Types of Light Used in Food Photography

Light Types

The best thing about Food Photography is that a basic and simple lighting scheme is enough for you to take an appetizing photo. This means you can take great photos without expensive lighting systems or photography equipment. Most of the time, all you need is a large natural or artificial soft (well-distributed) light source. So what are natural and artificial light sources?

Natural Light Source

Sunshine, of course. Sunlight is the most preferred type of light for most food photographers due to its softness, brightness, naturalness and ease of use. The best way to use sunlight is to take your photos near a window without direct (hard) sunlight. If the windows in your home receive direct harsh sunlight, you can achieve very good results by softening this light with diffusers (softeners). The reason we avoid using direct sunlight is to avoid harsh shadows and unwanted explosions that may occur in the photo. In cases where sunlight only allows us to shoot at low shutter speeds, we must use a tripod to prevent shaking in our photographs. Unfortunately, it is not possible to use daylight in some cases, such as the length of time we have to shoot and therefore the light in our shooting area constantly changes during the day and produces different results, or the location where we will shoot does not receive enough light. For this reason, it is very important for professional food photographers and people who only have the opportunity to shoot at late hours to master the use of artificial light.

Artificial Light

Although personally, daylight is my favorite in food photography, as a professional photographer, I can say that studio lights (my personal preference is electronic flashes) are my biggest savior in order to adapt to changing light conditions and shoot for longer periods of time. Thanks to studio lights, you can shoot at faster shutter speeds, so you can shoot at different angles with the camera in your hand, without the need for a tripod.

There are two basic types of electronic flash you can use; small overhead flashes and paraflashes (studio flashes).  Although both types of flashes are suitable for food photography, I prefer to use paraflashes because of their power, not being battery-dependent and having more diffuser options. The biggest advantage of top flashes compared to para flashes is that the recycle time of the flash for consecutive shots is much faster compared to para flashes (for this reason, it is called speedlight in English) and that it is smaller and easier to carry.

Another type of artificial light you can use is continuous lights. The advantage of continuous lights is that you can see the result of the light in the viewfinder before taking the photo. When using continuous lights, you can see where and how the light falls and shape your shot accordingly with additional accessories such as reflectors or diffusers. When using continuous lights, you should keep in mind that these light sources produce very high heat and can heat up the food you are going to photograph and cause it to spoil. By the way, let's underline that artificial light in photography is not preferred because tungsten, that is, lamp light, leaves a yellowish color in the photo. For this reason, we need to turn off all artificial light sources in the environment when taking our photos. To the human eye, the light coming from any tungsten lamp appears white, but ultimately it is predominantly yellow light. The color temperature of normal daylight is around 5600 K, whereas the light emitted by a tungsten lamp is 3200 K. For this reason, it causes a more yellow result compared to daylight, and this is not a desired situation. If we use continuous light, we need to make sure that it is adjusted for daylight, like flashlights.