Comments on: Guerilla Food Photography: 10 Tips for Taking Great Food Photos

By: Pappy

Pappy — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 19:16:55 +0000

Hey thank for your valuable thoughts. Very much useful for all travel lovers. You are right our passion and commitment will produce good output. Once again thank you…

By: Daniel Noll

Daniel Noll — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 15:52:49 +0000

@Pappy: Well summarized. When it comes to good photography and particularly effectively photographing people, passion and commitment (and with people, I would add respect) all help to yield good output.

By: Daniel Noll

Daniel Noll — Sun, 15 May 2011 21:07:03 +0000

@Christy: I know the impatience, especially as hot food gets cold. We just took a cooking class here in Bali where we shared and passed around large plates of food. You could hear grumbles in the room as I took photos of each dish.

I’m a big fan of that dumpling photo, too. In fact, I’m a big fan of that dumpling!

By: Christy @ Ordinary Traveler

Christy @ Ordinary Traveler — Fri, 13 May 2011 02:43:27 +0000

I always have the hardest time getting food photos that look appetizing. I think I’m too impatient and I just want to eat so I take a quick photo (or none at all) and dig in. I love the photo of the dumpling that shows the steam.

By: Daniel Noll

Daniel Noll — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 09:05:28 +0000

@Jenn: Macro lenses are great if you happen to be carrying them, but we almost never have one on us when we are in a restaurant.

Reliable macro shooting in a pocket-sized camera is a great feature though, particularly when it comes to shooting food on the fly.

By: Jenn

Jenn — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 12:58:44 +0000

As always guys… awesome post! And great advice! 🙂

By the by, I do like to use my macro lens for food photography, I have one for my DSLR, but actually I LOVE my Canon SD1200 for this – amazing macro and perfect pocket size!

By: Mariza

Mariza — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 10:33:49 +0000

Dan,
I’m mostly having trouble taking pics inside or in the evening. I can’t get the food to look appetizing and most of my pictures are out of focus. I’m finding it easier to take pics of fruits and vegetables at the market (where there is, of course, more light), but I’d like to be able to take better pics in low light settings. I’ve played around with the ISO, shutter speed, and white balance but sometimes I still get some blur. I don’t have a tripod so I need to work with what’s available around me. I prefer to take pics that are as spontaneous as possible. I don’t want to set up a tripod at a dinner party or at a restaurant. I know I can try setting the camera on something on the table instead. I also just figured out that I need to stand a bit further away from my subject. I was taking the pics too close up to the plate. If I back away a bit, and use the zoom, I usually get a better pic. I’m slowly starting to understand my camera, but it’s been frustrating. For now, I think I’ll focus on taking pics in the daytime and experiment with lower shutter speeds in the evening when I have a lot of time and no hungry, impatient people waiting for me to stop taking pictures.

By: Daniel Noll

Daniel Noll — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 09:28:44 +0000

@Mariza: If the light is so bad, there may be nothing you can do. If the situation is so dark, and you’ve maxed the ISO (it will be grainy), held it as still as you can (and still blurry) and adjusted the white balance to accommodate for whatever light you do have (and there’s no light for the color saturation you are looking for), then there’s nothing you can do but use flash. But here are a couple of thoughts:
1) Try to recreate the low light conditions at home (with a dish or some fruit) and continue trying to experiment.
2) Approach your favorite restaurant kitchen, tell them you are a photo student hoping to exhibit some food photography and ask to get into the kitchen to watch and shoot the prep.
3) If you need a lot more light, buy a flash (one where you can direct the flash), like the Nikon SB-600 flash.
4) If all you need is a bit more light, then the 50mm lens will help, since it’s a faster lens.
5) Instead of a huge tripod, consider a Gorilla Pod. Something like this might be a bit more discreet.

By: Mariza

Mariza — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 20:31:53 +0000

Hi Dan,
I just read your article. Your tips were very helpful for my current digital photography class assignment. I have a Nikon D90 with a 18-105 mm zoom lens. I’m having fun taking nature and landscape pics with it but I’m having some trouble taking close up shots of food. I did some research online about food photography and someone suggested a 50mm lens for food photography. For my class, I had to choose a genre and stick with it for the entire class. I now wish I had chosen nature photography instead of food. I’m thinking of buying the standard Nikon 50 mm lens. That way I can switch out the lenses and take pics of my two favorite subjects – food and nature. This new hobby of mine is getting expensive!

By: Daniel Noll

Daniel Noll — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 16:59:08 +0000

@Mariza: I suppose it all depends on what you want to do with your food photography, but we shoot just about everything with our Nikon 18-200mm (which is a versatile lens, but sacrifices color and image quality) or (gasp), our Panasonic Lumix pocket camera. But the results (at least for us) are satisfying. The question is this: what do you want to get out of your food photography that you believe having the 50mm lens will do for you? Or ask it another way: what’s missing or what’s wrong with your current shots?

If you begin to answer that, you might find that your current kit will suffice, or at least working with your current kit/lens will challenge you to do more with less. I’m not an expert in food photography, so maybe the 50mm lens is the solution, but be very careful — especially when you are starting out — and try to avoid solving problems with more equipment. I’m guessing you are struggling with light and color, in which case you might want to play around with things like very low shutter speeds, DOF, white balance, ISO, and your cameras color settings. Also, if your class also involves post-processing and print, make sure you are shooting your images on RAW (rather than on JPEG), because you’ll have more flexibility to make adjustments to the image if you need to.