Need advice on shooting food for six commercials

[legrevedotcom]

Those are good looking shots, but to me they're just too flat for food ("too flat for food" - need that on a t-shirt or something). No sparkle, deep blacks, the warm color balance is plugging things up. It's all very subjective, but food needs to be sensual and sexy. For me, it's usually hard light mixed with soft.

In the stills realm - before photoshop, it wasn't unusual to do dots and fingers of mild gels to do things like pop the green of a lime or add some pink to seafood skin. In motion that could be harder to pull off (but then there's motion tracking and masks to control that).

This looks pretty luscious… I also really like the flatter "rembrandt-ish" look with some muted colors that we're seeing in higher-end cookbooks (like this guy's work, yet there's a fair amount of hard light). And this shot isn't lit very hard but is really nice.

Just image-search "best food photography" and you'll see some gorgeous stuff (and some so-so…)

Those look great for a still photography, but you have to take into consideration the purpose of the video. If you are doing a receipe video, contrasty rembrandt looks can make it hard to translate what you are seeing. If you are selling mood and inspiration though, they are great. The reason is that when dealing with stills you have longer time to linger over the image, and you might not notice, but you will soon have spent 7-8 seconds going over a nicely composed contrasty still food image. I can't remember the last time I was allowed to linger 7-8 seconds on 1 food framing for video.

 

[robmneilson]

I've been trying to get into doing more food work, here's a short ad we did last year: https://vimeo.com/127521065

Basically for the table shots we had an HMI diffused through a 12x12 silk, and then I believe a 400w Joker for the hotter back/side light.

We tried to keep it dumb and simple since shooting food can be HARD. On other food shoots the food stylist basically did all of the work to make it look good, and I just rolled the camera. So cannot emphasize hiring one enough!

 

[legrevedotcom]

Just wanted to share a setup I'm doing tomorrow with a famous chef here in Denmark. The set is not completely dressed, will have to finish it up tomorrow morning.

Lights are:

2x 2k open face banging into our white walls. Flagged off with 2 man sized styro plates.
1x 300w fresnel with 1/1 cto and some ND.

Will end up placing a candle of some sort to motivate the 300w light.

Camera rated at 2300K.
Added slight contrast, downed exposure by 0.3 and lowered the highlights in the CU shot, but apart from that, all the photos are straight out the camera.

The 650w isn't doing anything, just a little test. I did find an old window down in our storage room, it has lots of nice tinted facets, so I might try it out just for fun

 

[Scott F]

I didn't want to start a new thread, figured I'd bump this one since it's full of great advice and images. Slightly off topic.

Anyone ever shoot melted chocolate as seen in this Pond 5 clip? (or similar)

LINK

Worse-case I can purchase the clip for a project I'm working on, but I thought it might be interesting to attempt it. I have an FS700 and various lights/bounce etc.

 

[emretufekci]

Just wanted to share a setup I'm doing tomorrow with a famous chef here in Denmark. The set is not completely dressed, will have to finish it up tomorrow morning.

Lights are:

2x 2k open face banging into our white walls. Flagged off with 2 man sized styro plates.
1x 300w fresnel with 1/1 cto and some ND.

Will end up placing a candle of some sort to motivate the 300w light.

Camera rated at 2300K.
Added slight contrast, downed exposure by 0.3 and lowered the highlights in the CU shot, but apart from that, all the photos are straight out the camera.

The 650w isn't doing anything, just a little test. I did find an old window down in our storage room, it has lots of nice tinted facets, so I might try it out just for fun

View attachment 111270

I really liked what you did here. Simple yet very elegant, very Jamie Oliverish.

 

[David W. Jones]

I didn't want to start a new thread, figured I'd bump this one since it's full of great advice and images. Slightly off topic.

Anyone ever shoot melted chocolate as seen in this Pond 5 clip? (or similar)

LINK

Worse-case I can purchase the clip for a project I'm working on, but I thought it might be interesting to attempt it. I have an FS700 and various lights/bounce etc.

View attachment 114760

I worked a chocolate shot some time back. If I remember correctly the stylist mixed oil into the chocolate, but I can't remember what type she used.

 

[firehawk]

Great thread. Any more advice for shooting a large cooked turkey on a plate? Better to light around 5600K or 3200K?
Hard back light for edges?

 

[adaptation]

Great thread. Any more advice for shooting a large cooked turkey on a plate? Better to light around 5600K or 3200K?
Hard back light for edges?

Generally food is better with 5600k - although you need to watch out to not turn Blue - you need to be perfectly white unless your doing blue cheese. As a general rule - yes food always has a strong visible backlight - usually a fresnel 300w, dedolight or a super hard source helps getting that specular highlight. Most food stuff is backlight strongly.

I myself have cheese plates to film for the next few weekends - unfortunately i dont have a food stylist, but i do have access to a large collection of plate. I went all black and wood plates - creating good contrast with the cheese. Gonna add some jam, almonds, pecans, and thym/basilic leaves to enhance the shot.

Out of curiosity for people who shot cheese - what temperature(not camera, actualy fahrenheits) is best for cheese? General rule for filming food is that its better when its on the cold side, but im wondering if this applies to cheese as well. Im talking big french cheese here, brie, camembert, blue cheese - ''fine cheeses''

 

[David W. Jones]

Great thread. Any more advice for shooting a large cooked turkey on a plate? Better to light around 5600K or 3200K?
Hard back light for edges?

To be honest, I think I have seen as many successful Tungsten lit shoots as I have daylight.

If you have a rental budget you can pretty much get whatever lighting instruments you want. If not just use what you have access to. I'm sure you can make great looking shots either way.

 

[fatman]

was hoping to see the finished product after all of this!

I've been shooting a lot of food lately but more for web - 1-man band style. I actually use a diva flo close to the food, low light head-on and shoot right beside the light and get the food away from the background by a good number of feet.

I want to see some of your guys' shoots in here! I've posted mine in a different thread - but actually one thing that hasn't been mentioned is - a love of food/cooking helps! I certainly do, and say what you will about my pictures, but I know what's important about certain dishes, just as I know in boxing for example what a perfect left hook looks like. I think if you don't really care for food/cooking - it's over before it starts.