Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Snap your cakes and eat it too

Here is an image of a carrot cake which I took recently. I documented the setup below. It was a fairly simple setup done with just one SB-600 set to manual mode at 1/2 placed on the right triggered via SU-800 with white paper placed on the other side to soften the shadows.

I depended a lot on the ambient light coming from the window on the right. I add-on an additional light to complement the ambient light. Notice that I bounce the flash and let the spill over light from the flash enhance the ambient light. This would also help preserve the details of the white icing which could be easily lost.

p/s: I forgot to mention that the carrot cake image actually consist of 30 images stitch together turning it into a 42.6MP instead of a 12.1MP. How cool is that =).

3 comments:

  1. Just curious, how long did it took for the setup and also the shooting until you got the expected results?
    And stitching of 30 images? Awesome...

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  2. The setup is pretty straight forward. Here is what goes through my mind when I do the setup.

    1. Have a theme and an image in your mind of what you want.

    2. Find my main / key light: I wanted something soft so window light becomes my choice as a main light source.

    3. Fill the light: as the name suggest your choice of fill light should not be brighter than your main light.

    4. Soften the shadows: a white art paper was placed on the left to soften the shadows.

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  3. @marvin: setup was pretty quick because I have done similar shots before with the coffee. Initially I took 10 minute to get the light I needed. Another 5 minutes to get the shoot I need. Hope that helps.

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