When we first opened our doors 6 years ago one of my goals was to make our paper menu, menu boards and website communicate the quality and depth of the food we prepare at Arda’s. Being an independent restaurant we didn’t have much in the way of a photography budget. However, i did invest in some equipment at the time and began reading tutorials on how to take food shots. I purchased a Canon 10D kit with a 80-200mm lens. The kit included some flash lights, some umbrellas and a 256mb memory card. At the time this was the top of the line prosumer camera. I though I was set.

I attempted to take some shots and things just came out bad. The kind of bad that makes you say, why did i spend all this money on the camera and related equipment. The lighting was dark, I wasn’t getting a good depth of field and nothing was really working out. I was disappointed to say the least. The camera was put away and sat dormant for 5 years.

After my initial attempt failed, we had our food photography shots taken by www.diamondgraphics.com and we used the occasional stock photo. The difficulty with what we were doing was that the Diamond Graphics studio was cumbersome to shoot at. Even though they were close, we had to essentially pick one item and wheel a cart of ingredients/utensils to shoot at the studio.  The results from Diamond Graphics were great and we continued to use their services, but i still wanted to be able to shoot on location for a minimal cost.

In comes my photographer friend Ariel (www.50-mm.com) . Ariel specializes in street photography as well as model shots. I picked Ariel's brain for a while and we have had many conversations together about how best to shoot food in our kitchen. We ran several tests using different lighting schemes and different lenses. Fortunately for me, Ariel lent me his expensive lenses to experiment with.

Of course by this time, I had spent weeks pouring over blogs and reviewing examples of different food shooting techniques. Turns out that I was missing a few critical pieces when I first started.  

It became obvious that the magic is in the lens quality. The original lens that came with my kit really wasn’t suited to shoot the kind of shots I wanted to achieve. Using the Canon 50mm 1.4 really did the trick. I then invested in one of these lenses.

The lighting- Shooting in the kitchen with the lighting that we had wasn’t delivering great results. Most blogs about shooting food will tell you to be in front of a window on a well lit day and you can get the best possible photos. While this is true and i did some tests shooting outside, our kitchen is in the back and I couldn’t afford that flexibility. I had to choose another lighting source. I set to build my own light-box.

There are many light boxes that you can purchase, they come in different sizes and shapes, and can be found easily on amazon.com. I opted to build my own because of the space limitations I have in my office to shoot the final shots. Off to home depot I went. I purchased some pvc piping, a window screen, 3 light bulbs and put together what you see on the left.

1. 1.• The light bulbs are 5500k full spectrum lights. This was important to give the most natural and white light that I could get. The bulbs are about 7-8 dollars a piece. I house them in two donated and one purchased fixtures. 
   
   

2. 2.•The window screen is a semi transparent almost frosty screen that I wrapped around the pvc frame. This was done to defuse the light. Once that was setup I turned on the lights and positioned one on top and two on the sides. For the backdrop I use either wood panels that we have in our cabinetry of the restaurant or I use a roll of white paper that acts as a smooth background and is well suited for fliers and text.
   

That’s pretty much it for the lighting. As for the shooting, most of the shots I shoot are at a 400-800 ISO, with an aperture setting of 2.8-4.5. I also leave the camera on Aperture Priority Mode so the camera auto adjusts its shutter speed. 

Part 2:  Styling and editing. The second part will deal with how to style the food as well as editing in Adobe Lightroom 2.

Author:

Jon Toktas

Owner Arda’s Cafe

jtoktas@ardascafe.com  

( Feel free to contact me if you have question or suggestions)