What one light equipment to buy?

What is shown in the article appears to be a speed light inside a softbox.

You can find both for relatively low cost on Amazon. If you want to spend more money for higher end brands, you can do that too, but I don't see why you would need it for food photos.

Watch some YouTube videos on speed lights and softboxes for specific brands and ideas..

Links for info and ideas -

Introduction to Food Photography

New gig: FOOD photography. Need help on lighting, examples included! Thanks!!!

Light Bulb Recommendation ?

Continuous Lighting Solutions for Still Life advice

Kelly Cook

I mentioned these before in another thread. These are not that expensive and will do the job for you. They are continuous balanced lights, have a good reputation, and are a good bang for the buck. Look at the Lowel Ego's which are daylight balanced for $143 bucks. They sell a two light kits for $305 You might find it for less elsewhere or used but they have been around a long time and give for full spectrum for what you need and will get the job done.

mredbourn said:

I only started with photography a few months ago and am doing photos for my cookbook.

I bought a Nikon D3300 with a Nikkor 1.8G lens.

Right now I have very good natural light and am pretty pleased with my recent pictures.

But winter is coming and the light will be going.

Here's a recent one, Internet quality. http://justpaste.it/nz87

I would like to try the one light setup that's at but he doesn't give any equipment details.

https://fstoppers.com/food/one-light-food-photography-2937

If anyone would tell me in some detail, what to buy, based on his post, I'd very much appreciate it.

Thanks,

Michael

Click to expand...

Add a speedlite to your kit, its one of the most useful photo accessories going.

Then using this via a TTL lead it will give you plenty of lighting options, especially paired with the right modifier, something as simple as a large flash bender with diffusion panel would work well for food.

The light shown looks to me like some sort of incandescent work light. Sitting in front of it is a diffuser.

An incandescent light is a full spectrum light so with your camera set to the right WB the colors will all be correct. With fluorescent or LED lighting you do not get full spectrum lighting and some colors will most likely be wrong.

An incandescent work light is cheap and will work fine as long as the heat from the incandescent work light isn't a problem. Just pick one up at Home Depot or a Lowe's.







The diffuser can be a low cost pop-up diffuser from eBay or Amazon.com. A kit like this one also has reflectors.

eBay - 60cm*90cm/24"*36" 5 in 1 Studio Multi Photo Collapsible Light Reflector

The advantage of continuous lighting is that what you see what you get.

With a hot shoe flash you don't know what the lighting is until you take a test shot, then you move the light and take another test shot, then you move the light and..... This can be a big waste of time.

--
Living and loving it in Pattaya, Thailand. Canon 7D - See the gear list for the rest.

What light source you choose is not that important, it will be more about how you will be able to defuse the light you add to the scene. If your preference is daylitht, and that is what you want to get, its about getting you light source close and using a good big defuser. Either umbrelle, softbox or a big defuser screen

(I often use the one coming with my reflector kit ....)



(dont mind all the other "stuff" in the picture.

Some years back I did start our with a one flash setup but it did not last very long.

Below is my most used setup for food.



The best one flash results I get is by using a simple big softbox like this:


It works very well with speed lights.

//Stine Lise