I figured that I’d post a bit on how I do what I do with my little P&S camera.
This will be somewhat of a work in progress and I’ll try and add to it as new things come up
I can also answer questions (except what camera should I buy I just do not follow the market)
here we go…
here’s the set up for my egg shot
Southern window to the upper left of the shot and since no direct light I did not need to diffuse the light source
spent some time in lightroom painting a brighter exposure to the background and mixed in some reverse clarity (fuzziness) and reduced the saturation a bit as well.
The P&S camera was on M mode (macro focus too) and I changed the exposure +1/3 or so to brighten the image.
This simple chicken shot was all about the bird being a heirloom breed and I wanted to document the physical differences from a typical g-store chicken.
Shooting straight down I could really concentrate on the beautiful bird.
Lighting was a sun lit NW window with a single cell blind.
Here’s a shot in the same window but shot into the window
The main difference being that I’m shooting in to the window light source and
the shrimp is catching a highlight from the bright light source.
Fantastic, Mel. It’s always a bummer when we have a really special meal and then the pictures are bad. I always wondered how you got those perfect white backgrounds!
Great post Mel, thank you for the tips. Do you have any advise for shooting wine bottles? I tend to be the one to shoot the last minute bottle needed for a newpaper or magazine article in Spain, or to update the web site and there is always so much glare on the bottle. Also have the same issue shooting our EVOO bottles. Great ideas! Thanks again.
Not so much. We don’t go out to eat that often and when it is “date night” I tend to leave the camera at home.
Also, unless we are eating during daylight hours and in a window seat, I’m not going to shoot the food with flash or room light. While I’ve seen some pretty good stuff from a few of the high end restaurants most of what is published on food boards is pretty bad.
The operating principal behind shooting reflective surfaces is to use a large soft light source very close to the
object. The closer the source the less contrast in the reflection. you can get silky translucent highlights in glass if you get your light source really close.
A clean pressed bed sheet and a off camera flash behind it can make a really nice light source.
let’s say you have a DSLR camera and an all-purpose lens like a 28mm-200m lens. I’d want to mount the camera on a tripod and frame up the bottles using a longish lens 100mm to 200mm depending on space. the longer the lens the les background you will need and you can get the light closer to the the bottle.
Frame up the shot and then position the large light source as close as you can to the bottle. I’d angle it from near the front of the lens back to the side of the bottle ( I tend to light L to R (like I read)) place the strobe or maybe a cheap quartz work light away from the sheet so it spreads light over the whole sheet. take a few photos to get your exposure set and then see if you need some fill on the dark side of the bottle.
The bottle “sees” (reflects) just about everything so use black cards or fabric to remove unwanted highlights
from the glass. Pay attention to the sides as they are seeing behind the bottle. Of course, you can remove some if not all imperfections in Photoshop but try and take care of most of the issues before you shoot.
