Other Techniques Softbox and Food Photography

[Hokuto]

I reported in some earlier messages that I was asked to do some food photography by some friends for the menu at their small pub/restaurant. Since this was going to be pretty much pro bono work, I had to keep my own expenses to a minumum, and couldn’t afford to spend much money on studio equipment. But if I was going to do it at all, I wanted to do it as best as I could, so I began studying and experimenting.

I started by building a small light tent, but quickly realized that it wasn’t really best suited for most of the shots I was planning to do, which required more surrounding ambience than I could stuff into the tent. Based on some Net reading about the exotic field of food photography on sites like HERE and HERE, I decided I needed to be able to provide more diffused lighting on the set, so I decided to build a SOFTBOX for my FL-50. In accordance with the instructions at the linked site above (these same plans are available at several sites on the web), I used a type of foamcore (Styrofoam) board., although I modified mine in several ways from the initial plan:

1. The softbox in the link is four feet wide, based on a single sheet of 4x8’ foamcore board, and since it is designed for use with fixed studio lighting. For my Fl-50, though, I didn’t need a softbox that big (well, at any rate, I don’t have room to store one), and I can’t easily get the specific size of foamcore here in Japan, anyway, so I decided to use a smaller piece of B1 size (108cm x 76cm) glue-panel foamcore. This is 5mm thick foamcore with a glue surface preapplied to one side (covered by protective paper sheet), and is usually used to mount photographs and posters for display. Here in Japan it’s easily available from Office Depot.

2. Since my B1 glue panel did not have sides with the 2:1 proportions listed in the instructions, I modified the dimensions to allow greater depth in the box than would’ve been produced by following the instructions faithfully. I did this since the effect of a softbox is considerably influenced by the distance between the light source (FL-50 in my case) to the diffusing material. In other ways I used same general pattern, so was able to make my softbox from a single B1 sheet.

3. I had also earlier found some interesting foam-aluminum insulation material at my local home center, and decided to apply it to the glue surface of the foamcore. This insulating material is very thin, only about 1mm thick, a flexible insulating foam sheet with quilted aluminum on one side; it's about 90cm wide, and sold here for the equivalent of about $3.00 per meter. My theory was that the shiny aluminum surface would provide better reflectivity inside the softbox, while the quilted finish would simultaneously help prevent (so I hoped) any “river” effects in the aluminum-reflected light.

4. I used a thicker 1” piece of home-insulation Styrofoam for the back (flash-mounting) piece, since I felt it would provide better support.

5. I created a "Rube Goldberg" mount from an old piece of steel L-bracing I had in the garage, bolted to a piece of wood necessary to support the softbox at the height created when the FL-50 was mounted to the wireless flash trigger I reported on earlier. The one thing I had to do here was drill and tap a 1/4" hole to accept a standard tripod/light stand bolt.

Here’s what the contraption looked like when finished:

The mount:



The box



Inside the box, with FL-50 peeking through



The translucent plastic draping down is an initial diffuser meant to prevent a hot spot in the light.



From the back, the FL-50 mounted on the radio trigger.

The “strap” you see here is velcroed to the sides and in use goes around the metal vertical piece in the rear, to prevent the box from sliding off the flash when the contraption is tilted down. One could also use screws to attach the box permanently to the wooden mount, but I wanted to be able to disassemble it for storage.


Complete:

I experimented with two different (and combined) types of diffusion material; the white plastic seems to work best; the other sheet (bunched on top) is the same translucent nylon I used inside for the initial diffuser.


The results seemed to turn out fair for this first attempt. I know I've got more to learn about lighting the shadows, and unfortunately, the owners were pretty much leaving things to me as for the food design, so I just tried to reproduce some of the effects I'd found on restaurant websites.

I placed the softbox to the right rear to create short lighting, and used my old Panasonic flash with homemade lightsphere for fill on the left, with two folding reflector panels on the table to redirect light back to the front of the dishes. For the "environmental" shots I used two photofloods in the rear directed toward a background board covered with an experimental variety of colored construction papers. Here are some of the shots I got:





Some others can be seen on my Photobucket FOOD PHOTOGRAPHY page.

One other note about the radio trigger: In my earlier review, I said I had little problem with false flashing, but when I set up in my friend's restaurant, the trigger was false flashing frequently. I don't know whether it was because they have a wireless LAN in the house, or because they're beside the road where lots of cars pass by (electronic ignitions?) or what, but every few minutes the flashes would pop, sometimes several times in succession. Unfortunately I didn't have time to experiment with switching to a different channel, so I don't know what effect that might have had.

[EVOFans]

Nice job for first attempt!!Impressive DIY and picture.

[Jamie]

I love your technique!
The photos look great!
Congratulations!

[Ox Online]

Great first attempt. A couple of ideas, if I can spread my ignorance around

The shots seem a little dim, nothing Photoshop can't handle - or it could just be my screen.

The background lighting, I think, draws attention away from the shot. I'd try to balance it with the subject and if you need to declutter the background try using a drop sheet or something.

But you'll do good.

Just my 2c

[Hokuto]

Thanks for the feedback, guys.

Ox, I agree that a couple of them are darker than I would like; since I spent the entire day over there without pay and am already in the doghouse for that, I tried not to do any more than the minimum of pp (from RAW). I will probably tell them tho that some of them should be brightened up for print.

The issue of background is a matter of taste, obviously, and one I know very little about in practice, outside of what I've picked up from the kind of sites I referenced in my message. I guess I was most influenced by Michael Ray's Food Photography Blog, in which he discusses the various ins and outs of shoots as he does them. I was especially impressed by his 40-step photo-process tutorial, which I think is as good an explanation as any of what the professional food photographer goes through, including setting up the background. I shot lots and lots of frames that got left on the cutting-room floor just in order to get the few I feel I can show.

--In fact, I should probably translate that article into Japanese and show it to my "clients" (friends) to give them an idea of what is really involved.
Anyway, my excuse for doing this "for free" is that it was hands-on experience that I was after, and I sure got that. We did 9 dishes total, and I was there from 10 AM till 5:30 PM.
--Oh, and they did give me free lunch

[parallaxkid]

Those are nice shots Hokuto. You did a really impressive job with that makeshift softbox. Have you tried bouncing the flash for these shots? If you were able to photograph the product in a room with a low, white ceiling you could get a usable soft and enveloping light that would work for these commercial shots. If not, you've done very well with what you had to work with.

[cstirlingbartholomew]

A softbox like yours is good for small strobes where you need all the light you can save in the process. If you have a little more light to waste, say a couple of 200ws portable strobes, you can get by with blasting the light through a sheet. All you need is a T bracket that mounts on your light-stand which you can fit small aluminum tubes over to make a balanced portable and lightweight curtain rod. Then you sew loops on your curtain. Choice of material is critical. Some testing required to find the ideal mix of color, light transfer and diffusion.

I used a setup like this with two professional german strobes and it gave me a little better than f8 (ISO100) in most rooms. I even used it outdoors and still had f8. One strobe was used for the curtain (main). The other I used with a white umbrella (fill). My experience with the silver umbrellas was that they gave a harsh light. More efficient, yes, but the end results were not pleasing to look at.

The curtain rod breaks down to a nice compact object that can fit in the same box with your light stands. Try doing that with a soft box :-)


Clay

[windsprite]

I missed these before. The lighting looks really nice. The composition, too. I've tried food photography before, and the arrangement is awfully difficult.

Julie

[Hokuto]

Originally Posted by cstirlingbartholomew

A softbox like yours is good for small strobes where you need all the light you can save in the process. If you have a little more light to waste, say a couple of 200ws portable strobes, you can get by with blasting the light through a sheet. All you need is a T bracket that mounts on your light-stand which you can fit small aluminum tubes over to make a balanced portable and lightweight curtain rod. Then you sew loops on your curtain. Choice of material is critical. Some testing required to find the ideal mix of color, light transfer and diffusion.

I used a setup like this with two professional german strobes and it gave me a little better than f8 (ISO100) in most rooms.

Thanks, Stirling. I thought about something similar, namely a diffusion screen using some kind of sheeting (I think I found some plans on the net somewhere), but I was also wary of going too soft (some photographers emphasize the importance of directionality in food shots). I was also trying to put the background oof on most of these shots, so I used f2 whenever possible, and I actually found that I had too much light in many cases, even with the FL-50 cranked down to minimum output! The principle for softer light is closer and larger, so moving my box away to reduce the light makes it smaller and more distant (and thus harsher). The other thing I could do is just add another layer(s) of diffusion material to cut the light output.

In fact I'm now being severely tempted to buy the Leica/Panasonic 25mm just for the ability to open up another stop for better bokeh.

[Hokuto]

Originally Posted by parallaxkid

Those are nice shots Hokuto. You did a really impressive job with that makeshift softbox. Have you tried bouncing the flash for these shots? If you were able to photograph the product in a room with a low, white ceiling you could get a usable soft and enveloping light that would work for these commercial shots. If not, you've done very well with what you had to work with.

Thanks for looking. I did some of my very first practice food shots where all I had was a bounced ceiling, and I thought it worked all right at the time, but on review, I realized it left me with too little directional and color control (depending on color of the ceiling/walls/fixtures). You generally want to have multiple light sources including reflectors to provide short lighting while selectively opening up the shadows in the front, so merely bouncing off the ceiling can produce excessively flat results.

[Hokuto]

Originally Posted by windsprite

I missed these before. The lighting looks really nice. The composition, too. I've tried food photography before, and the arrangement is awfully difficult.

Before I started, I downloaded hundreds of food photos from various restaurant and other food-related sites on the web and gave them to my clients on a CD-ROM just so they'd have an idea of what's possible, and how difficult the choices might be. In fact, I found that one of the hardest issues was keeping the client involved in the process. She wanted to just walk away and let me do my thing, but I wanted her to stay to make some creative decisions about what kind of settings she wanted (it's easy for someone to be disappointed later if they think the photographer is the sole person responsible). I got a lot of good material from Michael Ray's site on that angle, especially his writeup for clients.
I should also note that I actually got paid for this; the clients contacted me later and asked how much I wanted for it, so I asked them just for ichiman'en. Just a pittance for a day's work, but I considered it practice anyway.
If you ever do this, here's a tip: take along a laptop computer so you can download the photos and actually show them full-size to the client as you're working. It's much easier for them to see the results that way, and helps get you off the hook for decisions made about design and so on.

[OzRay]

I think that you've done exceedingly well. The biggest thing about food photography is getting the presentation right, so that the food actually looks appetising, and then getting lighting right to enhance all of this. I think you've got both spot on.

The shots you've posted here give a great impression of texture, colour and mood. Some of the other shots showing large expanses of sauce (curry?) doesn't really work, but cropping in to show isolated detail does work.

If you plan to do more of this or anything similar, it'd almost pay to get a compact studio flash kit like an Elincrom Set to Go. Everything is contained in a solid case, plus a bag for the soft boxes and stands and isn't really all that expensive, but makes things so much easier.

Cheers

Ray

[Hokuto]

Originally Posted by OzRay

I think that you've done exceedingly well.

Thanks Ray, much appreciated.

If you plan to do more of this or anything similar, it'd almost pay to get a compact studio flash kit like an Elincrom Set to Go. Everything is contained in a solid case, plus a bag for the soft boxes and stands and isn't really all that expensive, but makes things so much easier.

Well, if it ever comes to that, I might, but (un)fortunately, I've still got a paying job