Food Photography & Aperture Priority
As a food photographer and I take a range of food photographs, in my home and on location for clients. I have a certain setup and process when taking a food photograph. I usually shoot in manual mode, but recently I have been teaching students about aperture priority.
From teaching this process, I have learnt more about my own camera and lens. When my camera is at the widest focal length the f-stop can go as low as f3.5.
I teach the students to always remember these key pointers when using depth of field and learning about Aperture priority.
Using your camera to decrease depth of field, you will need to:
Use a narrow aperture (larger f-number)
Distance yourself from the subject
Use a shorter focal length
To expand the depth of field in your photograph:
Widen your aperture (smaller f-number)
Move closer to the subject
Lengthen your focal length
You will need to remember that every photograph has some form of depth of field and what I have listed above can be completed with either focal length or aperture.
Read more about the depth of field by reading this blog:
In this blog, I have explained my own process when taking a food photograph and using aperture priority.
If you have not used aperture priority before, this is when the camera lets you only control the aperture you wish to use per photograph. You are not able to change the speed, so depending on the lighting you may require a tripod if the speed drops below 1/60 or increase the ISO.
Picture Layout
One of the things that I consider is the foreground and the background for each photo. For this photograph, I wish to create depth with a window in the background.
The two above photographs show that I have moved the plants, to help decide where to place them. I have decided that I liked the plants on both sides to create a framing of the glass.
The three above photographs show the amount of depth of field per image, where I have to move the glass distance from the background. I have also shot as I have moved the plants into the framed position that I required, to have the frame of that picture. All of the planning photographs show the blurry effect of depth of field, making this process much easier for me to create and consider the layout over the camera settings.
Final image
The image above shows the glass filled with strawberries and ice cream. For this photograph, I have focus-stacked the image, so that from the top of the strawberries to the bottom, is all in focus.
From using aperture priority, I have found that creating depth of field was much easier to form, than when I used manual settings.
The lens I have is a Nikon 24 - 120ml, with an aperture range of f3.5 - 5.6, which has made forming depth of field difficult, so from now on I will use aperture priority in the future when I wish to expand on the amount of depth of field in each photograph.
Let me know what you think.
Have you used aperture priority before and when do you use it?
I do think it is always good to try different settings and try the best for the type of picture you wish as your end result.
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