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Details
WHAT’S
COOKING?
How to use a macro lens for food photography.
EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM, 1/200 sec @ f/14, ISO 160 © Gary Schmid. Canon Explorer
EF-S 60mm f/2.8 Macro USM, 1/50 sec @ f/5.6 ISO 800, Shot by Patrick Harrison
F
ood photography is a great way of showing off
your talents – both culinary and photographic –
to the world. You might blog your pictures
and recipes or even be putting together your own
recipe book.
Good food photography often focuses on details,
from the preparation of the raw ingredients to those
all-important finishing touches. Using a macro lens
to shoot a close-up of some peppercorns or a few
spices is highly evocative, and gives a great idea of
the flavour of your dish. True macro lenses magnify at
life size. This means the lens can reproduce an image
on your camera’s sensor at the same size it is in real
life – known as a 1:1 ratio.
Macro lenses come in different focal lengths.
Those that are more telephoto in nature allow you
to stand further back from your subject, which can
be handy when photographing insects or other easily
scared wildlife.
The very shallow depth of field available when
shooting close-ups means you need to be accurate
and precise with focusing. But you can use shallow
focus to highlight just a few details, such as the
sprinkles on the top of a cupcake. For those shooting
with APS-C cameras, the EF-S 60mm f/2.8 Macro
USM is a great choice, delivering superb image
quality and focusing down to just 20cm.
One of the 100mm macro lenses in the EF
range offers a similar shooting perspective for
full-frame users.
Lighting is another consideration when shooting
close up. Professional food photography makes use
of sophisticated flash lighting, but you can achieve
similar results using daylight from a window. Your
kitchen is a near-perfect location for a food shoot,
EF-S 60mm f/2.8 Macro USM
Designed exclusively for use on APS-C cameras,
where it gives a similar angle of view to a 96mm
macro lens on a full-frame camera. Excellent for
general macro photography and close-ups with
shallow depth of field.
EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM
A versatile Macro lens offering superb
performance at any aperture, right
across the frame.
with worktops at an ideal height. Choose one with
a window to one side or behind or try using a large
piece of white card as a reflector to bounce light back
on to your subject. Blur from camera shake can be an
issue when shooting macro photography, but using
a tripod or a lens with an Image Stabilizer will help
ensure crisp images.
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