It is something which is a prerequisite of taking shots of food (in this cake pops) that someone can bake – and bake very well.
The task was simple, to shoot at least workable and sellable shots of these cake pops. Sounds simple doesn’t it. However like all shoots, if you think it’s going to be easy, it’s actually going to be very challenging.
So let’s get the technical stuff out of the way. I’m shooting on a Canon 6D with a Tamron 24-70 f2.8. This lens is my favourite lens (just to warn you for future blog posts, I do love this lens). What gives it the edge for me over the more popular Canon 24-70 f2.8 (and f4) is the wonderful image stabilisation, or VC. It makes it perfect for videographers. Although I’m locked on to tripod and slider for this shot, and don’t need VC, it’s still my go to lens. Just to get a bit closer to the cake pops, I stuck on an extension tube.
I’m at f4, ISO 100. Anyone will tell you that your best friend in any filming environment is to have light, and plenty of it. As you will have seen in my previous blog posts, my small studio allows me to use as much natural light as possible. So my key light is a huge window, and then as my fill I’m using a 5 bank daylight balanced softbox. It comes out at about 5600k, so white balancing is important (and woe betide you if you ever forgot to white balance before shooting).
The first test of the cake pops (while delicious) did not come as expected. When I brought the clips into Premiere Pro, I discovered that the white background was actually a pale blue. I thought by having my background next to a huge window on a sunny day would be enough. How wrong I was.
I decided I needed light. Much more light. So I cracked out even more of my daylight lights – ones which I would normally use to light my green screen as they were equivalent to 2 500w tungsten bulbs. However, I still needed more, just to smooth out the light and get rid of any potential hotspots. I borrowed this little light off of my father-in-law (who is a very talented photographer) and placed this as an overhead light.
Now I had a perfectly lit background, it was time to light my subjects. One 1200w soft box and then another 300w soft box.
The results of the shots speak for themselves. An exponential increase in quality with the addition of more light.
What I didn’t realise in the beginning is that I had to over expose the white background in order to make it appear white on camera. Now I know, I shall never make the same mistake again. On the plus side, more cake pops videos are coming so keep an eye on the blog, Twitter and my Flickr page.
Here is a before and after of the first and second cake pop shoots:
The final video will hopefully be on Shutterstock very soon for you to purchase and download.