Hey guys it's dave here from creative path films and in today's video
you're going to learn how to shoot food hero shots
this is a follow-up to a previous video where we showed you how to set up a multi-camera cooking
show if you haven't seen that video yet and you'd like to learn more about that multi-camera setup
make sure to check that one out i'll link it up up in the cards as well as down in the description
this part of the setup was our sixth camera on this overall shoot designed to capture our hero
shots of the finished plated dishes as well as promotional shots for each recipe we use this
setup for a wide variety of different meals and it worked a treat across the board now by the end
of this video if you start to feel a little bit hungry and you'd like to learn how to make some
of these meals all for yourself then make sure to check out chef angela's channel fresh food friday
i'll put a link to that down in the description all right let's get into it there are a few parts
that went into this overall setup with the core of the setup being a lightweight camera jib this
shoot was a fast paced shoot and we wanted to be able to capture a range of different angles
very very quickly so a jib made the most sense in this situation when we wanted to shoot a top
down angle we'd simply position the end of the jib directly over the product and then
we'd either hover it in place or do a subtle jib up or jib down when we wanted to get a different
shot usually one taken from the front we simply slide the tripod legs back and lower the jib down
to the correct spot we'd repeat this process for each dish shooting both an overhead shot as well
as several shots from the front usually shooting down onto the plate at about a 20 to 30 degree
angle the jib we used for this shoot was a kessler crane kc light 8 foot jib this is a lightweight
jib that's designed specifically for dslrs and mirrorless cameras and shout out to gold coast
camera hire for providing the jib for this shoot the jib was mounted onto a manfrotto 504 hd head
on the 546b tripod legs as this is the chunkiest tripod setup that we have in our kit when using
any kind of a jib setup you definitely want to use the strongest and sturdiest tripod legs that
you can possibly get you definitely don't want to be using a lightweight tripod at the front end of
the jib we had a manfrotto 701 hdv head which is a small lightweight tripod head and then on that we
had the panasonic s1 which is an excellent full frame camera paired with the camera we had the
panasonic 24 to 105 f4 lens and this allowed us to capture a wide variety of shots at different focal
lengths so it was very versatile in this setup at the rear end of the jib we had the atomos ninja 5
as a monitor and that was attached to the tripod head using a magic magikarp and this allowed me to
monitor the shots that we were getting as i was operating the jib alright now let's move on to
lighting to light this setup we used a top light with a softbox attachment if you'd like to see
a few ways that you can rig up a top light you can learn more by checking out this video right here
for this shoot we'll be using an aperture 120d mark ii with a 26 inch softbox attachment we used
a smaller softbox this time around because frankly we were using our larger ones elsewhere in the set
but we also wanted to keep the weight down because the light was rigged onto the end of the c-stand
arm so we needed to keep the whole setup as light as possible this worked quite well but when it
comes to soft boxes the larger you go the softer your light will be next time i think i'd try and
use something a little bit bigger maybe around the 37 inch mark and that is presuming that we have
enough room overhead using a soft top light source is really the key to this entire look because
that soft light wraps around the food really beautifully creating really nice reflections
and soft subtle shadows it's really important to use high cri light sources whenever you're
shooting food and the reason is that you want the best color rendition possible our aperture light
worked beautifully for this with a high cri of 96 plus in addition to our top down key light we also
had a number of small led light tubes that we used as backlights or rim lights the lights we used
were the luxio p7 led light tubes and we've talked about these lights in a few videos in the past so
you can check those out if you're interested we mounted these light tubes onto small tabletop
tripod legs so that we could easily move them around and reposition them for each shot there's
one last element that we utilized for these videos and that is a turntable a turntable is a must-have
accessory if you're planning on doing any kind of product or food shots as it allows you to get
some really interesting and dynamic shots without having to move your camera much it allows you to
slowly rotate your plated dishes and capture some really nice detail shots now when you're shopping
to buy a turntable ideally you want to pick an electric one this is by far the best option for
you to get but unfortunately for us we didn't have enough lead time ahead of the shoot to order one
in so this meant that we had to improvise a little bit and go with something a bit more rudimentary
instead of a turntable we opted for a wooden lazy susan when operating an unmotorized lazy susan
there were two methods that we tried the first is to try and do it by hand and this is definitely
not the route that i recommend now this is incredibly fiddly and takes quite a bit of
skill to be able to maintain smooth even rotations a much better method that we discovered was to use
an electric drill and that becomes a rudimentary motor what you do is you grab any kind of electric
drill ideally one that's cordless and you position the head of the drill without any kind of drill
bit attached under the lip of the lazy susan then set your drill to the lowest speed and have one of
your crew members slowly engage the drill then just like magic it will start to spin your lazy
susan at a smooth consistent speed couple of things to watch out for if you have a tabletop
surface underneath your lazy susan that you need to protect make sure that you put something
underneath the head of the drill bit otherwise you might wear that surface away and the other thing
is if your drill has an led light on it make sure to cover that up with some tape so that's a little
trick that you can employ if you don't have access to a motorized turntable so there you have it guys
that's how we shot our hero shots of our finished plated dishes on our recent cooking shoot if you'd
like to see more videos just like this make sure to hit subscribe so you don't miss out and
like i said before if you're feeling a little bit hungry make sure to check out chef angela's
channel over at fresh food friday and of course if you enjoyed today's video make sure to let
me know by leaving it a thumbs up thanks for watching guys and i'll see you in the next one