# Japanese Resturant Food Photos - C&C



## Parker219 (May 17, 2015)

Hello,

Please keep in mind, I did this photo shoot in the restaurant on a busy Friday night. So I cant bring a lot of equipment, take up a large space in or take the food to a studio. These photos will be used for a local magazine and to be used on the clients facebook page / website.


I have NOT turned these in yet, so I can still edit these to make them better.

These were all shot with the D5300 and Sigma 18-35mm 1.8 Art lens.


Thank You for your time.







1.  Dragon Roll










2. Braised short ribs










3. Lovers Roll









4.  Pork Dumplings ( 1 stop too dark? )


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## KmH (May 17, 2015)

The light in all of them is a bit harsh.
Larger light modifiers would help that _and_ make the shadows wrap more and be more diffuse.

#2 is OK but the right end of the ribs should be in focus, so the Dof was a little to shallow.
The DoF in the others is way to shallow.

#1 and #4 have a lot of hot spots.


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## Parker219 (May 18, 2015)

ok, I will work on that for future shoots. Not sure if I can fix any of that in post.


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## Braineack (May 18, 2015)

pretty important photos to be shot under such circumstances.

KmH said pretty much everything I was going to.  But I'd also add the framing on #1 and #4 isn't the greatest.


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## vintagesnaps (May 18, 2015)

I agree about the framing, there's enough space (maybe too much?) at the top of most then the subject is cropped off at the bottom. I find if there's an out of focus object that isn't recognizable, especially when only part of is in the frame, it just makes for a distraction rather than adding to the background.

I think Braineack's right about the timing of it, that doesn't seem like the best option for this type shoot.


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## Parker219 (May 18, 2015)

Its sad the owners wont open early / close late, I guess the results will show.

Sometimes they would put a dish down in front of me and say that it was a customers so I could only take one photo, then they had to bring them their food. Normally I would take 10 to 12 per dish so I can sort through them later.


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## Parker219 (May 18, 2015)

As for the lighting, I have a soft diffused light, however I guess it's not soft enough. I need to bring a sheet or pillow case to diffuse it a little more it seems. The restaurant itself was pretty dark though.


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## Braineack (May 18, 2015)

Parker219 said:


> Its sad the owners wont open early / close late, I guess the results will show.
> 
> Sometimes they would put a dish down in front of me and say that it was a customers so I could only take one photo, then they had to bring them their food. Normally I would take 10 to 12 per dish so I can sort through them later.



If I was that customer and saw that I'd ask for a new plate.


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## Parker219 (May 18, 2015)

^ Wouldn't bother me.  

Some people that saw me there even brought their dish to me and asked if I wanted to take a picture of it. One thing I've noticed is that everyone loves the photographer.


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## epatsellis (May 26, 2015)

Image by Image:
#1 To me, it's unfocused from a composition standpoint. cropped too tight, objects in the background and placemat distracting. Focus, Focus, Focus....

#2 Focus/focal point seems to be random, DOF seems a little shallow as well. I know you're just being give these, but the presentation is all wrong, the plate could have been dressed much more appealingly. the placemat is distracting and draws the eye away from the dish as well.

#3 lighting's a little hot, a smaller softbox, or larger with the head moved in to taper off the light, would give you a better shadow on the food. Shadows keep things from looking like they are just floating in space. Another "trick" that works well is to grad your lighting from front to back, so as you go further back in the image, it gets a little darker. It has to be done subtly, but you'll know when you get it right immediately, it makes the foremost subject almost pop. Attention to detail: loose black bits make the food very unappetizing to my eye. Chopsticks lead the eye out of the image, and are distracting

#4. Plate not dressed very well, lettuce and peppers not visually supporting the main subject, burn marks on the edges are a bit more than "browning". Overall lack of attention to the little details, note the spill to the left and top of the sauce, for example. Don't know if it's too dark, it's too cool in the highlights though... placemat distracting


Some advice for your next food job:

Be sure to note in the contract (you did execute a contract, right????):

You will be shooting for 6-7 hours, when the restaurant is not open to the public.

That you or a food stylist will dress the plates.

You will require 5-10X the product required to be in the final image to allow you to select the very best ones.


Some advice in general:

Soften up your lighting, alot...specular highlights should accent, not become the focal point.

Use manual white balance, shoot raw and focus manually. Use gaff tape on your lens if the zoom or focus creeps whatsoever, very few still camera lenses are parfocal, and focus will wander. (google parfocal zoom lens...)

Crop looser, final crops can be done in Lightroom, Aperture, GIMP or Photoshop (final cropping should be the very last thing you do)

Buy a Kodak Q13 or Q14 and learn how to use it to ensure accurate color. No need for a Macbeth or other ridiculously expensive color profiling solution if you can understand how to use the Kodak grayscale/color checker) Your white balance is all over the place, each of the plates in these 4 images should be exactly the same color, they're not even close. Every camera is non linear across all three channels, using the gray scale card will allow you to fine tune (using curves) color balance at each step from white to black, should you desire or need to.  

Eliminate all ambient light, use (buy/rent/borrow) studio lighting and learn how to ensure your modeling lights don't influence your shadow white balance

Hire a food stylist, seriously. Bill it at cost +10%, it's worth it.

Never eat the food, even if they insist, charge enough to go out and buy a meal in a good restaurant afterwards with your wife/significant other.

I'm a bit of a perfectionist and hyper critical. Don't take it personally, some of my fellow students did during crits and it could get ugly, it's not personal, and an honest attempt at helping you.


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