall). When you have a low light condition, it'll flash and blow out the image with a blinding white glare because most point & shoots can't soften the flash when it's needed.

Cameras doesn't need to be fancy to make good photos either. It's about the cook, not the cooker. :-D Luckily, these days you get more features and advanced technology that the same price bought last year.
 
Rick's Tropical Delight said:
you forgot "that'll be $50.00"!

it's all true... this shot was with the cheapo tripod, with timer, natural daylight & spotlight on the building, 1/13th second shutter and f 4.8. no way you could hold a 1/13 second exposure steady.

oh... and auto setting on the dial (or the flower, can't remember :biggrin: )
Click to expand...

Yup, the flower setting for closeup focusing. Great tip for tight shots.

"Bracketing" is something you can play with once you know how shutter speed and lens aperture work together to allow light onto your film, er light sensor. I took several frames of this late evening bonfire shot, and changed the aperture settings after each shot. Each one came out differently. Sometimes the bricks in the background came out exposed properly and the flame was washed out. In the other, the flame was brilliantly orange but the background was too dark. This frame is the compromise in between.

And like Rick's shot of his pizza, this sort of low light photo requires a tripod. No way I could have hand held this shot.

And to keep this BBQ focused, this shot is from a series I took of a historic recreation of 19th century cattle rancher's earth pit BBQ. All photos in that set are not post processed at all, it's all straight off the camera. You can see more photos from that event here
http://flickr.com/photos/professorsalt/sets/72157600843130709/
 

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Nice reading! No wonder my farking pics are blurry half the time. Can one of you camera folks sugget a tri-pod for a Sony DSC H-5, please.

Ebay/Amazon mod
 
cmcadams said:
Rick's Tropical Delight said:
This is in Q-Talk, NOT Woodpile! :)

LM & Keale, thanks... The second was after a lot of help figuring out how to take the shot, though I still have a long way to go.

Thirdeye... Maybe we can get the admins to start a new section for photo critiques!
Click to expand...

I like the idea of a photo critique section! I love to play with my cameras and am always trying to learn better ways to take pics. I am still trying to get a good pic of a star pinwheel (focus on the north star and open the shutter. Wait a few min and close the shutter. The north star stays in the center but all the other stars swirl around it.)
Click to expand...
 
You can spend a lot on a tripod... I just picked up a good all around tripod at Radio Shack for something like $20... It does most of what I need for now.
 
cmcadams said:
You can spend a lot on a tripod... I just picked up a good all around tripod at Radio Shack for something like $20... It does most of what I need for now.
Click to expand...
I'm good with a $20 tripod. Wish that was all my wife spent on hers! Of course she feels the same way when it comes to a bbq pit. :rolleyes:
 
Professor Salt said:
Good point. The autoflash makes an estimated guess for when there's not enough light overall to get a decent shot. Most camera's software seems to operate on a general sense of "there's not enough light in this frame overall, so I need to turn on the flash for this shot under these conditions."

That means it won't turn on the flash for harsh outdoor light conditions because there's plenty of illumination (overall). When you have a low light condition, it'll flash and blow out the image with a blinding white glare because most point & shoots can't soften the flash when it's needed.

Cameras doesn't need to be fancy to make good photos either. It's about the cook, not the cooker. :-D Luckily, these days you get more features and advanced technology that the same price bought last year.
Click to expand...

most of my shots, if not taken during the 'hour of power' (just before the sun sets and the sun is low and the shadows are long) are taken with the flash OFF so the shutter speed is longer and the only light source is the spotlight on the side of the outbuilding or halogen light clamped onto the rv... like this:
bristolfall2007-008.jpg


1/3 second shutter at f/4.5

If i can do this stuff, anybody can. you can take a decent photograph with a shoebox with a hole in the end. it's all about composition and framing.
 
Putting this photo class together sounds better and better all the time.

I have both a compact tripod with 6 or 7 inch legs (they do telescope to 24") and a full size one. I broke my monopod last year and need to buy another one of those. All are handy in one way or another.

The fun thing about digital is you are only limited by battery power which means you can goof off with ordinary subjects while you test out different settings. Since a tripod allows you to keep the position of the camera constant, you can concentrate on lighting or different settings. My weak point is recording my notes. I farked around for 20 minutes with water pictures one day ..... probably couldn't find my notes to save my life. Rick clued me to viewing the image data recorded on all digital photos, and that helps a lot. I still need to move some into a sample folder and paste a few details below each one for reference.

DSC01621a.jpg


DSC01400.jpg
 
Professor Salt said:
Good point. The autoflash makes an estimated guess for when there's not enough light overall to get a decent shot. Most camera's software seems to operate on a general sense of "there's not enough light in this frame overall, so I need to turn on the flash for this shot under these conditions."

That means it won't turn on the flash for harsh outdoor light conditions because there's plenty of illumination (overall). When you have a low light condition, it'll flash and blow out the image with a blinding white glare because most point & shoots can't soften the flash when it's needed.

Cameras doesn't need to be fancy to make good photos either. It's about the cook, not the cooker. :-D Luckily, these days you get more features and advanced technology that the same price bought last year.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the photo lesson professor...I have a Canon Power Shot A95. 5.0 mega pixels. I've been "pointing and shooting" up till now. The interest in taking better pictures stems from Rick's food photography. I'll delve a little further in to my camera's features and see what I come up with.

JD

ps...I'm a definite YES to the photo class!!!
 
Great thread here guys...I'm going home tonight & am gonna break out the Olympus manual, keep the info coming & we'll all be taking pictures like Rick & that would be a good thing
 
I always need to learn how to use a camera. My wife and I got a nice digital, but have not spent much time looking at the instruction. That would be a good start.
 
Great thread guys & gals. Ive got a nice Lumix camera with a Leica lense and the manual is like a farkin college physics exam. I need to sit down with the manual and get serious with it.
 
:icon_blush:
wow, mon... you guys need to stop calling my name. i'm getting all flushed and stuff.

i have no formal training in photography, or photoshop for that matter. i do however, have a couple of good photography books i got in the 80's for the basics and i've been taking food photos on and off since around 1985.

what i do is push every button till something cool happens! seriously... that's how i learn computer application programs also. the bestest button ever invented was the 'undo' button.

so go ahead and read the manual guys... but i think you'd be better off learning the basics of shutter speed, aperture size, composition, and framing in a general photography reference and then applying those basics to your cameras.

anyway... i got this new nikon d80 in april 07 and i think i'm getting the hang of it now. :biggrin:

so where is this thread leading, kurt? when will the 'critic' appear? heheh 8)
 
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Im seeing a pattern here..."We all have nice digitals...but haven't read the manual"! LOL!:rolleyes: I wonder what would happen...say in a month or so to our pron shots after READING the FARKIN" things???:biggrin:

JD
 
Here's a photo tip for you.

Besides looking at what you want to photograph, look at what else will be in the image, like stained tablecloths, misplaced spots of food on the plate and things in the background.

FiletMignonPlated1.jpg



Then you won't have to spend so much time and effort cleaning up the image digitally!!! Duh!
FiletMignonPlated.jpg
 
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