Better Food Photos: DSLR Tripods, Camera Settings, and More
Photographer’s thoughts on Food Photography
If you’ve ever had the urge to snap a quick photo to capture a recent culinary success or savor an important meal a little longer, then you know the challenges that good food photography poses. Do you need fancy DSLR tripods and fisheye lenses? Are there piles of lighting gear you have to have or should you be making fake photo-food recipes so it turns out better? With just a decent DSLR camera and perhaps one lens upgrade, you can begin taking better food photos without worrying about any of these questions.
You probably have some sense of what is and isn’t working with your food photos. Before digging into gear changes and techniques, a few tips can offer dramatic improvement.
- Use natural light – Your flash is your enemy when it comes to food, but so are halogen and other common household light bulbs. Move the plate by the window before it gets dark for the best, most natural colors and hues.
- Clean it up – Most of the time, your photo should just be of the food on your plate, and you should try shots where the food itself fills the frame fully and shots where the plate helps as the frame. But either way, eliminate clutter and gross mess.
- Work on composition and framing – This is similar to the last point, but if you want to include more than just a close up of the food, such as the pan you cooked it in or some floral napkins, learn more about photo composition and natural table setting. Sometimes all it takes is moving the cup a few inches to the left or rotating the plate to infuse the shot with energy.
- Control the color – Food shots are all about the color of the ingredients popping so they look delicious. Use your camera’s manual white balance setting to be sure the true colors are showing through, and maybe even cheat a bit and use the white balance to change the colors to create an interesting effect.
When you’ve maxed out what you can do with those tips, it’s time to move in to explicit camera settings and gear. Either a macro lens or a prime lens is perfect. While the latter is less specialized and more affordable, the former will let you get really close while still focusing perfectly. Many pros also suggest a tripod so you can take multiple shots from the same spot once you find a framing you like, giving you the ability to layer the photo and work on composition without the added variable of reframing every time.
The ISO, shutter speed, and aperture settings you use also matter a great deal. Obviously they impact how much light you get in the shot, but they also determine how much of the shot is in focus and how sharp or blurry it is. Macro photography in general, of which food photography is a branch, usually involves detail shots with a shallower depth of field. So you want a wider aperture, and on a kit lens you will want the widest. You should manually set the ISO as low as you can handle while still getting enough light.
These tips and techniques represent the vast majority of what the best food photographers rely on to take their shots. They might have nicer DSLR tripods and connect their camera to a computer for the bigger review screen, but they work with the same elements to achieve the colors, lighting, focus, and composition necessary for stunning food photography. It’s just a matter of practicing and applying these techniques.
Light Graffiti Without the Use of Lens Filters
Light Graffiti has become very popular. The term is a bit of a misnomer, but the art form involves drawing or writing in the air using lights and then capturing those patterns with a slow shutter speed to turn normally impermanent light into something more. You don’t need any fancy lens filters or Photoshop skills either, just a camera with a manual mode and one of any number of camera tripods.
There are three parts to creating stunning light graffiti – the location, the camera settings, and the actual light drawing itself.
Location
Choosing the right setting is very important, and you’ll have to experiment to get a feel for your camera and what you like. Generally, you want a place that has little ambient light so the background isn’t overexposed when you leave the shutter open for a long time. Most people also like shooting these with interesting details that they can integrate into their art, such as a brick wall or other textures, but you can also position the camera so the background is entirely black and you only see the light-lines, or the lines and the artist. Bear in mind that if you try to use the sky as a dark backdrop, light pollution from cities will brighten the background to a lighter color and might reveal interesting or distracting backgrounds.
Framing the shot itself is part of getting the right setting. With the help of someone else, frame up the shot and then figure out where the outer edges of the frame will be so you can keep the light in frame or spill it out deliberately.
Settings
For starters, although not technically a setting on the camera, you need a tripod. It’s the only way to avoid unwanted shake and blur with long exposures.
The most important thing about the shot is a long exposure. So set your camera to full manual and choose the slowest shutter speed. If you have a remote, you can even use “bulb” mode that keeps the iris open as long as you want. There’s obviously an outside limit for shutter speed, but your camera’s native settings won’t have it. 30 seconds is often the max, which is not very long at all for creating your art.
Because of the long exposure, you have to set the ISO as low as possible, usually 100, and the aperture as small as possible, usually f/8 or higher. These two settings prevent too much light from entering the shot, and they have the added bonus of reducing noise and expanding your depth of field to make keeping everything in focus easier.
You want to turn off all the other automatic settings too. Set your white balance manually, choose your focus manually or at least use the center-weighted average, and turn off light metering if you can.
Technique and the Light Drawing
You need to experiment with different light sources to find the right one for each photo. Also plan on spending some time redoing the same photo repeatedly to get the effect you want as far as the person in the photo. You can do it so they are invisible and only the light art can be seen if you keep it dark enough and use shorter shutter speed. Or you can achieve any number of other effects where the “artists” look stationary, shows blurred movement or seems to be part of the light drawing.
Practice the thing you’re drawing, whether it’s words – which have to be done as a mirror reflection of your intended design if the artists are facing the camera or you’ll have to flip the photo in editing – or just shapes. You can also leave the shutter open before and after the actual drawing to let more of the background enter the image and make the person more transparent.
Light art and light graffiti is easy to create but offers virtually limitless variations. You can even try adding fill lights or colored lens filters to alter the aesthetic of the exact same technique. As long as you have the camera fundamentals right, you are only limited by your imagination.
The Art of Low Light Camera Work
Low light makes photography more difficult. The difference between taking one of your favorite shots ever and a bunch of junk you delete from your point & shoot cameras before getting home is how you deal with that challenge. You can view it as an obstacle to be overcome or you can think of all the aesthetic advantages of available light photography and turn your kit into one of the most convincing low light cameras with just a bit of practice and moxie. These tips can help those who are interested in harnessing the subtle beauty of low light.
You have to decide if you’re solving low-light photography or shooting available light photography. If it meets your goals, increasing the amount of light is a great solution. However, if your priority is to capture the actual setting and environment, then you have to figure out how to take good photos using nothing other than the (low) light that is already available – no flash, no turning up the light, and probably no time or opportunity to restage the shot to meet your lighting preferences.
1. Prepare
Starting with your gear, everything you do can prepare you to take advantage of an awesome shot when it presents itself regardless of the light. You need a fast lens, meaning one with an aperture that opens up much wider than a kit lens, ideally up to f/1.4. This lets more light hit the camera’s sensor, meaning your camera can operate at faster shutter speeds even in low light.
You should also choose one of the more known low-light cameras, or at least one with a good range of manual settings so you can control the f-stop, shutter speed, and ISO to capture that light you want.
Find the best light source in the space. It’s called available light, meaning find the best light available in a space that appeals to you as quickly as possible so you can take shots that are imbued with the light, tone, and energy of that space, all of which come from its light. You can’t capture those elements if your camera can’t “see” them. Also be aware of the contrasts and effects of strong backlighting. If you can set yourself up at an angle to the light so it’s not directly behind or in front of the lens, you will get more natural shots.
2. Get the settings right
Available light photography is all about maximizing the impact of the light that is there. Use ISO (or film speed), shutter speed, and the aperture to get the right amount of light into your camera.
ISO – some people say you shouldn’t go about 1600, other suggest using the most powerful ISO your camera offers if that’s what a shot requires to get enough light. A higher ISO will allow you to capture hauntingly soft shadows in a dark room where no other collection of settings would, but it introduces digital distortion, called noise, which you either have to ignore or edit out afterwards. If you won’t bump up the ISO, you have to make up for it with the other settings.
Shutter speed – most people can’t shoot a crisp shot with shutter speeds slower than 1/60 of a second. Try your hand and see what works for you. The slower the shutter speed, the more light gets in, so it’s often either shutter speed or ISO doing the legwork.
Aperture f-stop – You probably just want to open your aperture as wide as it will go, meaning to the smallest number. This does shrink the depth of field, making it impossible to get more than just one narrow area, somewhere in the fore-, mid-, or background, in focus. So if you have to have clear details all the way from right in front of you to far away, such as if you’re taking a shot of a group of people in a bar, you have to decrease the aperture opening.
It’s also a good idea to shoot in continuous drive mode, because this lets you keep taking photos without moving your finger to repeatedly press and release the shutter button. This is a main cause of blur at slower shutter speeds, so taking several shots continuously increases the chances of at least one that is sharp and in focus.
3. Strategy
Learn to distinguish good blur from bad. If the whole shot is blurry, you probably can’t see anything. If many of the details are sharp but one person is blurry because they were moving, your shot may look better for it. So don’t fear the blur.
You have to strategize to find the right moment. That could be a half-second when the light of a flickering candle perfectly illuminates a person’s face giving you the light you need, or the pause between breaths when your subject is still. The lower the light, the more important timing is for the beauty of your shot.
You don’t need the best low light cameras to become an available light photography lover. Just use these tips and practice and you’ll see the power of a darker shot.
How To: Breathtaking Panoramas with a Tripod
Panoramic photos create a different perspective that can produce some beautiful photos full of details. Pros advocate a few specific tools to go with your Canon DSLR cameras, including the right camera tripods, good photo editing software, and a good set of skills. It’s up to you to find the photo editing software you like most and purchase a great tripod, but this list of tips can certainly help you develop the skills and techniques necessary.
The first step is picking your panorama stitching software. A free version of old Photoshop available from Adobe is a good place to start. Get familiar with it so you know its quirks before you start trying to take panorama photos you’ll care about. If your camera has a panorama mode, plan on using it internally and then following these steps to create a panorama shot on your computer after so you can compare the two methods.
Once you’re at the photo location, frame your entire shot first using your camera tripod. The purpose of the tripod is to limit unwanted shifting of the camera, especially vertically, as you pan between shots. Find the best place to set up the tripod and then take a trial series of photos to work on your framing. If you know you’re going to do the entire process at least twice, you’re more likely to be critical about problems the first time through, which is the best way to correct them.
Pros suggest keeping the following in mind as walk though the shot.
1. Hold the camera vertically, in portrait orientation. This might seem counterintuitive because it means you have to take more shots, but you won’t be at a loss for horizontal space. However, if you use a portrait orientation, you can also ensure you have more vertical space to use, which is helpful if when you have to crop part out during editing.
2. Overlap every photo roughly 50%. This means the content of every photo is split between the shots on either side so you have a lot of redundancy, except for at the very ends. The advantages of this include giving you more photo to work with when stitching together so you can crop out any lens distortion that your wide angle might produce, and increasing the chances of success if you use an automated panorama feature on your software. Plus you’re more likely to line things up correctly with more overlap.
3. Use full manual mode. When you’re framing the shot you should also find the best camera settings so you don’t have to change between shots to maintain the exposure. Full manual ensures that your camera won’t “correct” when you move to the piece of the panorama with more light from the sky, which would create disunity between sections and make stitching the photos together more difficult.
Once you have your photos, it’s time to edit them together. This is almost as important as the photography itself for the quality of your panorama. Newer versions of Photoshop make stitching the photos together very easy, offering you an automated merging tool that only asks you a few questions before putting it together, and then still giving you a great deal of room to correct your photos if you want. If you are struggling with adjustments, learn more about layer masks, which is the method the automated panorama tool in Photoshop uses.
From a DSLR and camera tripods to a panoramic photo of your favorite location in just a few easy steps – follow these tips and practice and you can crate stunning panoramas with even the most modest camera and hardware.
The Secret to Great Low Light Shots with Any DSLR Camera
Photography by: Shane Drummond
Low light poses problems for many photographers even with the best DSLR cameras because it leads to a tradeoff between enough light to see the subjects, overexposing the lighter parts of the shot, washing out colors with the on-camera flash, and struggling with blurry images due to slow shutter speeds. Plus, many of the ways to compensate for low light make accurate color depiction less likely. Every situation calls for a different solution, but you are always working with the same tools, whether you have fancy digital SLR lenses to help or just a point-and-shoot: aperture, shutter speed, ISO, flash, and exposure compensation.
You can either change the camera’s settings to let more light in, create more light for the shot, or make the light that hits the sensor more powerful through digital changes in how the camera processes the shot.
Letting in more light – Aperture and Shutter speed
The very first thing to do if you’re struggling with any situation, low-light or otherwise, is to switch your camera off full auto and take control. You need to be able to control all the settings to get your camera to function the way you want it to in each situation.
For low-light shots, you can open the aperture, the hole that lets in light, more by decreasing the aperture number, and you can slow down the shutter speed so the iris stays open longer. Both of these will let in more light, helping to create photos in which you can actually see the subject. But each has a tradeoff. A slower shutter speed makes it more likely that you won’t get anything in focus because you can’t stay still enough to avoid image blur. For most people the cutoff is about 1/60. A wider aperture makes it difficult to get everything in focus because it shrinks the “depth of field” that the camera can keep in focus, which might not be what you want. Also, the standard kit lens that comes with DSLR cameras only goes up to about f/3.5 and you need about f/1.8 or f/1.2 to really open up the iris, which means buying a better DSLR lens such as a face, 50mm prime lens.
Adding light
If it’s dark, find more light. Sometimes it’s just a matter of the angle, and by moving you can eliminate backlight to reduce contrast so natural highlights show up better. But usually, you have to actually find light. The best thing to do is find ambient light in the space and get your subjects in front of it, whether it’s a window or a candle. If that doesn’t work, you have to use your flash. However, the standard flash that comes on most DSLR cameras is very disappointing. Either learn some diffusing and bounce tricks with your on-camera flash to help control the harshness and direction or buy an off-camera flash you can control and hold in your other hand.
Change light processing
Film speed or ISO, and exposure compensation are the two final options to capture a beautiful exposure in low light.
ISO used to be something you controlled by the physical film you bought. With DSLR cameras, it’s just a setting, and higher film speeds register light more strongly, producing brighter photos from the same low-light shot. The cost is that any ISO above 800 or 1600 ends up with distortion or “digital noise” that makes the shot look grainy. Preventing this is one of the many reasons you should use a manual setting instead of full auto. If you can’t get a good exposure using the other techniques listed, try increasing your film speed, but only go above 800 is you have no choice but to sacrifice a bit of quality so you get enough light.
You can also change the exposure compensation setting on your camera as a last resort. This applies other digital processes to the photo to increase or decrease how light it looks. It should be used sparingly because it introduces inaccuracies, but the cost can be worth it.
Great low light photos require some creativity and experimenting with your DSLR camera as well as effective application of these techniques. Just remember that if the setting is dark and you want to truly capture it, it’s OK for your photo to be slightly under-exposed.
Classically Powerful Photography: Canon Powershot Silhouettes
Check Out more about Silhouettes.
Why is the silhouette such a powerful, beloved style of photograph? Perhaps it’s because the technique makes it easier for the photographer to obscure what would normally be the obvious focus of the photo so that in withholding details and information, they force perspective to make a more impacting piece of art. You can do this with the best cameras in the world down to the simplest, from a top-of-the-line Canon Powershot camera down to Polaroid Instant cameras.
The essential element of a silhouette is backlight. When the strongest light source points directly towards the lens instead of originating from a source on the same side of the subject as the photographer – loosely called front lighting – it makes the side of the subject facing the camera relatively much darker than the light, obscuring the front of what is usually a person.
This doesn’t mean your photo is composed exclusively of blasted, overexposed portions and complete blackness, which can happen with a bad exposure. To take beautiful silhouettes, you need to master the art of controlling the exposure so you still get the colors, details, and light you want from the background or other areas of the photo that are lighted, while maintaining enough detail and contrast around the subject that that person remains the obvious subject of the shot.
Step 0: Have a purpose – Unless you’re just practicing, you should have a reason for the silhouette or a story to tell with the technique. The common image of the brooding individual is somewhat cliché; think about the storey beforehand and choose your location appropriately to avoid this.
Step 1: Turn off auto – If you haven’t already figured out how to shoot in manual or at least shutter and aperture priority (usually “M”, “S”, and “A” respectively on the function wheel), now is the time. Automatic mode will try to chance the exposure and force you to use the flash so more light highlights the details of the main subject and balances out the contrast between the backlight and the light on the subject. You want more control to prevent that. So switch to shutter speed priority and set it to a comfortable speed, which for most people is at least 1/80. You also want a lower ISO to decrease light sensitivity, so stay below 400, choosing depending on the conditions of the shot.
Step 2: Set up your shot – Get your subject in front of a light source and frame it up so the important details are present but not overly obvious. Take a few shots to be sure you are not overexposing the lighted areas, and use the shutter speed and aperture to work on that if you are. Underexposed is better than overexposed because it’s easier to fix in editing.
Step 3: Review (and shoot more if the subject is patient or stationary) – Use the histogram setting on your DSLR or Canon Powershot camera’s review function to get more details about the exposure. This will help you focus on each individual light and dark area so you can figure out if your composition is good and if you got the exposure right. According to pros, “the histogram should have spikes on the shadows and highlights, with little in between. If your histogram shows positive spikes on the mid tones, then your shot will contain unwanted detail.”
Use this information to take more photos and get closer to what you want.
With practice you can get beautiful shots from Canon Powershot cameras and even from the lowly outdated smartphone camera. You will discover how to take silhouettes you love that do more than just demonstrate loneliness or isolation.
Wedding Photography Tips for Novices – Making Your Digital SLR Cameras Work
Photography is difficult. Good wedding photography is much more so no matter how nice your digital SLR cameras are, and if you are a novice, you will need all these tips, all your focus, and a great deal of practice and confidence to pull off good wedding photos. But the good news is that with a few DSLR lenses and a plan you can certainly take decent wedding photos, good enough to satisfy a friend or family member asking for a favor.
Strategies
You need a plan. This is the most important strategy. Start by talking extensively with the couple about what they want, and if at all possible get examples from them about photos they love so they can explain what they love about them. If they prefer a certain type of lighting or angles, or they have very specific ideas about what detail shots they want, discussing this can help you build rapport that will help them feel satisfied, as well as actually focus on delivering what they want.
Strategizing is also the period in which you should visit the locations at the time of day that you’ll be there for the wedding so you can get a sense of light and what ankles offer the best shots of the essential action. Knowing where to be for the presenting of the bride and how the light will behave during cake cutting let you avoid mistakes that mean missing the perfect moment. Plus you can practice your exposures and focal lengths.
Your final strategy is practice. Get familiar with your gear in the conditions at the locations by taking a lot of photos. And if you have time, go crazy with practice before the wedding, especially focusing on shooting people being active and doing stuff in big groups so you can figure out how to move your shot and frame it for maximum effect.
Maybe have a friend come in a white dress so you can event practice different positions and angles. Planned creativity is a photographer’s best friend because it means that when it counts, you won’t be trying a technique for the first time, and it creates space for other instances of creativity.
Gear
The right gear is important. Pros suggest two cameras, one with a wide angle and one with a telephoto, because you don’t have time to change lenses you have to grab the other camera and keep shooting before the moment passes. They also emphasize a good off-body flash so you can always get enough light without washing out the subject. This also means practice.
Also be sure to pack tons of accessories like extra batteries and memory cards, something to wipe your camera and lenses in case wind kicks up dust, and anything you might need for the weather if events are happening outdoors.
Behavior
On wedding day, it’s on you to get the shot without disrupting the wedding. Be firm but polite and unobtrusive. That means framing up the shot before hand and visualizing it, getting into position to snap a few frames, and then politely moving. You have to be confident and poised to you aren’t a bother but also don’t just demure yourself out of the best shots.
To aid your ability to not be rude, make your camera silent. Turn off sounds and anything else you’re carrying that could be a distraction, like a smartphone.
Also, during the wedding don’t be afraid to interact with the primary people and stage them for photos. Especially if you plan this with them beforehand, using a down moment during the party to take the new couple to an area you scout beforehand can yield some of the most powerful, intimate photos even if only by virtue of giving the newlyweds a moment of calm away from the chaos to celebrate their new union.
Skills and Techniques
The most important skills are getting the focus right, taking a ton of shots, and being willing to edit later. If you’re composition isn’t perfect but you captured all the essential details, you can crop it down to perfection in post.
To make this more effective, shoot in the RAW format. This lets you alter the white balance on a computer later so you can fix anything weird that happens when you change rooms or the lighting isn’t perfect.
Lastly, use your feet to change perspective and take a lot of photos. If you have 20 shots of every moment, you still will wish you had more. Switching perspective lets you get a new shot on important moments, change the relevance of personal details that might not be as obvious in the context of the entire wedding setting, and ensure you get all the important faces into good shots.
Digital SLR cameras and some practice and planning can be enough and you can do it. But you have to take these tips to heart and really have a strategy to keep your head above water as a novice photographer at a wedding.
Capture the Trend: Double Exposure Photography with Digital Cameras
Check out 50 examples and tutorials
Double exposures have been around since long before digital cameras and fancy digital SLR kits and software. However, they have become quite the rage, with beautiful double exposure portraiture showing up all over the place on photo blogs, and sharing sites like Reddit and Flickr. With the littlest bit of work, some basic gear, and the instructions below you can try your hand at this in-vogue artistic technique.
It’s interesting to start with some background about double exposure photography, which gets its name from the practice used by photographers when their cameras actually used film. They would take a photo, then roll back the film and take another photo over the same, no-longer blank spot on the roll to actually exposure it to two shots worth of light, hence the name double exposure. Older photographers and those familiar with film point-and-shoots have probably experienced an accidental double exposure because sometimes those cameras would make a mistake reading the last shot on the roll and double expose it.
This type of photography has obvious visual appeal because of the dynamic coloring and lighting it makes possible, as well as strong artistic merit. You can make a powerful statement while exploring light and color when you combine two shots captured with a digital camera by blending them together with editing software.
There are a number of techniques to achieve the double exposure effect, and unless you have a Nikon D700 or another comparable camera that can combine images in the camera, you’re going to need photo-editing software like Photoshop or Gimp.
First you need to capture a silhouette-style portrait or at least one with very high contrast on the subject and nearly no dark areas on the background around the subject. You can create this effect using a manual backlight or by getting the subject to stand in front of a window on a mildly sunny day without much light inside. You also need your other photo. Verdant sceneries, nightscapes, cityscapes, billowing smoke, and sunsets are popular. The important thing is that the other photo has light, color, and details that will show up on the face of the portrait.
Get both photos loaded onto your photo-editing tool of choice and set the silhouette as the foreground. Add the second photo, such as a landscape, as the second, background layer. If you’re using Photoshop, set the second layer’s blending mode to “screen”. With other photo editing software, look for the transparency setting that makes the layer invisible except for the area underneath positive space of the layer above.
If you aren’t using Photoshop and can’t figure that out, you can also use the select tool on the second layer to select the areas of that layer that aren’t below the subject and then erase that extra space. Then just mess with the transparency levels to achieve the desired mixture. You can use filters and other settings to turn off color and improve contrast.
Once you become adept at this technique, you’ll realize that the real artistry comes in choosing the two photos you want to combine. Creativity and careful attention to composition really pay off, and you can find a great deal of inspiration browsing portrait photographers on Flickr and searching the phrase “double exposure portraits” online.
Whereas most photography requires a lot of practice to perfect your technique, blending photos to create a double exposure is only constrained by your skills with digital cameras. The actual double exposing with Photoshop only takes a few minutes and can be learned in half an hour. You will be stunned with what you can create using just a bit of creativity.
