Food 201: Recipes for Success Lesson 1

Welcome back! Most if not all of you have either taken The Art of Food Photography or Introduction to Food Photography courses in the past. Both classes covered similar principles in regards to lighting with the Art of Food Photography using both natural and artificial lighting and the Introduction to Food Photography concentrating on natural light. In this class, the lessons will be based on artificial light sources. However, you are free to use natural light to complete any of the assignments as long as you can produce the look we are after. As we have shown in the past, you can get very similar results no matter the type of light you are using if you understand the qualities that each light source has and know how to modify one to look like another. The advantages of using artificial lighting over natural light are many. It allows us produce any quality, quantity, and temperature we desire no matter the time of day or time of year. When shooting with natural light, you are limited by what you have to work with during daylight hours only as well as having to deal with weather changes and the effect it has on the light. That means, you need to modify your subjects and images to fit your light rather than the other way around. That can be very limiting and time consuming.

Pan Seared Sea Scallop on Mache Mamiya 645/P30+, 105-210mm@170mm w/36mm extension tube f/16, 1/250sec

There are many different types of artificial light sources available. We will concentrate these into two types.

1: Strobe or “” type lighting.

2: Continuous lighting, also known as “Constant” or “Hot Lights”.

Each type works equally well and each have their advantages and disadvantages over the other. During the next 4 weeks, we are going to show you how to work with whatever type you have to produce the results you are after every time.

Strobes

When it comes to Strobe or Flash lighting there are literally hundreds of choices and price points. From small “speedlite” type flash units, to “”, to “battery powered” to “pack and head” systems. Important things to consider are power output, size, available modifiers, and cost.

Monolights are self contained units that just need a power cord plugged into an AC outlet. The power supply for the flash is inside the unit and there are controls, usually on the back, that allow you to turn the unit off and on, adjust power, operate a modeling light at full power or proportional to the selected output, turn on a slave function, and connect a sync cord or radio firing device like a Pocketwizard. The advantages are a small, relatively light weight self contained unit that only needs an AC cord and light stand. They are a little heavier than the pack and battery powered heads though, usually around 6-7lbs.

Battery powered strobes are more like the “pack and head” systems in that there is an external power supply, a battery in this case, that you connect a flash head to with a cable. The advantages are obviously portability since you don’t need AC current to run them off of. The disadvantage is cost per Ws can be 2-3 times that of a moonlight.

Pack and head systems have a large power supply that sits on the floor and you run individual cables out to the flash heads. The advantages of this are that the flash heads are smaller and lighter so they are easier to mount on stands, especially overhead. You control the light output of each head from the power supply. Disadvantages are lots of cables running from the power supply. The weight of the power supply itself. Cost vs monolights.

Like with most things, more power is always better, right? Well, not necessarily. Having more light than you need is certainly better than not having enough but you have to be able to control it. If your light is set to its highest output and it’s as close to the subject as possible and you still don’t have enough light, you’re in trouble! In that case, the only solution is to add a second light right next to the first one. That can introduce all kinds of problems and you will be much better off with a single light that has more than enough output for the job. The opposite problem from this would be that your high power strobe is set as low as it can go but you still have too much light. Actually, this is not a problem because there are a couple of ways to remedy the situation and they are both better than trying to use 2 key lights!

First, and this one is really important, you need to know the “Inverse Square Law”. Here is a simple explanation: This is the law of diminishing luminance that states that light reduces by the inverse of the distance squared. In other words, if the light travels twice as far from the subject, it reduces by its inverse (2x becomes 1/2) and then squared (1/2 x 1/2) = 1/4. So the amount of light falling on a background twice as far away from the as the subject being photographed, it will only have a quarter of the light.

Another way to think of this would be:

2x the distance is 1/4 as bright, and 1/2 the distance is 4x brighter (2 stops) 3x the distance is 1/9 as bright, and 1/3 the distance is 9x brighter (8x is 3 stops) 4x the distance is 1/16 as bright, and 1/4 the distance is 16x brighter (4 stops) and so on.

As you can see, if your light is turned down to its lowest output but is still too bright, all you need to do is move it back from the subject. The other option would be to add neutral density gels in front of the light. You can buy them in different densities such as ¼, ½, 1, and 2 stop. They can be stacked as needed and do not effect .

With that said, I recommend a strobe with no less than 400Ws with 500-600Ws being even better. It does not matter what type, , battery powered, pack and head, as Ws are Ws are Ws….. most of the time. There are some less reputable companies that claim their lights are far brighter than they actually are and if you read the fine print, you will see what the “true Ws” rating is. That is the number you need to be aware of.

As I mentioned earlier, the power rating of Speedlites is measured by “” which does not relate to Ws whatsoever! To top that off, each manufacturer lists their guide numbers differently based on the maximum power of the flash, the angle of coverage, and the distance to the subject! The best comparison I have found so far is that a guide number of 120 is approximately equal to 1/16 output of a 500Ws strobe.

For instance, the guide number of Nikon’s SB-900 flash is 131’ (100iso) with the flash set to 35mm angle of coverage. Canon’s 580EXII is rated at 190’ (100iso) with the flash set at 105mm and 138’ (100iso) at 50mm. From that information, it is safe to assume that the SB-900 is slightly more powerful than the 580EXII but probably not a noticeable difference in real life situations. Both are quite powerful and put out a tremendous amount of light for their size.

As with strobes, there are other manufacturers to look at as well but they might not work as seamlessly as the actual camera manufacturers brands do. Because of their small size, high output, and available accessories, speedlites are well worth a serious look for studio and location work.

Color Temperature

Most strobes and speedlites have a color temperature close to 5500K or “daylight” and rarely will there be a white balance issue when mixing different brands or types of strobes or using them with speedlites at the same time. This can be a tremendous advantage if you happen to have both available to shoot with.

Modifiers

In the past classes we discussed Quality of light in great detail. When it comes to shooting with artificial light, we need to understand the difference between “Hard” and “Soft” light and how to modify our strobes to create one or the other. To see the difference between hard and soft light take a plain, clear light bulb (make sure it's not one of the frosted white ones!) and place it in a lamp with no shade about three feet from a wall. Place your hand between the bulb and the wall and notice how dark and contrasty the shadow is. This would be considered a “hard" light source. Now, either replace the bulb with a frosted one or place a diffuser between the bulb and your hand and notice how the shadow is much softer and has less contrast. This is a "soft" light source. Since the light quality of the unmodified strobe is always the same, we use “light modifiers” to create the type of lighting we need for our subject.

Reflectors and Grids. A bare strobe head will produce a very hard light but without much direction or intensity since it spreads evenly in all directions from the source. By adding a (not the same as a reflector we use for fill light!) to the head, we can control the spread of light as well as the direction and concentration of it. The size and shape of the reflector determine the size and shape of the light coming out of it. Common reflector types are umbrella, grid, background, soft or “”, high performance, and wide angle. When it comes to shooting food, a grid reflector with a set of grids will be the most useful. The grids are numbered by degrees of spread. 20, 30, and 40 degree grids are the most common. The higher the number, the wider the spread of light. A gridded strobe creates a small, hard light source that is perfect for showing texture in a subject.

Softboxes. The opposite of a small, hard light source would be, you guessed it, a Large, Soft light source. And what better to create that than a ! A large softbox is perfect for recreating the look of natural light coming in through a large window. Softer light will work better with very reflective subjects as it reduces glare and blown out highlights. A softbox also makes a wonderful fill light as the lower contrast it produces will not compete with your key light. They come in many shapes and sizes and the larger they are, the softer the light they put out. They are available for every type of strobe and even for speedlites.

There are additional modifiers available for both strobes and speedlites such as , barndoors, gobos, scrims, and . You can check with your favorite camera store to find out more information about these. They are more specialized items that we will not be using in this class. Honl photo makes some wonderful modifiers for speedlites such as grids, reflectors, snoots, gobos, and filters.

Continuous Lighting

Until recently, the only viable options for continuous lighting were tungsten and HMI. Both of these work great but they produce tremendous amounts of heat which can cause a couple of problems for food photographers. First, the high temperatures these lights operate at can cause your subject to quickly loose its fresh look and second, they can be quite painful to work around in tight spaces. More than once, I have had to stop shooting while I tended to an unpleasant burn from accidentally bumping a light while adjusting a scene. The biggest differences between these two types of lighting are color temperature and cost. Tungsten light is very warm in color, averaging 3200K while HMI are usually closer to 5500K. There are some warmer HMI bulbs available from certain manufacturers. HMI is also available in much higher output than tungsten and is commonly used in the motion picture industry, not in food photography. Tungsten is also usually much less expensive than HMI lighting and does not require a ballast to operate. It is not a good idea to mix tungsten with other light sources because of the difference in color temperature. You can gel strobes and speedlites to match the color output but it’s usually more work than it’s worth. Gelling tungsten is not a good idea since the heat they produce will quickly melt most gel materials. There are similar modifiers available for studio tungsten lights such as , barndoors, reflectors, and grids but they are specially made to handle the high working temperatures. Do not use modifiers that were made for strobe lighting with tungsten lights!

The light above is a typical studio tungsten light source. It contains 2 bulbs, 350W and 650W and they can be used individually or together. This light comes with a set of barndoors, an umbrella reflector, and a softbox as part of a kit. Lights like this are a fairly inexpensive way to get started when compared to strobes that produce the same amount of light.

Fluorescent lighting

In the past few years, tremendous advances have been made in fluorescent lighting. Fluorescent offers several advantages over tungsten and HMI in that they use much less power and run much cooler. The newer generation of high CRI bulbs provide very consistent daylight/5500K color temperature and the electronic ballasts provide “flicker free” operation. There had been a real issue with these two things that made them virtually unusable for photography. The phosphor coating on the inside of the bulbs acts as a slight diffuser creating a softer light source than other continuous light sources. They have a very high light output per watt of energy used and are suitable for using with or without a modifier such as a diffusion panel or grid. Some of the higher end fluorescent fixtures provide dimming options but I have not been happy with the color shift that occurs when the bulbs are run at less than full power. Instead, I recommend fixtures with separate ballasts for each bank of lights. You can then operate them separately or together for more or less light. The disadvantages with fluorescent lighting at this point are higher cost and fewer modifiers available but this should change as they become more main stream.

The fluorescent fixture above has 3 banks of 2 55W tubes that can be run individually or together to adjust power output. The outer two banks are on and the center bank is off in this image.

LED’s

Another recent breakthrough in technology is the availability of high output, color corrected LED’s or “Light Emitting Diodes”. They still have a slight green color cast which is easily corrected using a gel to bring the color temp to 5500K. LED’s are very small and put out a tremendous amount of light with very little power needed to drive them. In fact, they put out about 10X the light per watt compared to tungsten lighting and little to no heat. The individual “bulbs” last for many years with no loss in output or change in color making them more cost effective in the long run. Because of the low power requirements, they can be run for lengthy periods from just a battery making them highly portable. Their individual size requires that many of them be used side by side in a “panel” to create a usable light source. Due to this, they create a relatively hard light similar to a gridded strobe which is great for showing texture. Because they run so cool, they can easily be diffused with a softbox or placed behind a large diffusion panel to create a larger, softer light source. The disadvantages to LED’s are cost, they are not as readily available as other light sources yet, there are not a lot of modifiers available at this time. I believe that we will be seeing more and more LED lighting products in the very near future.

The LED panel above uses 45W set full power which is about 1/5 of what the fluorescent light uses to put out the same amount of light. Also, notice the difference in the quality of light each produces. Pop Quiz: Which one is the harder light source when unmodified?

As you can see, there are many different ways to light our subjects. None should be considered better than another. They all get the job done but will have some inherent differences. Let’s take a look at these differences and see how to make similar comparisons in total light output.

If you used a speed of one second, then you could directly compare Watts of incandescent lights to Watt-seconds of strobes. A 500 Watt-second strobe would give an approximately equal to a 500 Watt bulb, at the same distance, in the same fixture, using the same reflector/modifier, etc. As you shorten the , the continuous lights deliver less light to the sensor, so at typical camera sync speeds of 1/125-1/250 sec, 500 Watts of continuous light delivers much less useful light than a 500 Watt-second strobe. How many stops difference will you see between a 500 Watt-second strobe and 500 Watts of continuous lighting? The answer, of course, depends on the shutter speed which you need to use with the selected to get a correct exposure with the amount of continuous lighting you are using. To compare exposures at shutter speeds other than one second, just multiply the incandescent light's Watt rating times the shutter speed in seconds to get the Watt- seconds of energy used by the light during the exposure. So a 500 Watt light at a shutter speed of 1/125 uses 500 x 1/125 = 4 Watt-seconds of electricity while the shutter is open. The chart below shows the wattage necessary from a constant light source to match a 500Ws strobe.

Power Needed for Equivalent Exposure Strobe Watt-seconds Watts @ 1/30 Watts @ 1/60 Watts @ 1/125 Watts @ 1/250 500 15,000 30,000 62,500 125,000

As you can see, it’s not really practical to make a direct comparison between the two. You can get an equivalent exposure using either light source and that is what matters. When shooting food, we are more concerned with aperture than shutter speed because our camera is ALWAYS on a and DOF is critical, not shutter speed.

With strobes, the shutter speed is determined by the sync speed and you then select the aperture you want for the desired DOF and adjust the output of the strobe to get a correct exposure. With constant lights, you select the aperture for the desired DOF and then adjust shutter speed for a correct exposure.

Are we having fun yet????? Probably not but science class is done and now we can move on to the fun stuff! Well, almost.

Before we get down to actually making images, we need to talk about a few more important pieces of equipment that we will be using throughout this class and define “Key” and “Fill” light.

The first one is a light meter. I know, you hear all the time about how no one uses a light meter anymore, they went out of style with photography. Call me old fashioned then but I still own and use one when I am setting up my lighting for food photography. To be more specific, when I am setting up multiple lights. There can be more than one light source in an image but there can be only one “KEY” or main light (more on this shortly!) All other light sources, whether natural or artificial, bounced or reflected are considered “FILL” light. Fill light is just as its name implies. It is used to “fill” in dark areas that otherwise would show no detail from lack of light. It COMPLIMENTS but does not COMPETE with the key light! How can we tell that the fill light is at the right level to COMPLIMENT our key light? You guessed it, with a light meter! Fill light should be 2-3 stops lower in intensity than our key light. You can get close through test shots and adjustments but this takes a lot of time. With a light meter, you can have perfect lighting ratios within a minute. As you gain experience with your lighting equipment, you might find that you can set your ratios close enough the first time and no longer need to use a meter but when starting out, it can be a real time saver!

Sekonic L-358 Flashmaster Here is the meter that both Kent and I use. It has several modes that allow for measuring flash and constant light sources. You can get a wireless module that will fire your flashes that are connected to or connect a synch cord from the meter directly to the flash unit itself.

Reflectors

Reflectors can be made out of many materials or purchased individually and in “kits” that contain several different and usually fold up nicely in their own storage bag. I usually use foam core board that can be found at any office supply store. I like the 3’x2’ sheets that are white on one side and black on the other. You can cut them to any size you need or even connect them with tape or push pins if you need a larger size. We will also be using these to block out any unwanted light in certain situations. They are inexpensive and work great! Small mirrors can be very handy to add bright specular highlights to a subject so if you have them, great. If not, don’t worry about it as they are not necessary and we can suggest alternatives to get a similar effect if needed.

Westcott 6-in-1 reflector kit

Diffusers

A diffuser is simply a piece of translucent material that goes between the light source and subject and “softens” the light. These can be made or purchased in many different sizes. A softbox that attaches to the front of a studio strobe or hot light has the same effect as a diffusion panel placed in front of a continuous light source.

A large diffusion panel like this can be easily placed in front of any continuous light source to soften the light and increase the size of the light source.

Okay. Congratulate yourself if you made it through all of that without falling asleep! Before you read the next section of this lesson, you might want to take a break, get some fresh air, make a pot of coffee, do some jumping jacks, anything to get the blood and oxygen flowing back to your brain because this next part is VERY important so make sure you are wide awake and ready to pay attention!

KEY LIGHT/MAIN LIGHT

As the name implies, the “KEY” light, or “MAIN” light (these two terms are interchangeable) is just that. It is the key to properly lighting all of your images. There can be only ONE key or main light. Let me repeat that, THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE KEY OR MAIN LIGHT. Got it? Let me say repeat it once more for good measure… THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE KEY OR MAIN LIGHT. Are we clear on that? Good. This concept is much easier to grasp using natural light than with artificial light. It’s tough to have two key lights with only one sun! There is only one sun (Key light!) on planet Earth. Think how confusing it would be if you stepped outside right now and saw 2 shadows of yourself heading in different directions! Unless you’ve been transported to a different planet that has more than one sun, it’s just not possible. The same confusion results when we see an image with multiple shadows of the subject heading in different directions. Our brains know there is something wrong and have a hard time getting past that enormous distraction. Hopefully I have made my point and everyone is on the same page now with regards to there being only one key light!

Fill Light

“Fill” light is just as its name implies as well. It is used to “fill” in dark areas that otherwise would show no detail from lack of light. It COMPLIMENTS but does not COMPETE with the key light! Fill light can be created by simply using a reflector to bounce some of your key light back on to your subject or you can use a second light source as long is it is 2-3 stops lower in intensity than your KEY light. NEVER EVER HAVE YOUR FILL LIGHT EQUAL TO OR MORE POWERFUL THAN YOUR KEY LIGHT! At that point, it becomes a second key light which we know won’t work because there can be only one! In fact, your fill light should never be bright enough to create a shadow. If it is, it’s too bright and it’s competing with your key light. That is very bad! When you have two competing light sources, you get shadows in two distinct directions and we NEVER want to see that.

Direction of Key Light.

The biggest decision you will have to make when setting up a food shot is where you will place your key or main light. Whether you are using natural light, strobes, constant or “hot” lights, or even your small flash unit as your main light source, careful consideration is required as to the location or direction the light is coming from. The following diagram will illustrate where the key light source should be located in relation to the subject and camera as well as where the reflector will be placed for fill light. As we now know, there will always be ONLY 1 key or main light source.

As you can see from the above diagram, the majority of the time, your key light will be placed in a position that is about 135 degrees from the camera. The key light can be on either side of the subject, between 10-11:00 OR 1-2:00. There will be times when your main light is closer to 90 degrees or even at 180 degrees from the camera but that is usually less than 20% of the time.

You can also see that the reflector is placed 180 degrees from the key light. It is in this position that you will get the most reflected light from it. What do you think would happen if the reflector were moved to between 12-3 or 6-9? What would happen if the reflector was moved farther away from or closer too the subject? Finally! It’s time to set up a light, pick a simple subject and start shooting. It doesn’t matter what type of light you use in this exercise. Try shooting the same subject with all of your modifiers (softbox, grid, etc) and if you have more than one kind of light such as a strobe, speedlite, and/or hotlight, I suggest you repeat this with each of them so you can see the differences side by side afterwards. You can even set this up by a window and shoot with natural light if you want to. Just be sure that you block any window or room light when you are using your studio lighting! We only want one (key!) light and a reflector used for this. Look at the image below for an example. If you want to use natural light, just place your table so that the window is in the same place as the softbox.

500Ws strobe with softbox. The modeling light is on to aid with focusing. You might need to use some additional light for composition and focus if the modeling light is not strong enough. Remember to turn off all other lights before you shoot!

Once you have your light adjusted to the correct intensity, start moving your reflector to different distances between shots so you can see the difference it makes on the subject. You can play with the angle as well as height to move your fill light around the subject.

Here is the resulting image from the above set up. The camera was set to its sync speed of 1/125 because we are using a strobe. I selected an aperture of f/8 to get the DOF I wanted and then adjusted the strobe output until a correct exposure was achieved. This can be done with a flash meter (faster!) or by taking test shots (slower!) If shooting tethered, you can check your exposure by wither the histogram or by checking RGB values to make sure you do not have any clipped highlights (255) or blocked shadows (0).

We then repeated this shot with just the modeling light (tungsten hot light) as our key light to see the different look it gave.

Shot with just the modeling light of the strobe and softbox. The modeling light is much less intense than the strobe but is constant so I switched the camera from manual exposure to aperture priority, and then selected the aperture I wanted. This one is at f/11 and the shutter speed went from 1/125 with the strobe to ½ with the modeling light. We did not move the reflector so there is a little less fill due to the lower light output but notice how close these two images are with completely different light sources!

I do need to point out a mistake that we made while setting this up because it happens to all of us. Since the modeling light is not bright enough to clearly focus with, we turned on the overhead room lights to help brighten things up. I forgot to turn them out before I shot the first image and the below image is the result of that mistake. Remember what I said about having more than one key light? Of course you do….. Take a guess as to what happened before you scroll down.

The dreaded multiple shadow or “cross lighting” effect from competing light sources! There can be only one key light, there can be only one key light, there can be only one key light. Ok, now that we have that straight, notice how the exposure is still the same as the image with only one light. The camera was still in aperture priority so it adjusted the shutter speed to make up for the light.

We then went on to repeat this shot with every other type of light we had in the studio that day. Below are the results using a Canon 580EXII speedlite mounted in a Lastolite Ezybox, a fluorescent cool light, and an LED panel. The camera was set to aperture priority for the continuous lights and manual for the speedlite. The camera was on a tripod for every shot, manually focused, and a shutter release used. These are all things that you must start doing as food photographers. It is as important as only having one key light! These are the RECIPES FOR SUCCESS!

Same set up but using the speedlite and the ezybox. The big difference you will see here is that the size of the key light has changed. A smaller light source means less light spread so we had to let the background go dark to keep enough light on the subject. A second light could have been used to separately light the background to get the same look as the first images. Since this was shot with a flash, the camera was in manual mode and the shutter speed was set to 1/125 and the aperture was at f/11 for the DOF we wanted. We then adjusted the output of the flash until we had a correct exposure. Again, a light meter makes this really fast or you can take test shots and adjust if you don’t own one or just have lots of time on your hands.

All of the previous images were shot using a softbox. The last two were not. Take a close look at the shadows in all of the images. What do you see? Which light(s) would be considered soft? Which would be considered hard? How do these two terms relate to contrast? What effect can you see between the larger light source(s) and the smaller ones? How many Key lights can there be? Post your answers and any questions you have about all of this in the QnA this week. These are all extremely important details that we will be covering in the upcoming weeks.

Same setup shot with an LED 600 panel. Aperture priority, f/11, 1/9sec

Same setup shot with a fluorescent cool light. Aperture priority, f/11, 1/15sec

As you can see, there are many different ways to get to the same place when it comes to studio lighting and food photography. It’s not about the gear you have but rather how you USE the gear you have. We are going to show you how to get the most out of whatever lighting you are using in the next 4 weeks along with a lot of other tips, tricks, and techniques to get your work to the next level.

Ron Goldman