Need a "Food Photography & Video" board!

I don’t think it can be underestimated that photos and videos are important in making a website attractive and welcoming but they also can describe the sensation of viewing and eating foods in ways that words alone cannot.

Fortunately, the software used by Hungry Onion and Food Talk Central (Discourse?) is far more agile than Chowhound seemed to be when I last posted there some time ago. Photos and videos are easier to upload and visuals seem more crisp and almost error-free compared to what we may have been used to in the past.

I propose that we set up a “Food Photography & Video” board in order to trade tips on cameras, settings, lenses and editing in order to make this site more multimedia savvy. Ultimately, we could have videos and slideshows about restaurants and food events on a consistent basis that would surpass anything else that is currently available.

Also, with the advent of live video such as Periscope and other platforms, we could have scheduled events in real time that would make for a virtual destination in a manner that I don’t believe anyone else is doing.

I am not a super techie but I did do a few animated photo slideshows on Chowhound that were favorably received but what I would like to see is a group effort to develop a team to be able to turn out multimedia on a consistent basis. Quality, for the first year or so, would not be paramount because that will come with experience and that experience will come with the sharing of technique among those who are interested.

The “Food Photography & Video” board would be a place to post photos and videos and to discuss the technical details of how it was accomplished. Cross-posting the videos on the particular boards suitable for the subject of the photos and videos would still be encouraged, but the technical details would be discussed on the new board without disrupting the flow of the topical board.

I don’t know anyone else here interested yet in this new board so I don’t have a quorum if one is needed.

Comments?

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I am interested. My two hobbies, eating, and photography. Usually I eat them before I take pictures of them. LOL

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I enjoy food porn and find that the “WFD” posts with photos always get my attention. I do post photos, but they are taken w/ my iPhone, so I couldn’t offer info on settings. Anything I can learn from this type of board would be appreciated.

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Well, if your looking for food photos, I’ll start with these, from Xing Shun Da in Flushing, NY -










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Hi Robert,

Those pictures look great, especially the cumin flounder which I’ve never seen before.

I don’t use cellphones but there is a free app that will let you see the “EXIF” data which describes the settings such as ISO sensitivity, focal length, aperture for each photo. Here’s a link below to an article describing the app. The EXIF data might show your location so you understandably might not to want to share that.

Do you think that the images you uploaded in your post are pretty close to what they look like on your phone?

Thanks for starting off with the first substantive post on this thread.

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Good idea, I’m starting to get more interested…and want to improve. I can’t deny I eat with my eyes too.

But I wonder if the format here like a forum is the best way as a showcase?

Maybe a useful way to learn is to post also the technical details with the photos.

  • camera
  • lighting
  • speed and ISO etc
  • darkroom effects?
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Here’s the board!- https://www.hungryonion.org/c/culture-media-general/food-porn

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Ha ha ha. Food Porn category.

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I just saw this in a post, every of the Presuno’s photos worth the badge of food porn. Here she explains how she did it:

Check this out. 7min long.
My Nikon is 10 years old, and the lense is even older. I’m happy with my equipment.

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For non-pros, gear is so very rarely the limiting factor to the quality of a picture. Its almost always the photog’s skills. Age of gear doesn’t matter. The little secret is that someone learning photography can do so with much cheaper second hand quality gear than lower spec new gear.

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I read digital camera news and browse the forum often and am still amazed at the amounts of people who think having “the best” gear would automatically means they make good photos.

I cringe when I look at my food photos taken a couple of years back. This means I am always learning and experimenting. Over the years I have developed an eye for details and compositions. Another thing is, besides an understanding of lighting, one must know one’s camera well.

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This is an interesting article. I also try to pay attention to the way food is pictured in the more design-intensive cookbooks, e.g., angles, light and shadow, cropping, etc.

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This doesn’t exist? It says entry denied.
I don’t remember this thread from back when.

They also made a Food-Styling 101 follow-up. Not for me but maybe someone else might learn something.

How I do it

A plastic cup in place of a eur.25 flash diffuser.

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My food photography set-up is to shoot with a pocket camera and then make a slideshow with the pictures.

This linked 5-minute piece was recently done at the Market Hall in the Rockridge section of Oakland CA.

Gear - the camera used is an Olympus Tough TG-4 waterproof compact that fits in my coat pocket even with a small, flexible mini-tripod attached which can help with stability. The lens is equivalent to 25mm to 100 mm optical zoom with a widest aperture of f2.0 at the short end. It does JPEG and RAW files and has very good Macro closeup features including a Microscope function.

Almost all of the shots were done at 25mm, f2.0, no flash and in JPEG.

Software - the JPEGs were upload to SmugMug photo sharing and edited for exposure, sharpness and contrast using its built-in editor PicMonkey. More editing needs to be done on some shots for white balance. When there are duplicate photos, the first is straight out of the camera and the second is the edited version.

After editing, the photos were uploaded to ProShow Web slideshow software by Photodex which has a maximum resolution of 1080p.

I’m pleased with the output, portability and handling of the gear.

http://show-vid.com/view/pbbcm2x4

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Cool. My favourite pic is of the cheese, of course.

Made this album a couple of years ago. All taken with a camera I bought in 2005, Nikon D70s. Last year I finally replaced it with another Nikon, D90, which is the immediate successor of the D70s IIRC.

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More photos from the Olympus TG-4 waterproof camera with straight-out-of-the-camera (no editing) jpegs. Most shots used the Macro closeup feature or the even closer Microscope feature. Photos uploaded to ProShow Web slideshow software by Photodex at up to 1080p selectable resolution with music from the licensed library from ProShow.

The food items shown are a taco with grilled cod fish, a chicken taco with mole and a bowl of vegetarian pozole soup with chips, the day’s special for $9.50 plus tax. All shots taken on March 24, 2017.

La Capilla Restaurant
1106 University Ave
Berkeley California

http://show-vid.com/view/6m8pm2x4

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I have several different Olympus cameras that have food settings. Does yours and have you tried and found it wanting comparatively?

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Hi bbqboy,

All my Olympus cameras do have a ‘Cuisine’ setting in the SCENE mode and I have taken some pictures using it and will try to use it more and compare it to some of the other settings. Here’s a link to some information from Olympus about ‘Cuisine’ from a few years ago and that setting does make the colors of fruits and vegetables look very good.

http://www.olympus-global.com/en/imsg/webmanual/shooting/cake01/point/index.html

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