A Hot Date with the Canon EOS M50
Written by Sandra Giustiniani - Jul 05, 2018
Recently, we went on a hot date with the Canon EOS M50 for some fancy food and drinks in Sydney, which was totally lucky for us because we forgot to bring lunch that day. #notanaccident
It got us thinking, though. We don’t do a lot of food photography here at DCW HQ. Not surprising. There’s a limit to the culinary brilliance one can perform at the office.
Thankfully, we got some excellent pointers on how to make our food photos look tastier.
Watch the video for the full experience and read to find out how you can get started.
Our Top 5 Food Photography Tips
- Work with natural light
This is probably the most important tip. Not necessarily the easiest to achieve, but if you can do it, your photos will look amazing. Just like any other photo style, natural light is your best friend. Move your food and props around to see how the light falls on them. You’re trying to avoid excessive glare and too much shadow, so avoid plating up in direct sun or right next to a window.
- When in doubt, get the tripod out
Not necessarily a must have, but if you’re planning a longer shoot or find that you’re struggling with sharpness, it never hurts to use a tripod. You can try a faster shutter speed for handheld, but this might not work as well if your light source is fading.
- Don’t settle for one angle
A lot of the time, we imagine food photography like a flat lay photo; shot from directly above so you can see everything on the table. While that looks great, some foods might look a little more impressive from a different angle. Like, if you have a mountain of spaghetti on your plate, change the photo angle to show that! We love spaghetti, it’s important to know there’s a LOT of it!
- Props and Actions tell a story
If you’ve got cute salt and pepper shakers, break ‘em out. It’s better to have more props on hand than not enough. Speaking of hands, they’re not out of place in food photos. Actions, like reaching for more dip, tell a story and make people want to eat. Remember to avoid using too many props or the image can get cluttered and take the focus away from your delicious dish.
- Focus, focus, focus
Using a camera or lens that lets you play with depth of field is a good way to help your viewer focus certain elements of your image. A macro lens or one with a lower aperture, like f/2.8, will give you some nice foreground and background blur, along with a little boost in lowlight. Consider your shooting angle, though, as you don’t want to go overboard with the artistic blur.
That’s it! Those are our top 5 tips for getting started. There’s a heck of a lot more, but we wanted to chop it down into something a little more… bite-sized and easy to digest. (sorry, not sorry.)
We shot our video on Canon’s EOS M50 mirrorless camera and it worked a real treat. It’s cute, easy to carry, and even easier to use. This makes it an awesome choice for you budding bloggers, café goers, and foodies out there.