Pudica's Food Corner: Food Photography: Lighting & Reflectors

Food Photography

Well, where shall I start? :) There are many complex parts to food photography including the food itself (food styling and composition), camera settings and equipment, and photo editing process. I will not go into more detail on these topics, but if you want to learn a little bit more, there are very nice books ("Plate to Pixel" from Hélène Dujardin and "Food Photography for Bloggers" from Matt Armendariz) and web videos /trainings (e.g., video2brain offers a nice section of online videos on food photography and can be tried out for 10 days for free) available.

Working with Lighting & Reflectors

Last week I had the pleasure to meet with two professional photographers from "H2N Photography". They work in different areas of photography including wedding and architectural photography but also food photography. They inspired me to go a step further with my food photography and learn a bit more about lighting and light equipment. They even lent me some reflectors and an external flash to practice. While working with the external flash light turned out to be a little bit more complicated, I will now present the results of my first try outs working with reflectors :) A big thank you to Grit & Marco!

Lighting is a big topic in food photography, so big actually, that I have shyed away from it until now... If you try to get into this topic, you will learn about natural light, artificial light, flash lights, reflectors, diffusors, etc.

The best light source is of course the natural light, but let's be honest, who has that kind of perfect light everytime we want to take a picture of our food? I unfortunately not, quite the opposite actually. I only have "perfect" natural light a couple of hours each day, and only when it is not cloudy outside. This of course is even more reduced during winter times... this means we do need to use artificial light sources. I do not like to work with flash lights, but my normal indoor lights are not that nice either. So, another option are so-called softboxes that have a white screen in front of it and come in different seizes. So far, that was all what I have considered regarding lighting.

However, today I will go a step further. I will work with simple white styrofoam boards as reflectors and diffusers.

My little Setup

Equipement: camera tripod, softbox, styrofoam boards (reflector/diffuser), SLR camera, lenses, external flashlight

I wanted to see and show the effect of the white styrofoam boards that worked as reflectors/ diffusers, so I keept the actual food simple. I used a few cherry tomatoes that I had in the fridge ;) Furthermore, I used my tripod and the same camera settings (ISO=100, shutter speed=1/30, aperture=f/4.5), so that I could take the same picture of the food in different lighting settings and compare the pictures. For the lighting, the main light source was the window (backlight). As it was a cloudy day and not very bright, I also used a softbox on the left side of the food. Then, I experimented. I used a styrofoam board as a reflector on the right side and additionally another styrofoam board in the back of the food between the main light source and the food, so that it worked as a diffuser for the main light source but also as a reflector for the artifical light from the softbox.

To sum up, this was my setup:

Back: Natural light - window as main light source
Left: Softbox - artificial soft light
Right: Reflector - styrofoam board opposite to the softbox, reflecting the light
Back: Diffuser - styrofoam board between natural light and food, diffusing the light

Here are the pictures (2 Examples):

First picture is done with only the natural backlight and the leftside softbox light. As you can see, the little tomatoes show a lot of dark shadows and contrasts, especially on the right side.
Second picture has the styrofoam board added on the rightside as an reflector for the softbox and the natural light. Now you can clearly see, how much brighter the picture is. The tomatoes are well lit from each angle, none are in a shaded place anymore. However, the back of the picture is pretty washed out from the natural light source.
Third picture has a styrofoam board added on the back of the food, between window (natural light) and the food. It therefore works as a diffuser. The back of the picture is suddenly much more visible, not washed out anymore, and the tomatoes are not quite as glossy. Everything is clearly recognizable but a little darker than before, but still brighter than in the first picture without reflectors/diffusers.

This shall only show the effects of a reflector and a diffuser. It does not say, that using both of them increase the picture quality. What you need really depends on what you want to photograph and what outcome you like more :)