Advice on very amateur food lighting and C&C

[Luigi74]

Hi guys...

I'm a chef and I like to take pics of my food for my daily specials to upload them in facebook and to my newsletter. Kind of a photographer in a budget (A tight one). This is my setup and as you can see is extremely basic, so far I can't get professional grade equipment. So, my question is...What can I do to upgrade it (A baby step please, no suggestions like getting a tilt shift lens or a Leica :mrgreen: )

As you can see, my food pics have some kind of "blue" on the bottom, the white surfaces have this cold blue-ish tone that I don't like. Sometimes I get rid of it by over exposing a bit and it gets very white. But a friend of mine (A newbie too, but with a little bit more experience than me) told me that maybe getting hotter light was going to help.
Is that a solution?, Like getting 2 5200K light bulbs.

What are your comments on that? Getting 2 light bulbs or spending up to 100 USD is the kind of improvements that I can do right now, but all your ideas and input will be very appreciated.

Here is my set up, and a picture of a salad, that is not an impressive pic (Actually, none of my pics is impressive at all yet), but in that one you can see that the bottom has that cold blue-ish tone that is my concern right now.

Best regards.
Luis

 

[Derrel]

What is the white balance setting or pre-setting that is being used??? It does not look "too far off" on the salad photograph.

 

[HomelessBoy]

1) If your pictures look a bit 'blue' then the best thing to do is to change your white balance.
2) Personally, I don't like how the front is in focus and the back is out of focus. For food photography, I think it would be best if you keep the whole dish in focus.
3) The best light source is from the sun, make use of natural light.

But it's a really good attempt, keep going at this sort of thing..

 

[gsgary]

That is good enough for facebook