Rodney Campbell's Blog

Friends of our family have recently opened up their second Japanese restaurant. Both restaurants are called “Ninja” and the first is at Avalon Beach and this new venture is in St Ives (both in the northern regions of Sydney). If you are interested in Japanese food then I can highly recommend both restaurants – their food is more traditional restaurant quality japanese food and is delicious. They source in quality ingredients and their blue fin tuna sashimi and wagyu beef is divine.

We all (including my parents) went for dinner recently just after the opening of the St Ives restaurant and whilst we were there enjoying the food we were discussing having photographs of their meals for things like menus, flyers and so on. They asked if I’d please do some photos for them and photograph their dishes for their forthcoming lunch menu… I’d never actually done food photography before and there is a real technique and art to styling, lighting and taking food photos however I was willing to give it ago (since if I failed they could always get a professional in to do it properly :)).

NIKON D90 + 50.0 mm f/1.4 @ 50 mm, 1/60 sec at f / 2.8, ISO 2800

I knew some of the basic theory for doing this and so brought most of my gear (including lenses, tripod, reflectors, etc). My friend (who’s the head chef) would make the meals and bring them out and I would photograph them on the tables just outside the front of the restaurant – lighting choices were limited (basically it’s just ambient light at the front) – however there was a large white sunshade cover which covers the whole front of the centre where the restaurant is which softened the hard midday light and I just used reflectors (silver) and scrims (white translucent) to shape the light a little more. Seriously however there wasn’t a huge amount of science to it and I’m sure the “real” food photographers are now rolling over in their graves but I felt reasonably happy with my first attempts.

The images for their use (menus, flyers, etc) I took mostly from that sort of higher 45 degree or more angle – which is basically what they need for that sort of thing. However I did take images from a much lower perspective with a much shallower depth of field (the sort you might see in magazines or in prints on the wall) and those are the ones I’ll show here 🙂

NIKON D90 + 50.0 mm f/1.4 @ 50 mm, 1/400 sec at f / 2.8, ISO 200

NIKON D90 + 50.0 mm f/1.4 @ 50 mm, 1/200 sec at f / 2.8, ISO 200

NIKON D90 + 50.0 mm f/1.4 @ 50 mm, 1/60 sec at f / 2.8, ISO 400

NIKON D90 + 50.0 mm f/1.4 @ 50 mm, 1/100 sec at f / 2.8, ISO 200

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