I am glad that I always carry everything in the car. Lights, light stands, umbrellas, pocketwizards, cables, lenses, and so on.  So that when a restaurant shoot yesterday involved food instead of interiors, there was no problem.

As the restaurant set up a table for the food (which was long enough so I would not need a backdrop), I prepared the following:

• My Canon 1Ds Mk3 camera with 100mm macro lens;
• A tripod;
• One stand-mounted 480EX flash fired by pocketwizard, with an umbrella above the food.
• One stand-mounted480EX flash, also fired by Pocketwizard, behind the food, firing forward;
• On the second flash a Honl Photo speed strap and a 1/4″ grid;
• I set the flashes to half power and quarter power, respectively. This is convenience and experience.
• I set the camera to 200 ISO and f/8.  (and 1/125th second, but this was almost irrelevant).
• I slightly adjusted the umbrella position.
• I checked an image’s histogram: great. Highlights in white table blowing out slightly, none of the food blowing out: perfect. This is experience – I could have used a light meter but this was a hurried, high-presure shoot (the restaurant was about to open).

All that looked like this:

And it got me shots like this:

Straight out of camera that is not bad, what?

Take the above recipe and copy it if you like – see how you do with food!