Hi,

I know, a bit late, but here are my food shots for the january assignment.

First one, soup meat on cutting board, over white, top angle,
Second one, food ingredients for preparing pasta, front angle,
Third one, also food ingredients for preparing pasta, taken from top angle :







All shots were taken with the Sigma 50 mm f/2.8,mounted on the Nikon D 200 body.
For light, ahum... a few weeks ago i started experimenting with light and decided to build something that would illuminate the object from below and knock out the shadows created by the object, just to save me a lot of editing in photoshop to get the background white.
So I build a box with white chipboard, mounted 5 daylight lamps in it, one on each side, and one on the bottom. On top of the box is a mat glassplate.
On top of that all i placed slightly transparent white paper curled up to the end to also have a white background for the front view shots. The standing up part, curled part of the paper is also illuminated with two daylight lamps from behind.
The on camera flash was used for illuminating the object by - 1 exposure, it also functioned to trigger two slave flashes places beside the box, both slaves bounced to a white ceiling (you can off course also use reflectors).

I found the white paper in a shopping mall, it is actually cheep white paper table cloth, cost about 5 dollar for 5 meter.
The material used to build the box and light can be found in a DIY shop, cost about 50 dollar.

The advantage to this setup is i'm not bound to the dimensions of a light tent, and it functions just like those light tables seen on this site : http://www.foka.nl/pages/bulk_v2/s1/...000002134.aspx
but with the exception my setup also illuminates from below...
:shock:
ps : look at those prices in euro and see above what i paid to make it myself...

Hope this is helpful.

Patrick. :lol:

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Ooh...yummy! The lighting looks great! :-) Figuring out how to illuminate from the bottom is something I'm still trying to do. I just don't have a lot of room for bulky contraptions, so in the end I'll probably buy a portable lightbox used for viewing slides and film.

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Hi,

Thanks Karimala.

About the box, measures are 50 x 50 x 25 cm. So actually not that big.

Patrick.

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The lighting is fantastic patrick and the food looks really appetizing, Even the meat looks tempting to a vegetarian lol!

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Patrick very nice job on the pics great shots!!

the third shot has part of the yellow pepper blown out.

I'm trying to understand how your light table works for those shots though.

how can you remove the shadow between the cutting board and the peppers by shinning light under the cutting board?

I know the answer is simple but I guess it's been a long night!!!

Bob

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Hi,

Thanks for the compliment.

About the light table... its primal function is to blow out shadows from objects on the underground, in this case, the shadows from the cutting board on the white paper are washed out due to the light from below. And... if i wouldn't use the light table, the underground (background) would slightly look grey-ish.. and i would have much more work in a photo editing program to get the background white...

But, you can also use this light table with the objects placed directly on them, ideal for small objects photographing over white.

Best regards,

Patrick.

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I really like it. Forgive my ignorance, but what is a white chipboard? Is it kind of like a foam board you can purchase at a craft store?

What kind of daylights are you using?

Can we see a picture of your setup?

Thanks.