Camera Labs

My main hobby is cooking and culinary arts. I bought my dSLR to mainly document my cooking better, let me know what you think. Comments and critique appreciated. Minor post processing, just basically auto-levels/color in photoshop and a crop or two. I usually end up at ISO 800 on my D300 with the 50mm 1.8 lense in aperture priority mode.




Classic "real" Caesar Salad




Beet salad two ways, roasted with goat cheese and fresh greens.


Caldo de Pollo

my "best of" gallery is here
http://rtimko.smugmug.com/gallery/56275 ... 9844_4EDUE

but I only posted the ones that were taken by the dslr the others were taken with a sony point and shoot.

_________________
-----------
http://randallpmcmurphy.blogspot.com

For my personal 'taste' I'd like to see less blurring of the foreground subject.
Smaller aperture if possible. What's the shooting info?

Photo 1: I'd like the back of the plate and the food on it to be in focus.

Photo 2: I'd like the slices of bread to be inside the DOF sharpness.

Photo 3: Is the front of the red whatsit juuuust outside the DOF?

Photo 4: Should be all sharp if possible. There's no main subject here I think. Only the chair doesn't need to be in focus, but probably will be if the rest is sharp.

You are making me hungry though.

Ben
_________________
When in doubt..... Press the shutter.

thanks, yeah, always have trouble on what DOF works best for food. I have a few shots where I just took same picture, changing aperture.

maybe better?

_________________
-----------
http://randallpmcmurphy.blogspot.com

The way I see it the parts of the photo that are part of the (main) subject, the parts you want to show and focus(!) attention on, and that the eyes of the observer wanders over should be sharp. So the front plate with the salad I'd like to see all sharp. The plate in the background is just more of the same and can/should be blurred.

When I looked at the front plate in the first photo I was made aware of the blurred parts. That was a distraction that shouldn't happen when I let my eyes wander over that main subject.

The slices of bread were also part of the main subject. If the fork there would be blurred if all the food on the plate is in focus that would be ok in my opinion. It's the food that is the subject here.

So the second photo of the salad is much better. If you want the rear plate to be blurred more you can change the distance and zoom to achieve this.

The meat at the rear of the bowl of soup in the second series is also just a smidge unsharp it seems. I'd like that to be sharp too.

And the third in the second series is ok as far as DOF is concerned but the angle is perhaps a bit too strong. You don't want to make people feel inclined to tilt their head. That defeats the effect of shooting it at such an angle.

But it all looks very tasty!

Ben
_________________
When in doubt..... Press the shutter.

also, the 50mm lense is a little hard to work with, as it's pretty zoom...i think i may go with a 35mm fast lense...or maybe a fast actual zoom lense...like a 28-70 2.8?

_________________
-----------
http://randallpmcmurphy.blogspot.com

See that these foods, I was in the saliva of the fall, the look is too delicious.

_________________
flowers melbourne

The foods look really good!!!! Maybe you should share some receipts too in the future. I also like cooking a lot but rarely have time to do so lately.

The photos, however, look too busy to me as there are too many focuses on every photo. I think it would be better to photograph one plate on the white table so the plate would take more space on the photo therefore look more delicious?

Just my 2 cents.

God they look yummy.

_________________
GALLERY

They're nice photos. Too bad something was in the way in the second photo.

_________________
Sony ɑ200 + kit 18-70mm + Tamron 28-200mm + Minolta 28mm 2.8