How I Shot This – Food Photography Gear and Set Up

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This is a guest post by Miriam and writes at her recipe blog. If you would like to write a guest post about food photography or food styling, please send me a note by clicking here.

I first saw her photos when she shared food photo with us. The use of depth of field really made this photo appealing. In this post Miriam explains about her equipment, set up and other aspects of food photography for her food photo above. Let’s welcome Miriam.

The Equipment – Camera and Lens

First of all, let’s start with my camera. I have a Nikon D70S, a SLR camera which is not a very new model already, but a good one anyway. I’ve been an amateur photographer for some time now and I’ve always used Nikon cameras. I find a SLR camera is essential to control shallow depth of field, like in this photo. I always shoot my food photos on f-stop priority, so that I can choose the depth of field. Then I let the camera adjust the speed automatically. I only have one lens, an AF S NIKKOR 18-70mm 3.5-4.5, which does the trick for most of my (self-) assignments. But this will change… someday.

The Food Photography Setup

The setup of the photograph was as follows: I live in sunny Spain and in the summer, and in general when it’s fair weather, I take my photos in my veranda for a beautiful and natural daylight. It has a northern exposure, which is perfect for this purpose. I use a tripod to place the camera exactly where I want while I prepare the set and so that I can use low camera speeds. I only use a cheap polystyrene board for reflecting the light on the subject (very professional equipment…). I got it from one of my nephews who used to cut such material to make Warhammer models for battles… The little wooden spoon in the photo was held between a plastic cup, placed upside down on a table, and a bag of beans. This is a trick I learnt at Lara Ferroni’s beautiful blog (the setup is shown in the photos, the first without using the white board to reflect the light and the second with light reflected).

I then placed the lidded jar on the background and checked through the camera that the composition was right for me, especially that the spoon was at the right height regarding the jar. I chose the lowest aperture my lens allowed, which was 4.0 f-stop, so that I could have a very shallow depth of field and a beautiful bokeh in the background. When all the props were ready, I used another spoon to place the tiny jam dollop on the wooden spoon. So I was ready to shoot. That’s it.

The Post Processing – Editing Food Photos

I always apply post-processing to enhance the focusing and contrast. But I still have such a lot to learn… I used to do it with Jasc Paint Shop Pro at the time of taking this photograph, which is really a very similar program to the widely popular Adobe Photoshop. I’ve recently switched to experiment with RAW format… and I’m still working on it!

Thank you Miriam

If you found this helpful, please let Miriam know by visiting her website or by leaving a comment for her below. If you have questions for Miriam about this set-up or photograph itself, please leave a comment below.

If you have a unique food photograph that you would like to share with us, visit share your food photo page. Know more about Miriam by visiting her about page.

All photos copyright of Miriam from The Winter Guest.