I shot a food party tonight, for a glossy magazine. This included, of course, some food shots.
My setup was simple:
One 430EX flash in an umbrella above the food, and one 430EX direct flash with grid side/behind the food.
The camera: a Canon 1Ds MkIII with a 100mm f/2.8 EF Macro lens, with a 580EX flash fitted to drive the other two flashes. I set the camera to manual, f/8 at 1/125th second, 200 ISO, and used wireless E-TTL to drive the external flashes.
The shots: like this one of an Alu Gobi dish (it was freshly cooked Indian food):
See the steam?
And the food? Delicious.
In your contract, did you have photographer receives samples?
Michael, this is an interesting post. Recently I had been asked by a friend of mine to shoot some sushi for the cover of a book she’s publishing. I hadn’t thought about firing upwards into an umbrella. I wasn’t very happy with my results.
Luckily, my friend wasn’t happy with the look of the sushi (preparation wise), so I’ll be giving this another go. I will definitely be using this method.
Cheers.
Photographer eats samples. Lots. And yes, the umbrella plus the straight on flash worked – the straight on flash lights up the steam, as you see if you look carefully.
I can see that I need to look through this blog from start to current. I may need a bigger primary camera bag too. 🙂
Please do, Gar: I like to think that my advice i, um, timeless.And thanks! 🙂