Photography classes here and there and you still have no idea which buttons to tinker on your camera. You are probably going nuts with the number of surfacing cameras — from analog to the now digital compact cameras.
Food photography requires a lot of patience and attention to detail; especially now that we've all become foodies. Whenever we go to a restaurant, we immediately put out our phones only to realize the quality's not top notch. Basically, if your mouth doesn't water while capturing and editing food photos, you aren't stepping up your game.
Lucky for you, we've come up with a cheat sheet which has the basics to capture scrumptious food photos using the newest Canon EOS M3.
Natural Light
As much as possible, get natural daylight instead of using your camera's flash to avoid unnecessary reflections.
Styling
Make your food pop with some styling especially when you want to take it from the top. Add accessories — use napkins, glasswares and utensils in the background but make sure the dish is still the star of the photograph. You could also interact with the food if it looks boring — lift a fork of meat or a spoonful of that soup just to add life in the photo.
Shutter Speed (30 to 1/4000)
If you are using a tripod, you may use a shutter speed below 1/60 and notice that you won't have any blurs. However, if you are going to be holding your camera, use a shutter speed above 1/60 then adjust the ISO and aperture instead of lowering your shutter speed.
Note: The higher the number is, the faster the shutter speed will be.
Aperture (f/3.5 – f/5.6)
For food photography, set your aperture to f/4.0-f/5.6 and just adjust as needed. The smaller the f-stop, the wider the aperture is opened, letting in more light while the bigger the f-stop, the narrower the aperture is opened, letting in less light.
Moreover, the aperture affects the depth of field about how much of the image is in focus. A low f-stop will make a shallow depth of field so only the object that you are pointing at will be in focus while the background of the image will be blurred out. However, with a higher f-stop, everything on the image will be in focus.
Use aperture priority (Av) for your camera to automatically adjust shutter speed for your desired f-stop which is commonly used in food photography than Tv mode.
ISO (100 to 12800)
The higher the ISO, the faster it will register light which basically lets you use a faster shutter speed. This is best used in low light situations where even using a wide aperture, the shutter speed isn't fast enough for a clear image.
Use a wide aperture and high ISO since a high ISO will let your camera's sensor to catch more light. But take note that the higher the ISO is, the grainier the image will be
In low light, use a wide aperture and high ISO since a high ISO will let your camera's sensor to catch more light. But take note that the higher the ISO is, the grainier the image will be.
In well-lit areas, adjust your aperture based on how much the image you'd like to be focused. When the aperture is wide, the depth of field is shallow which means that the background is out of focus — this is best used when you want to focus on only one object in the plate. Moreover, smaller apertures will widen your depth of field which lets you capture all the objects in the plate.
In food photography you want your images to be as crisp and clear as possible, so the lower the ISO the better.
Post-Processing
Use the Creative Assist setting to automatically adjust the brightness, contrast, saturation, color tone and monochrome (i.e. black/white, sepia, blue, purple and green) right in your camera.
Fix White Balance for when the plate of food looks more yellowish than it really should be. Adjust levels of brightness and contrast since it adds depth to the image while adjust saturation if it still lacks life from the contrast edit to help the green food to be more green and yellow food be more yellow and more.
