Perhaps it would have been better to have the whole of the board in the shot? Also it feels a little as though the shot is from the side - maybe rotating the cake slightly in a clockwise direction would give a better impression.
The top looks nice and sharp, and then gets real soft on the way down. If this is what you were trying for then I would say it works. I also notice a little bit of blue tint on the left side of the frame. Perhaps a smaller f/stop to gain more DOF and bring the whole cake into focus. One trick I was told about was to shoot from farther away and then crop/resize what you want, and that gives more coverage on your DOF, which brings more into focus.
Just my $.02
Ken
Nice cake - I agree with he previous posts - all the frame in and better depth. The right side looks white, the front greenish. I think you need to do levels pick the white dropper and work on the green cast.
Pretty good picture but if you are advertising it should be perfect.
If you use a tripod and remote shutter release you should not have to worry about going up an fstop. 50mm1.8 is a great lens for quality and price. So more important than lens, put it on a tripod. Using a wider angle lens this close will cause WA distortion. Using a higher mm lens will cause less depth - so 50mm is probably good - just back up a bit if you need to.
Cakecraft- I can't think of a better lens to take pictures of your cakes. It is an absolutely wonderful lens and CAN'T be beat for the price, not even close. If you wanted to step up to a better lens you can get the 1.4 but I don't know for your purpose if it would be worth the extra cash. 1.8 is very fast all ready.
I would definately add some sharpening to the above image in the image editor of your choice. If you don't have Photoshop then you can always use GIMP which is free. If you don't mind I will try an edit of this when I get home today after work.
So do you need a critique on the cake decorating or the photography.
Decorating... The cake looks off balance and lacking a primary front. The swagged element indicates the front, but the off kilter location of the small decorative elements throw this off.... Just kidding. The only thing I know about cakes comes from my tongue, not my eye.
Photo: First, the camera and 50 1.8 ARE up to the task. You need to get the most out of them. You don't need flash, only a halfway decent tripod and a background / forground. If I were shooting this in my house I would vacate the kitchen table, place a large sheet of paper down on the table and elevate it in the back. Adjust whatever lighting I was going to use and shoot away. f8 or smaller aperture for DOF. Tripod for time exposure, natural light for ease of use and low cost. The other option is to create a faux background in photoshop ( my second choice by far ). Include the entire base in your image and leave a little breathing room around it.
I could not find an immediate example of an object the size of a cake shot the way I mention, but here is an avocado. It was lit with one small light to cast a shadow, probably not what you want to do, but the idea is similar. The background is a sheet of paper and because the light falls off to the rear, it gets darker as it goes back. In this shot I elevated the paper behind, which you will need to do to to get something as large as a cake. Keep the background as far back as possible for light fall off.
BTW, I don't know how big the cake is, but you will need a fairly large piece of paper to use as a foreground/background. You might want to setup the cake on a sheet or something you have around the house to see for yourself what size you will need and then go buy the paper. The first time I made a photo stage it seemed so big, but I found I couldn't photograph anything larger than a beer bottle on it. This page is old, but it may give you some ideas.
