I own 2 540ez's and would like to put together a very basic kit to shoot my meals for a personal/family food blog. For this shot, I merely bounced it off the ceiling, but would like to obviously add some control and snap/depth to the shot.

Simplest setup for food is one light, unmodified from above and behind the food angled to put nice specular highlights to make the food look "juicy" and a matte reflector down in front to provide bright, diffuse fill.

You need lots more light than you have here to get decent depth of field, and don't use a wide angle lens, the distortion will make the food look strange.

Search this forum for "food" and you'll find a fairly recent thread with some nice examples.

Don't forget that much of the success of food photography is about the look of the food itself, which is the domain/realm of the food stylist. No pro food shoot is without one.

<Chas>

A magnum is a powerful reflector, effectively doubling the output of a zoom reflector. A

n easy set up would be a shoot thru umbrella and a bounce card. It sounds ridiculously minimal but it will allow for manipulation to taste, no pun intended.

I lit a lot of food commercials back in the 1970s, Armour hams and turkeys, Kraft salad dressing, Knudsen dairy products, fast food like Taco Time, Wendy's, more food than I can remember 8-) Also a lot of wine and beer.

Most food likes top or top back either straight or angled. Different foods take different light. Salads like top light and loafs of bread like a top back at about a 45 degree angle.

Take something like a goose neck reading light and move it around the food until you find a light you like. Then put your flash there.

Something simple that looks good is an open ended box made of show card or maybe foam core. Show card or poster board and small pieces of foam core can be found at an art supply store. While at the art supply store pick up some Clear Print 1000H tracing paper. 1000H comes in rolls up to six feet wide, but all you need is a medium size sheet, maybe a 20x24 or 24x30.

To build this box tape four pieces of show card together (black side out, white side in) and on the top opening tape in the tracing paper several inches below the rim (this is to stop spill). Hold the box at the position you determined and shoot flash through the tracing paper. These boxes can be retangular or cone shaped, square across the end or cut at an angle -- what ever fits your food lay out. Or maybe try this without the tracing paper -- this would give you a strong specular light with the white walls of the box providing fill.

cwebster is right about the food stylist. They can make or break a food shoot.

In addition to the lighting advice you're getting, plus one for the comments about food stylists. Since you're doing your photography for yourself, you'll want to be your own stylist, and that means examining all the food shots you can from magazines like Food & Wine, Gourmet, Cook's Illustrated, etc. Figure out what it is about a shot that grabs your attention, and then try to duplicate it.

For example, in the shot you posted above there's shallow depth of field but no clear subject. Total depth of field across the plate would work better, or placing a distinct subject (like a nicely browned chicken filet or a big slice of eggplant or whatever) in the focused area of a shallow DOF photo.

Several years ago I took a weeklong cooking course at the Disney Institute (no longer in existance), and one of the classes was on Coverpage Cooking, where we learned how to prepare foods for photography. While everything we prepared was made of edible products, they weren't always prepared edibly. For instance, the beautiful Thanksgiving turkey you see on the cover of many magazines this time of year may be raw, painted with soy sauce, and the cut area "cooked" with a torch or hot air gun. Yum!

Almost forgot; if you're not already using one, definitely use a tripod for still life photography like this.

Thanks folks for your information. Simply fantastic information. CD--I'll be off to the craft store soon to make up a box as you suggest. And hopefully have some foamcore left over for flagging, extra reflectors, etc.

I'll certainly be my own stylist--which is certainly an art unto itself. Plating is something else I want to learn for both photography and food presentation ends. Certainly won't be doing anything like they do for real shoots--I want to eat my product not too much after the shoot while it's still warm.

The whole process is just fun for me, so I'm not terribly worried about perfection as much as constantly improving. That said aspiring for professional results is always good.

For the record, my DOF is shallow because I ran out of power. Since these are all going to be prepped for the web, I could probably get away with iso 800, maybe even 1600 and stop the lens down a ton. I'm appreciating why product/food is shot with TS lenses to get the plane of focus where you want it.

But again, thank you folks. I'll try and update this thread along the way as my free time permits.

Best,
Daniel

The strongest illusion of 3D is created when objects are backlit and the camera shoots into the shadow side. The amount of detail seen on the shadow side is the controlled with fill (to bring the darkest shadows up to the range the camera can record detail) and key light (to create the illusion of shape and texture on the front of the object.

Here's the basic recipe:

A foundation of fill to lift all the shadows the camera sees. Ideally fill should come from over the camera and be as shadowless as possible because where there are shadows there will be dark unfilled voids in the photo: