WORKSHOP - Food Photography Using One Light

focal length: 50 mm
shutter speed: 1/100
aperture: f/4.0
ISO: 400
flash: not fired

Last night, at OAC Photo Club, inspired by Strobist's article about food photography, we decided to make a smaller version of the inside-out soft box (because we didn't have a big enough box) and try our hand at photographing food.

Here's our setup.


Instead of a strobe, we decided to try using a continuous light source, a lamp without the shade. One of us held it above the box so it would shine through the tissue paper acting as a diffuser. The tissue paper covered the opening at the top of the box.

The lamp wasn't bright enough to allow the white pieces of paper to reflect any light onto the red peppers and the pieces of paper may have been too far away to be effective, which I was ok with since I intended to keep one side in the shadows for more drama.

Here are a couple more photos using the same setup.


focal length: 50 mm
shutter speed: 1/100
aperture: f/3.2
ISO: 400
flash: not fired



focal length: 50 mm
shutter speed: 1/100
aperture: f/4.0
ISO: 400
flash: not fired

The box was super easy to make and the lighting is something everyone has at home already. It was so nice to be able to instantly see how the light would fall on the subject because we were using a continuous light source. Give it a try. I'd love to see your results.