Studio Lighting For Photographers

If you are thinking about opening a photography studio, then one of the most important thing that you must have is lighting. In this entry I am going to write about studio lighting for photographers.

Before that, take a look at the pictures below. The picture was taken at my studio in Ipoh, Perak and the later it was superimposed to another picture of a bridge in Cyberjaya. 

The guy was superimposed to the Cyberjaya bridge picture

And below is the original photo. To make it easier to cut the guy, I used a green screen (green backdrop plain muslin). The post process was done in photopshop.

The original photo

As for the lighting, I used one speedlight with a beauty dish placed on camera left and a Onsmo 200w studio light with a 4 footer octabox placed on camera right. The Onsmo 200w studio light looks like these:-

The price for this Onsmo 200w is RM999 and they include:

2 x Onsmo O2 200W
2 x BB Light Stand 1.9m
2 x 50x70cm Softbox
1 x Padded Bag
1 x FREE Wireless Trigger Set
1 x FREE UMBRELLA 40" White
1 x FREE MYSTERY GIFT

So, if any of you photographers requires studio lighting please email me at hizer1970@gmail.com or call/sms me at 016.5659.262. I also provide studio lighting for photographers course.

Food Photography - 4 Tips You Should Know When Photographing Foods

If you are new to food photography, then you must know these 4 tips about getting great looking food photographs. These 4 tips are: light your food sufficiently, keep your food fresh, make steam appear from your food and use bigger aperture. However these are not the only ways to make you food looks good as there are many more. But for now, you should start with these 4.

1. Give your foods sufficient lights

The first tip you must know is, in any kind of photography, in order for you to get the best photos, you must give your subject sufficient lights. Lights can be from ambient or flash. Ambient is light which is not produced by the photographer.

If you want to use ambient light only, the best bet is to place your food besides a window where there is plenty of natural light. You may also place a scrim between the window and your food. Scrim is a kind of translucent material which act as a diffuser to diffuse a light source.

You can also light your food using only flash. Do take note that you cannot use direct or bare flash because this will produce very unflattering pictures of your foods. The trick is to make your light source bigger, much bigger than your food. To make the light from your flash bigger, you can use the scrim, or you can attach a softbox to your flash. Softbox comes in many sizes such as 24"x36" and 32"x40". Once you have attached the softbox, get the food as close as possible to the softbox, but make sure it does not appear in you frame. This technique will produce a really nice, soft and flattering pictures of your food.

2. Keep your food fresh

The second tip is to make sure that your food is fresh. For instance, melted cheese will harden very fast and when that happens, it will no longer look appetizing.

3. Make steam appear from your food

Thirdly, if you can capture the steam rising off your freshly prepared food it will make you food much more appetizing and giving the look of freshly cooked. But this is really hard to do, so another alternative is to microwave a soak cotton balls and place them behind your foods.

4. Use bigger aperture when shooting low

When you are shooting at a lower angle, you should use bigger aperture to isolate your main subject and the background. This works very well when shooting foods which were arranged in a row. For this kind of shot, use a prime lens, like the 50mm. Try shooting with different apertures to get the effect that you are satisfied with. The 50mm prime lens will also prevent distortion on your subjects.