There is nothing wrong with natural light. Have I mentioned that ?
I mean, if you have a window ( and I really hope you do have a window in your room ) you can shoot photographs of food let's say 8 - 10 hours a day... unless you live in Turin.
I'm kidding, no seriously, Turin lacks some blue sky and sunlight.
Anyway, 8 - 10 hours is pretty good; especially if you consider that natural light simply flows into the room kind of ... naturally.
You don't have to charge batteries, change batteries, move light stands around the room or, even worse, the furniture; if you know what I mean.
You simply position your shooting table closer or further from the window depending on how intense the light coming in is; then you use a reflector ( or two ) to bounce light back at your subject and you're done. Consider your options and decide if to have the light coming from behind your subject or from the side or somewhere in between; only thing is, if you choose to have the light coming from say 3 o'clock ( or 9 o'clock ), you'll most likely gonna need some extra fill from the front. But other than that it's really simple, unless you like to complicate things unnecessarily.... like I do.

I was at Paddy's Market early this week and spotted some beautiful custard apples ; first time this season. Custard apples are a produce of Australia and they are so special; this being said, they also make a pretty unique photographic subject, so I decided to buy a few, take some photos and then eat the props, as usual....

The first picture, below, was taken around 9 a.m. by the window; light is coming from behind ( 12 o'clock ) and bounced back at the subject by a 30 x 40 cm piece of white cardboard sheet used as a reflector.

Nice and easy, a 5 minutes job, no flash, no editing, just cropping.

Note the very shallow depth of field which singles out the subject while at the same time reduces the effect of the distracting background; I used a AF Nikkor 50 mm f 1.4D for this one, which is a great lens for portraits too and quite inexpensive affordable.

Camera settings : ISO 200, f 2 , s 1/80.

But the thing with daylight is this, that it changes continuously; one cloud passing by and you get a totally different exposure.

So what I usually do, if there is any " useable " natural light, is to mix it with light coming from different sources, mostly strobes.

I can either have the flash as main light and the ambient as fill, or the opposite. When I'm indoor I generally prefer the first option, but if I am outside it's more likely I go for option number two.

This is what I did with the custard apple: I took a meter reading based on the light coming in from the window; it was f 2.85, which is f 3.5. Now, because I wanted a ratio of one and a half a stop for my shadows, I set the aperture to f 5.6 .

I positioned a gridded flash on a stand perpendicular to the plate with the fruit, and tweaked its power up and down till I got a value of f 5.6 ( I always start at 1/16 of flash power which is kinda in the middle ).

Then I did the same thing, with a second strobe, for the vase in the background.

Next I thought I needed some extra fill on my main subject so I bounced a bare strobe to the ceiling ( white ); this time I took no meter reading, I just fired a few of shots starting from the lowest  flash power and incrementing 1/3 of a stop at the time.

Now it was looking much better. I was almost done, I just had to crop the bottom part of the picture to lose that annoying double shadow given by the flash bouncing off the ceiling.

And then I moved the vase forward a bit to pull everything together.

Here is the final shot.



And here is the lighting diagram .



I hope you enjoy the pictures and I'd like to see some of yours; hit me with comments and questions, I'll take the time to answer you!

Till next time, sayonara!.

Posted in Food, Photography

comments