Glacé Plums or Candied Plums

The days of winter become shorter and shorter, actually we do not lose hours, but daylight. For a photographer natural lighting is optimum, however it is not always available when you need to photograph. How do photographers make up for the lack of daylight? Our answer is studio lighting; the set up for the candied plums (above) was using a canon 100mm lens on a mark 111 with an ISO of 100, f-stop of 13, shutter speed was set at 1/5 of a second, and the lights were set to 96.

There are many different types of lighting available, regardless of your budget or preference a light meter is a must.

Light meter

A light meter is essential in natural lighting or studio lighting; it guides you by giving suggested numbers to the camera’s settings. Generally it is on target, but every once in a while I need to tweak the information.

If you look in the back you will see the white tablecloth

 This photo for example the meter register 1/4, but 1/5 was a better shutter speed.

Last year Sydney and I tried several different types of lighting; except for flash lighting, we found it is to harsh. I started with a Lowel Ego lights on my kitchen counter top and my flood lights in the kitchen had been changed to white lights. This was to take away the yellow hues we were getting in some of our photos.

Lowel Ego..bought from Adoroma

I found the lights had a tendency to add an odd hue on the food; I have talked with plenty of bloggers who love them, though. They are the easiest form of artificial lighting and the price is perfect, so if they work for you keep using them.

The picture looks too blue

This is fine for showing step by step and prepping, but as a finished product I was not pleased.

Then I tried light stands with umbrellas

I also purchased this set from Adorama

I actually like the look I can achieve with this set up, but I had a difficult time with macro shooting, but it worked great for portraits and some food photos.

This room can tend to look yellow, but with the light stands it becomes warm

Finally I just decided to create a studio in my basement; I won’t tell you my photos were great at first, but Sydney and I practiced taking pictures and playing with the softboxes and the pocket wizard. The pocket wizard triggers a signal to a remote flash, without losing the camera’s shutter speed.

You need at least two pocket wizards; one for the camera and one for the lights, plus cables

The studio.

Think of this as a studio mise en place

Underneath the table cloth is  a Manfrotto Large Still Life Shooting Table with 79 x 49 Plexiglass Panel; we moved the plexigalss to the floor with my husband’s weights as the legs. I am only 5 feet tall and this set up works best for me. The camera is on a slik tripod and the pocket wizard is attached to the camera.

Sydney was so sweet to stand in as my model

I use the camera on manual mode; this way I can control the iso, f-stop, and shutter speed. This photo was taken at 1/5 speed, ISO of 100, and f-stop of 16. The lights were set at 196, plus DF was holding the reflector behind Sydney. (We all spaced out the reflector had it’s own stand). An unexpected bonus to having Sydney helping me with studio and camera settings is she has become a brilliant photographer in her own right.

This photo of Cherry-Fig Macarons was done in the studio with the white tablecloth under two red napkins. The lens was a canon 100mm EF 1.28, the lights were set to 132, and the reflector was pointing toward the macarons at an upward angle.

Viola!