The Lady and the Ladybug

One of the photos from Mackenna's first Halloween.  I liked the way the light from the lamp created an interesting background and provided separation.  Taken with available light.  The "key" is late afternoon sunlight coming in the from the front door.

Canon EOS 7D - Aperture Priority
Canon EF 70-200 2.8 L IS
70mm, f2.8, 1/100, ISO400

Minor adjustments in Lightroom
Brightness +20
Fill Light +19
Noise reduction and sharpening.

Quick Food Photography Tips

Fellow South Jersey food blogger Robin recently lamented on her blog that she is unhappy the way her food photos have been turning out, especially since her camera includes a "Gourmet" mode for taking food photos. I offered to give Robin some tips and, with her permission, I am posting them here.

"Gourmet" Mode
Since the camera has a food mode which the manual clams will "Allow you to shoot food arrangements in delicious and bright color", I did some research on what the camera does in Gourmet mode and found...nothing. I cannot find any info on what the camera is doing for you. The only thing I could figure out is that Gourmet mode really restricts what you can do. The only settings that can be changed are the self timer, macro mode, flash on/off, and white balance. I can only guess from the "delicious and bright color" that the camera is increasing the saturation and probably setting a small aperture to get a larger depth of field to make sure the entire dish is in focus

Yellow Tint
Yellow tint in indoor photos usually comes from White Balance mismatches, Incandescent bulbs are orange compared to sunlight, and fluorescent are green. Unfortunately the Sony DSC-HX1 just does not white balance well. Even the incandescent and fluorescent modes leave color casts.

What to do
Since we don't really know what the camera is doing in gourmet mode, I'd recommend against using it. The "delicious and bright color" can be achieved by setting the Color Mode to Vivid. To ensure getting an entire plate of food in focus, I would use Aperture Priority or Manual mode and set the aperture myself. Since the DSC-HX1 use has a range of f2.8 - f8, I would be in the f5.6 - f8 range for a plate photo. To take photos inside without the yellow color cast I recommend Manual mode and using the flash. Set the camera to the lowest ISO, the aperture betwwen 5.6 and 8.0 and the shutter speed between 200 and 500.

Unfortunately, the DSC-HX1 only has a pop-up flash and pop-up flash photos can be harsh. There are still ways to soften the light from the flash. I recommend bouncing the light off the ceiling. Photojojo, sells something to help, but there are other, cheaper ways: like an index card. Hold a white index card in front of the flash (at angle) to reflect some of the light up toward the ceiling. With just a white card there will still be some direct flash on the subject. For softer, more even light, add a folded piece of black construction paper behing the index card, to make it so all the light from the flash that gets to the food comes from the reflection on the ceiling. Safety note: Do not look at the index card when taking a photo!

Post Processing
Robin uses iPhoto for photo management and basic and it is all she needs for editing photos for her blog. To enter the editing mode, select a photo and press CMD-E. I recommend using Adjust tab in the editing panel. First, correct the white balance, if necessary. Click the "eye dropper" button under the word "Temperature", then click a point in the photo you want to be white, grey, or black. Indoor photos with the flash shouldn't need a white balance correction, but they "yellow" ones can be fixed this way. After the white balance is right, slide the exposure and contrast tabs until the photo looks how you want. That's all you need for basic adjustments, but I recommend playing with the other sliders to see how they change the photos in case you need them later.

Recap
Indoor photos: Manual mode, 200+ shutter speed, f5.6-f8, Vivid Color, bounce flash with white/black card. Tweak if necessary in iPhoto.

I hope these tips help.

-Bill

Samples
I took some photos with my Canon 30D to show the flash differences and touch up impacts.

Indoor photo with no flash on Auto White Balance. The camera was $1200 new and still has a yellow tint!

Indoor photo using direct pop up flash. Notice the bright highlights on the apple and pear and how the light falls off quickly (top of image is darker)

Left to right: 1. Indoor photo using pop up flash with white bounce card. Still some harsh highlights on the apple and pear, but more even lighting. 2. The bounce index card on the camera. 3. The card from the front when the camera goes off showing some light going direct to the food.

Left to right: 1. Indoor photo using pop up flash with black bounce card. Much softer highlights and more even lighting. 2. The white/black construction card on the camera. 3. Photo adjusted in iPhoto: Exposure +.66, Saturation 53.

The photo that started us on the train. Left: The photo from Robin's blog post. Right: Minor edits in iPhoto: Exposure +.87, Contrast 15, Saturation 76.

Like Shooting Fish on a Table

My favorite brewery, Cherry Hill's Flying Fish, makes beers to represent each exit of the NJ Turnpike. They make one batch of each beer and when it's gone, it's gone. On my food blog, I review each beer when it's released and provide some tasting notes. To accompany the review I take some photos of the beer. Normally I will take one of the beer in a glass, and another of the bottle, sometimes a pour shot as well. Since the current release is a red ale and to celebrate the red color of my favorite baseball team (opening day this Friday) my concept was to feature the color red. More than just the background color I also wanted red highlights on the bottle and glass as well.

Setting it Up
My concept of a red background and red highlights put me on the dark field glass technique again. I planned on using a red sweep and edge lighting the glass with a couple red-gelled strobes with a vertical diffuser, but when I went to my gel pack, I only had one red gel. FAIL! Searching for anything red I found some red construction paper so I creased a couple pieces and placed them on either side of the glass with a strobe behind them. Test images had nice highlights, but the background was too bright. Going back to the construction paper, I grabbed a couple black pieces and stood them behind the strobes which fixed the background. Both the glass and the bottle had labels which needed some front lighting. I tried a couple bare flash setups with snoots, but the light wasn't right. I settled on a strobe in an umbrella camera right, but with the strobe feathered up so the background didn't get too much light. Finally I wanted a light shining through the glass to show the color of the beer and highlight the rim of the glass. I grabbed another strobe and snooted it with red construction paper. The highlight around the glass came out overly bright, but I needed the beer brightened.

The Happy Mistake
With the setup done I poured the real beer, my test shots were with a cheaper beer, and started shooting. I wanted to shoot quick so I used the same setup for both the glass only shot and the glass/bottle shot. With my concern about the highlight from the beer light, I took some shots of each setup with and without the light. Just when I thought I was done I noticed the right red sidelight wasn't firing. My PocketWizard's batteries died, so I replaced them and ran through all the shots again. In post processing the bottle/glass shots looked better with the single sidelight, so the dead batteries actually saved the image.

It also turned out I was smart to take shots with and without the backlight. The glass only shot looked great with it, but the bottle/glass shot didn't look right either way. In the backlit image, the glass looked great, but the bright table and the bottle's shadow were distracting, in the other, the glass was too dark. I decided to use composite the two images together, taking the glass from the backlit image and the bottle and table from the non-backlit image. I applied the same RAW processing to both images and layered the without backlight image on top of the backlit one and masked out the parts I didn't want. I also cloned out a nasty spectral highlight on the bottle from the umbrella. The two layers and masks are below.

Favorite photos from 2010

I took a few thousand photographs in 2010 through a wide range of subjects: portraits, food, products, a school play, vacations, a couple of births, and many birthdays. Here are a few of my favorites.

Portraits

The Vice President of Lincoln Mortgage. One of my annual clients and the best photo on their staff page (I don't take the rest).

My sister-in-law asked me to take her family's Christmas portraits this year. I just love the expression on my 6 month old nephew's face in this image.

Like many pet owners, I have way too many photos of my dog. I took this photo while testing the focus with my Canon 7D / 70-200 2.8 IS combo. I think he was stalking a squirrel or something.

Food

Good beer, maybe a little sour. You can probably still find it, but not for very much longer. The highlights on the top and side edges of the glass show textbook dark field lighting technique, and I love the way the green table fades into black.

Football food! Tastes great, easy to make, and better for you than fried. Plus another Navy win over Army.

So yummy. Such great blueberries in 2010. I love the circle of light and the reddish shadow on the stem. I just wish I could have done a better job getting rid of the distracting highlights on the snifter.

Parties/Vacation

A 2 year old with no fear. After jumping off the diving board into the deep end, he likes to float around the pool with his swimmies on. Polarizing filter took the glare off the water to make this image.

The view from Armida winery during the Napa vacation Wifey and I took with my parents. We liked this image so much, we printed it on wrapped canvas and hung it in the dining room.

Another photo from the Napa trip (Cuvaison Winery), but I didn't take it, Wifey did. Great lines, awesome perspective. Probably the best photo she's ever taken. Taken with a now discontinued Canon SD880IS, it just shows you don't need an expensive camera to take great photos.

Bonus

OK, I didn't take this image either, the ultrasound tech did, but I did scan it. Plus, it's the first image we have of our unborn baby's face.

Shooting the Martini

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a photo on my food blog of an apple-apple martini. A few people asked me how I took the photo, so here it is: I used the a straight dark field technique for lighting glass described in the lighting bible: "Light, Science and Magic." Since there isn't a label or other object in the image, I didn't need to composite multiple shots or use any odd lighting techniques.

From LS&M, the concept with shooting glass is either to light or darken the edges of the glass with an oppositely lit background, or the glass will disappear into the background. Dark field uses a dark background and lit edges, and light field uses a light background with dark glass edges. I find dark field to be easier, since I have more dark backgrounds and can easily overpower any room lighting to create the edge lighting effect. Also for the apple martini image, I like how the dark background increases the amount of color in the martini; light field would have washed out some of the color.

I set up sweep of black felt on a table and set the martini on it. I used two Canon Speedlite 580's in shoot through umbrellas behind and on either side of the sweep. The lighting goal is to get the flash power right to have the edges of the glass almost pure white. My flashes settings ended up as 1/4 power for each and I triggered them with Pocket Wizards.

Composing the shot is easier with a zoom lens than a prime. You want to zoom the lens such that the background (the black sweep) just fills the frame. You want the lights almost in the shot. I was a little off in this image which can be seen on the top right side. There is a little black area on the right edge then it gets white moving from right to left, indicating the background went too far out of the frame on that side. I also didn't have any lights above the sweep so the front edge of the top of the glass isn't white, but a reflection of the color of the liquid.

In a nutshell, the technique for taking shots like this is to just fill the frame with a dark background and light the area around the background with enough power to get white edges. Simple, yet deceptively tricky. Try it and let me know how it worked in the comments.

"Prime" Time

I recently went with some friends to Sippin By The River, a beer / wine tasting event in Philly on Sunday.  At the last tasting festival I went to, I shot with my 24-105 zoom and found it difficult to shoot and hold a glass at the same time.  This time I took on my 50mm prime.  Not only was the camera much lighter, but I could easily shoot with one hand.  What I didn't expect was the change in composition of my photos compared to other events.  Since we mostly stayed together as a group, I couldn't constantly be backing away to compose photos as I normally would, which led to more interesting compositions like the photo of Mike, above.  As normal, restrictions lead to creativity.

Changing up the blogs

I've decided to change the organization of my blogs. I added two additional blogs, and instead of just randomly posting subjects to Light Fare, I am going to focus on two subjects I enjoy: photography and cooking. Photography related items (tips, how-to's, behind the scenes, links) will be on the blog associated with my photography business: blog.vividelegance.com. (Shameless plug: Delaware Valley residents looking for portraits, contact me at bill [at] vividelegance [dot] com). Light Fare will become what I originally intended and will feature posts on what I cook: recipes, instructions, and tips. Finally, bilhelm96.blogspot.com will be what Light Fare turned into: an extension of twitter. Expect random thoughts I can't squeeze into 140 characters.