Happy and Bewildered

[Polly1]

I should be really happy, and don't get me wrong, I am, but I am also in a complete fog, slightly scared and have no idea where to start. It's a long story, but without spending any money I am now the proud owner of the following equipment:

1 x Bowens Esprit 500 (seems there used to 2 but one got smashed)
1 x Portaflash 336 VM
Assorted stands
Several umbrellas in varying states of repair
An Aurora Lite Bank (softbox?)
An Aurora Lite Bank reflector - Gold/Silver
An Aurora Lite Bank reflector - White/Black
A small Lastolite reflector - white
Vanguard MK-2 tripod
A Fondali Backdrop
A Sekonic Flashmate L308B
A Kepcor IRT-353 Universal Wireless Remote Control Flash Trigger
Dozens of wires and cables and clips which initially resembled a snakes honeymoon

Phew!! I somehow managed to set it all up and it all works perfectly, the only thing that doesn't work very well is me. Whilst the positioning of the lights seems to make perfect sense to me, I have no idea how to adjust the lighting levels. I left the modeling lights on but had real trouble making my camera focus, in fact, most of the time it wouldn't. I have been scouring the internet but haven't managed as yet to find the answers I want.

A friend of mine has just opened a restaurant and he wants to cook all of his special dishes and have us taste them. Now of course, he wants me to photograph them as well. As this is happening the day after tomorrow I told him that it wouldn't work but he wants me to have a go. I don't mind as there is no pressure, but it would be great if I could actually manage to get a couple of half decent shots.

So, any help, tips or advice would be greatly appreciated. I know that photographing food is an art in itself so am not under any illusions about it being a success. I just thought it would make a good starting point rather than me just waffling about with the lights in my office.

Thanking you all in advance.

[brucep]

Polly, for food photos (http://www.photozo.com/album/showphoto.php?photo=149932&ppuser=7198), I like to put a softbox above and beyond the food so that light bounces off any sauces, meat juices, etc. into the camera. It's kind of a "hair light" for food. lol Without this overhead light, the food looks dead.

In addition to that, I put a main light to one side of the food and a reflector or subtractor on the other side. Varying the output of the main light and changing from a reflector to a subtractor gives me control of the ratio of lighting from the sides.

I shoot through a ring light with a shoot-thru softbox for fill. You may be able to accomplish this shadow-less fill by surrounding your camera with sofboxes or reflectors.

For portrait fill, I can put a softbox behind the camera and me, or just very close to the camera. In a food shot, though, I'm too close to the food (creating a giant shadow/reflection on the food). That's why I use the shoot-thru softbox.

Knowing this, you can probably look at the food shots (http://www.photozo.com/album/showphoto.php?photo=163673&ppuser=7198) in my gallery and see how I did it.

[Polly1]

Bruce, thanks for your reply and your helpful tips with the lighting for food, I will certainly give that a go tomorrow. As I said, luckily this isn't important and I am really just going to be playing around with the lights, it will be the first time I have used them as I have only had them for a few days.

The real problem I have is setting all the levels in the first place. Do I rely totally on the light meter (which I don't really know how to use either) to work out the settings or should I know some kind of formula myself?

Also, there is the problem with the camera and it not focusing in low light. I can only assume that not only should I have the camera on the manual setting but also the focus, is this correct or am I missing something?

Sorry to sound so dim, I hadn't expected to have any lights for quite some time so all this has been a bit of surprise to me.

[arezai85]

Well I can't say something technical but for me there is two kind of food shooting with subject. some pretty clean subject without something that show what happened or what become happening but second is reverse. try several subject with adding some story to your shots not just food in frame. Just my opinion.

Ali

[brucep]

A hand held light meter won't help unless it's a flash meter. A flash meter really simplifies setting up the output ratios of studio lights. Since your camera has a histogram, though, you can set up your main light (while preventing the others from firing) and adjust your f-stop (or light output) until you have a decent exposure, then you can add your fill light to taste. You may then need to back off a bit on your main or close a third of a stop on your camera. Then add that top kicker "hair light" and adjust its output until you like the look of the ratio of all three lights. You may decide you also need a background light.

The way I do it is to set up the lights while the food is cooking and I grab a loose wad of white paper from the trash and partially unfold it and put it on a plate. That way I can roughly frame the dish and the white wad of paper shows me what my light and shadows will look like. After shooting all the food photos, I open that test shot in Raw and adjust the white balance using that white paper (that's rarely needed with flash), then "tell" the rest of the exposures to be the same color balance.

Life is SO much easier with our digital cameras and their LCD previews and histograms! A flash meter used to be an absolute necessity in the studio. Polaroid proofs weren't at all a good indication of exposure. They'd just show you where the shadows were falling and what the scene looked like.

[Photonemesis]

Bruce has summed this up well. The only thing I would add is that a flash meter is still an absolute necessity! Even though digital cameras have nice LCD screens on them they rarely show the correct exposure level - even using histograms is not a substitute for a good flash meter. On my canon 5D, what looks correct on the LCD screen, usually turns out to be at least one and as much as two stops underexposed. If you underexpose by two stops it is unlikely that any amount of post processing will fix the image - even if shooting raw, as raising the exposure that much will result in severe image quality loss especially in the backgrounds. If you can't get the meter to work for you, my suggestion would be to bracket the exposures in half or third stop increments, perhaps as much as 3 stops. That way you will still likely get at least one good exposure in each bracket.

[brucep]

I was pretty tethered to a flash meter for years. Then I took a Joe McNally seminar. Joe shoots for National Geographic, etc., frequently and he rarely uses a flash meter. I was shocked! he says to just keep an eye on your histogram and make sure none of the image is over/under exposed. He also uses iTTL (ETTL) flash whenever possible. (Obviously not with studio flashes.)

I've following his lead with location lighting, using multiple ETTL flashes. When using just studio lights, though, if it's a quick bottle shot, I'll just check my histogram. If it's a complex setup where I know I want to start with my main light putting out twice the light as my fill, for instance, I find it much easier to "build" the lighting step by step using a flash meter.

[Photonemesis]

Not to hijack this thread, but Bruce you bring up an interesting point. My limited experience with location work has revolved around using portable monolights using more of the "build" approach. How well do flashes using e-ttl perform when using multiple flashes and can you get the same quality of lighting?

[brucep]

(Sorry while we digress just a tiny bit, Polly!)

I read Joe McNally's Hot Shoe Diaries: Big Light from Small Flashes (http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=hot+shoe+diaries+joe+mcnally&tag=googhydr-20&index=stripbooks&hvadid=3400768661&ref=pd_sl_296ej57alo_b), and became "born again." lol

Of course with hot shoe flashes you don't have the quantity of light you do with studio lights, but you have instantaneous control of lighting ratios, right from the camera! In November I had 90 minutes to create portraits of 13 subjects (http://www.photozo.com/album/showgallery.php?thumbsonly=0&perpage=90&cat=9436&ppuser=&thumbcheck=0&page=1&sortby=&sorttime=&way=&date=). They didn't want "school pictures"... all in front of the same background with the same lighting, so I used two 580EX's in softboxes on light stands. Since the flashes were hidden by the boxes, I couldn't use Canon's wireless setup (because it's line of sight), so I put an ST-E2 atop a PocketWizard MiniTT1 on the camera and put a FlexTT5 under each hot shoe. I was able do dial in my main to fill ratio and balance those two against the available light (which lit the background). I was hauling light stands all around their tasting room, tilting the softboxes to suit each, and shooting hand held from a step ladder. It would've taken a prohibitive amount of time if I'd used my Alien Bees and a flash meter.

Yes, if I'd had more time, I could've done better, but these subjects were on overtime and the tasting room was about to open to the public and they didn't want the photo shoot going on (or any equipment around) when they unlocked the doors.

Months after that shoot, I figured out how to use a RayFlash ring flash along with the PW Mini system, so the next time I do something similar to that shot, I'll use the RayFlash for fill and only have one softbox/lightstand to move around. (See our Article Publishing (http://www.photozo.com/article/2009/12/31/the-impossible-dream-getting-a-pocket-wizard-minitt1-to-work-with-a-ray-flash-ring-light/) area if you're interested in that technique.)

For food photos (the subject of this thread), I had to go from hot shoe flashes to studio lights to get the dof I needed. Naturally, since the studio lights put out more light, I can use a higher number f-stop.

[Photonemesis]

I definitely can see the advantages of using e-ttl flashes in terms of time, ease of setup, and changing positions. Monolights are big, bulky and somewhat of a pain to move around (Alien Bees are not to bad but some of the old broncolors I've used are monsters). If good results are obtainable with hot shoe flashes, it is definitely something to consider. Thanks for your input and thanks for the suggested reading - I see a copy of that book in my future.

[brucep]

Welcome aboard the Photozo, by the way. What's your first name? (you can put it in your signature.) Where's Graham located?

[Photonemesis]

Sorry - my name is Alex. Graham is located in NC about halfway between Chapel Hill and Greensboro (runs together with Burlington).

[brucep]

Welcome, Alex. We have several Photozo members in your neck of the woods!

[brucep]

Also, there is the problem with the camera and it not focusing in low light. I can only assume that not only should I have the camera on the manual setting but also the focus, is this correct or am I missing something?

Polly, Flash and camera should be on Manual, but you can use auto focus if it will work in your dim light. You can bring in a table lamp to focus by and it shouldn't affect your flash exposure, since the flash is so much more powerful. I use auto focus in my food shots except for those times when it doesn't focus where I want, then I just click over to manual focus.

[Photonemesis]

Well, I don't seem to be able to stay on topic BUT Bruce you mentioned something else I hadn't thought about. You mention using the Ray Flash ring flash as a fill. I don't have the RayFlash, but have sigma's canon 14ex ring flash clone. I'm assuming that could be used in a similar fashion. I've used the ring flash a lot for macro work, but I hadn't thought of using it as a fill for non macro work. Does it work well as a fill?

[brucep]

Yes, it makes a great fill. I've only used it as fill with daylight (on the job... no sample here), but have successfully experimented with it as fill with a softboxed 580EX as my main light. I don't have anything decent to show of my experiments.

You'd have difficulty using Canon's line of sight wireless with a RayFlash, because that ring light effectively COVERS the signal the 580EX emits to control another flash. Using the MiniTT1 system gets around that.

[Polly1]

Thank you Bruce for taking the time to be so helpful. Alex, welcome to photozo and thanks to you too. It was an interesting discussion between the two of you, most of it was completely over my head as usual.

Well, I did manage to get shots of every dish, there were nine altogether, but they weren't exactly very good (the photographs, not the food). But, it was fun and nice to have the opportunity to try out the lights and as it wasn't important there was no pressure. Every time a new dish came out I leaped up and photographed it and then sat down and ate it. There were a lot of people there and a good time was had by all - a nice five hour long Italian lunch!