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This page is for those who are interested in what camera and lenses that I use for my food photography. So I thought I will do a write up about food photography, well at least how I do it anyway.

It’s not you, is me.

First of of all, it is not important what camera or lenses you use, it is more important how can you be creative with the food and the styling, which I find is more challenging. Having said that, a DSLR camera definitely a big step from the compact digital camera you’ve been using. A DSLR camera is more versatile and flexible that the digital camera, quality and technical wise. The quality will definitely an instant big step up from those point-n-shoot, mind you I still do carry my point-n-shoot from time to time without the big chunky DSLR and I still get good results sometimes.

“Excuse me, sir…”

I know, I know… it is big, heavy and you have to lurk around everywhere whenever you go to eat, and it is definitely not “subtle” when you pull out the big gun in the restaurant and start taking snapshots on the food and flash firing away, blinding everyone in the restaurant. So I tend not to use flash in dark ambient restaurant if is possible as it can be distracting, and flash does take the whole ambient atmosphere out of the photos. Food = people, when someone being flashed at, they always look like a kangaroo in front of the headlight, frightened! It is not a good looking sight, so as your vege.

If you are not confident, or the atmosphere is rather intimidating, then “ask“. So it is always nice to “ask”, it doesn’t cost you a cent to ask. So far I’ve read some other foodbloggers having encountered being scoffed at while taking pictures of the food in restaurants. However, if you explain to the owner/restauranteur nicely the purpose of why you taking photos, and show him that you are sincere and genuine, and not a spy from another restaurant, I am sure things will resolve itself. If things get worse, then stop taking photos and take a step back, enjoy the meal and move on. It is not worth the confrontation that can be end in tears, and your credibility.

My milkshake is bigger than yours, damn right.

Ok, the gear that I use. Again, I want to emphasize is not about the equipment, is about how you use the equipment to achieve the results that you want. Here’s the ho down of equipments I use for my food photography:

Canon DSLR 5D(it died) DSLR 5D mkII

Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 lens

(“huh? That’s it?”) Damn right! The Canon 5D is 12mega pixel DSLR, which is sufficient to capture most details of the subjects including a tiny sesame seed. Know your camera inside out, learn how to use properly especially AE (Aperture Priority) mode is the most useful mode that can give you good results.

Update: Recently the 5D finally decided to give up and died on me, so it’s gone to Camera junk pile heaven. I have upgraded to 5D mkII, but same principles really, just more “Oompphhff!”

AS for the 50mm lens, it is the most versatile, if not one of the fastest lens ever made. You know those shots with blurry background and sharp object in the foreground? They are called Depth of Field – as the 50mm lens has the fastest aperture at f/1.4, which means you will be able to shoot in low light (restaurant/night scene) with no trouble, and also give you a nice shallow depth of field.

Some people use a macro lens for the closeup shot of the food, but to be honest, when your DSLR can capture an image which is over 4000pixel wide and 3600pixel height, I think you should be able to crop down to certain part of the food and scale down without loosing any details. So macro lens is not really necessary.

This icing on the top

Shoot is easy, turning it into a Marie Claire shot is another question. Most of the photos I shot will probably too yellow from the amber light, or too cluttered with all the knives and forks on the table, not to mention the mess; so by turning a photo that I shot to a presentable image to put on my blog is all down to post-processing (photo editing).

I use Adobe Lightroom to import, sort, color adjust/level, crop, white balance, tag all my photos. First, Learn you White Balance! It is very important in still life photography, especially food photography. Once you get the natural light balance in your shots, then the rest will just fall into parts. Then, all the photos will then exported to Adobe photoshop, to do my final touches like adding watermark, cut into quad square template which is the style I am using so far.

Again, what programs you use is not important, you don’t have to get the Lightroom or the Photoshop, just continue and use what you are comfortable with, so long it can manage all the basic photography editing process which is sufficient enough.

I hope this little write up will help some of you out there, and you can always comment here if you have any questions.

Happy shooting & Eating!