I recently partnered with Canon South Africa to produce a short video with my top five tips for better food photography, and to share more of my photography practice on Instagram.
View this post on Instagram
The video is also accessible on the Canon South Africa Facebook page.
Here are the tips for your reference:
Harness and shape the light you have.
Look for an area close to a window, where the light comes in bright and evenly. You can diffuse or soften this light further with a diffuser or a sheet of thin fabric. If you find yourself shooting at times of the day or night where natural light is not available, use artificial sources of light, like your phone or a desk lamp and use something like a thin piece of white fabric or tissue paper to soften it. For best results, make sure the bulbs you’re using are marked at 5600 kelvin temperature to mimic daylight. To bounce more light into your scene, place a white board opposite your light source. To remove light, place black board in the areas where you want to deepen the shadows.
Pick the best lens for the scene you want to capture.
For wide scenes, where you want to include more of the background or for flatlays, use a wide-angle lens like a 28mm or a 35mm. If you want to photograph a scene close-up with good detail and more background blur, choose a longer macro lens like the Canon 60mm f2.8 macro for crop-sensor cameras or the 100mm f2.8. The longer lenses are also good for compressing a scene, useful if you’re using smaller backdrops and don’t want environmental distractions in your image.
Build your set in layers.
Arrange your food and props in layers to achieve a multidimensional scene that will hold the viewer’s eye. First decide what it is you want to be in focus and build your scene around that. Use crockery, cutlery, and linens to add interest. Use the ingredients that feature in your dish to add another layer to your image. Have a simple styling kit with things like tweezers to help you arrange smaller ingredients, and toothpicks to keep things in place.
Use an app.
Use the Canon Camera Connect app to wirelessly connect your camera to your phone or tablet device. Once connected, click Remote Live View Shooting on your device and you’ll be able to see at a glance if your composition is working. The app allows you to change your aperture, shutter and ISO from your device. It also works as a remote trigger, useful if you want to place yourself in the shot.
Set your focus.
Nail your focus before you attempt to capture a drip or drizzle shot. Set your focus on the tip of the food item and switch to manual focus to lock it in. Get your insta-spouse into position, set your camera to a fast shutter speed, anything above 1/125s and shoot in burst-mode just as they begin to pour or drizzle.
A bonus tip that’s not included in the video, is to always shoot in RAW format. Your file sizes will be much larger but you’ll be able to edit with greater latitude and recover highlights and shadows with less degradation than you would with a JPEG file. I use Adobe Lightroom for my post-processing but you don’t need to commit to a Creative Cloud subscription if you’re just starting out. Canon offers their Digital Photo Professional software for free and it has more than adequate functionality to process RAW files.
While most of my work to date has been shot on DSLRs, Canon’s mirrorless range is looking extremely capable and I got to shoot with, and keep, the EOS M50, a crop-sensor camera that I’d say is comparable image-quality wise to the Canon 80D Naeem now uses, but in a much more compact package. I bought a lens mount adapter so that I could use my existing EF lenses (as well as my third-party lenses) on the M50 and it works perfectly. I can say with certainty, that my DSLR will be staying at home once opportunities to travel and tour open up again.
For food photography, the M50 is a winner for me. Its form factor means I can spend a longer time shooting without feeling like I’ve just come out of arm-day at the gym. And the flip-out variable angle screen is so useful for photographing a subject overhead. Some of the manual controls are not where I’d usually find them on a DSLR but once I got used to the buttons and dials, I was able to get the results I wanted.
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