Help with lighting my rice please

[redbourn]

Also, what were your settings? Your DOF seems pretty thin. Part of the rice being blown out might be due to it being outside of your DOF as well.

Beginning to think that rice doesn't work with short dof

 

[redbourn]

View attachment 118232 Try moving your light, a lot, all the way around your subject. Any subject, doesnt have to be rice. Strobist.blogspot.com I think its his first exercise. Read the rest of that site.

The rice is over exposed.

Google lighting diagram.

Light it from the front as suggested, your backlighting it; why?

Thanks for the diagrams and help.

 

[redbourn]

Interesting to me anyway that this photo was shot in pretty much the same was as this problematic one was shot in the first upload

but worked out fine.

Didn't move the light or the camera.

 

[Stradawhovious]

Interesting to me anyway that this photo was shot in pretty much the same was as this problematic one was shot in the first upload View attachment 118273 but worked out fine.

Didn't move the light or the camera.

You moved the plate. The reason the rice looks so much better in that shot is because it's actually in focus instead of looking like creamy oatmeal due to being outside your DOF.

Take a look at your image below. Your DOF is REALLY shallow. It's only between the two red lines. Your rice, in its entirety falls outside, making it appear to be a bright creamy mess. If you were to set up your shot EXACTLY the same, but stop down to make the DOF deeper... say... closer to the green lines, I think you would like the appearance of the rice in this shot far more.

Does your camera have a DOF preview function? If so, you may seriously consider using it. It works wonders when setting up shots like this.

 

[redbourn]

Thanks for taking the trouble to explain so clearly.

I have a Nikon D3300 and if I knew six months ago when I bought it I would have paid a couple of hundred dollars more for a camera with more features.

That's when I started photography.

It doesn't have DOF through the viewfinder, doesn't have automatic exposure in bracketing and I can't tether it to a monitor ;-)

Rice seems to be a very specific case since if every grain isn't clear then it turns into mush.

Even at F8 it turned into mush :-(

I shoot a sequence of photos and lots of difference f stops.

It seems to me and I could well be wrong that rice needs to be closest to the camera if one wants to fade the back of the food.

Problematic since the featured food will be at the back.

 

[robbins.photo]

Thanks for taking the trouble to explain so clearly.

I have a Nikon D3300 and if I knew six months ago when I bought it I would have paid a couple of hundred dollars more for a camera with more features.

That's when I started photography.

It doesn't have DOF through the viewfinder, doesn't have automatic exposure in bracketing and I can't tether it to a monitor ;-)

Rice seems to be a very specific case since if every grain isn't clear then it turns into mush.

Even at F8 it turned into mush :-(

I shoot a sequence of photos and lots of difference f stops.

It seems to me and I could well be wrong that rice needs to be closest to the camera if one wants to fade the back of the food.

Problematic since the featured food will be at the back.

Do a google search on focus stacking. It's a nice technique you can use in a situation like this....

 

[bffmike]

Ok this might seem like a strange suggestion, but don't use a softbox, or add in another hard light. Softboxes are great for faces because they remove small details like blemishes and wrinkles, but this is something you DON'T want to do with food. You want to see every bit of detail in it and a hard light will bring those out. Also, you might want to work a bit on your food styling to get some height on your plating. This will allow more of the elements to be in the focus plane. Here's a photo a did a while back that uses these tips.

 

[Didereaux]

Why not take 5 minutes and watch this video? Then think about what you jsut saw, and how he did it. Then try and duplicate it.

 

[redbourn]

Ok this might seem like a strange suggestion, but don't use a softbox, or add in another hard light. Softboxes are great for faces because they remove small details like blemishes and wrinkles, but this is something you DON'T want to do with food. You want to see every bit of detail in it and a hard light will bring those out. Also, you might want to work a bit on your food styling to get some height on your plating. This will allow more of the elements to be in the focus plane. Here's a photo a did a while back that uses these tips.

So what lighting are you suggesting.

Very nice photo.

I shot quite a lot of what I thought were quite nice photos with natural light but many people here told me that they looked flat.

Thanks for the reply and tips.

 

[redbourn]

Thanks for taking the trouble to explain so clearly.

I have a Nikon D3300 and if I knew six months ago when I bought it I would have paid a couple of hundred dollars more for a camera with more features.

That's when I started photography.

It doesn't have DOF through the viewfinder, doesn't have automatic exposure in bracketing and I can't tether it to a monitor ;-)

Rice seems to be a very specific case since if every grain isn't clear then it turns into mush.

Even at F8 it turned into mush :-(

I shoot a sequence of photos and lots of difference f stops.

It seems to me and I could well be wrong that rice needs to be closest to the camera if one wants to fade the back of the food.

Problematic since the featured food will be at the back.

Do a google search on focus stacking. It's a nice technique you can use in a situation like this....

Thanks for reminding me about focus stacking!

Somebody else mentioned it a few weeks ago and I have a link about it sitting on my desktop.

 

[bffmike]

In the shot I posted, there's a hard light rear and left, fairly low. The idea is that the light glances off the top side of the food which creates those bright highlights in the meniscus of the sauce, and highlights the oil on the meat (btw, I brushed some olive oil on it after cooking which helps it glisten, as well as adding some nice flavor .You can then expose for those highlights to make sure they don't blow out. Finally, there was either a bounce or a brolly in front of the dish that provided fill light so the shadows wouldn't be so harsh (sorry I don't remember what I used, this was shot years ago).


Mike R. Manzano (@bffmike) | Twitter | Mike Manzano | Facebook

 

[redbourn]

Why not take 5 minutes and watch this video? Then think about what you jsut saw, and how he did it. Then try and duplicate it.

I watched and it's food for thought and I should be learning a lot because I'm making lots of mistakes ;-)

Thanks

 

[redbourn]

In the shot I posted, there's a hard light rear and left, fairly low. The idea is that the light glances off the top side of the food which creates those bright highlights in the meniscus of the sauce, and highlights the oil on the meat (btw, I brushed some olive oil on it after cooking which helps it glisten, as well as adding some nice flavor .You can then expose for those highlights to make sure they don't blow out. Finally, there was either a bounce or a brolly in front of the dish that provided fill light so the shadows wouldn't be so harsh (sorry I don't remember what I used, this was shot years ago).


Mike R. Manzano (@bffmike) | Twitter | Mike Manzano | Facebook

You say a "hard light rear" but I've only been at this a few months, so what type of light are you referring to?

I have a big and small bounce.

Thanks.

 

[bffmike]

A hard light just means don't use the soft box You might use just the unadorned flash with a lower power or at some distance. If the light that's generated seems too hard, try shooting the flash at the small bounce and using the bounced light. The idea is that you want the light source to have a much smaller area than the big area you get with a soft box, and you want that light to be highly directional instead of spread out.

You say a "hard light rear" but I've only been at this a few months, so what type of light are you referring to?

I have a big and small bounce.

Thanks.

 

[redbourn]

A hard light just means don't use the soft box You might use just the unadorned flash with a lower power or at some distance. If the light that's generated seems too hard, try shooting the flash at the small bounce and using the bounced light. The idea is that you want the light source to have a much smaller area than the big area you get with a soft box, and you want that light to be highly directional instead of spread out.

You say a "hard light rear" but I've only been at this a few months, so what type of light are you referring to?

I have a big and small bounce.

Thanks.

So in short, I remover the diffuser from the softbox (5500 lamp) point it at a reflector (I have a large white/silver one and a small gold/white one) and reflect at the food?

Thanks

Michael