topic Re: Best Lenses for Commercial Food Photography in EF & RF Lenses

Best Lenses for Commercial Food Photography

JaylinG1402 — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 18:45:00 GMT

I was wondering what lens would be best for food photography. Like commercial photography for food.

Re: Best Lenses for Commercial Food Photography

rs-eos — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 20:08:01 GMT

My guess is a macro lens if details are needed. e.g. EF/RF 100mm f/2.8

Though from what I understand, it's really more about the lighting setup and other prep work to capture the best possible images to convey great taste, freshness, etc.

Re: Best Lenses for Commercial Food Photography

kvbarkley — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 20:14:49 GMT

For R or EOS cameras?

Re: Best Lenses for Commercial Food Photography

JaylinG1402 — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 20:15:34 GMT

EOS

Re: Best Lenses for Commercial Food Photography

JaylinG1402 — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 20:17:57 GMT

I have an EF 75-300mm zoom lens and an EFS 18-25mm lens

Re: Best Lenses for Commercial Food Photography

kvbarkley — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 20:52:35 GMT

The EF-S 35mm Macro has a ring light built in to the front of the lens

The best EF-S lens for this was probably the 60mm macro, but canon no longer sells it new.

Re: Best Lenses for Commercial Food Photography

Waddizzle — Fri, 02 Dec 2022 01:44:41 GMT

My son is an executive chef. I taught him how to take photos of finished plates of food using an 80D and a Rokinon 24mm tilt-shift lens.

Re: Best Lenses for Commercial Food Photography

ebiggs1 — Fri, 02 Dec 2022 15:20:20 GMT

"I was wondering what lens would be best for food photography."

The question is too general to make a good recommendation. Anywhere from your iphone to a Hasselblad X2D.

Re: Best Lenses for Commercial Food Photography

amfoto1 — Fri, 02 Dec 2022 17:50:16 GMT

While not quite the same, I've done quite a bit of small product "tabletop studio" photography with various Canon Tilt Shift lenses. Mostly I have used the old TS-E 45mm and TS-E 90mm, both on APS-C crop sensor and full frame cameras. Sometimes I needed to add a macro extension tube for smaller items and closer work.

The newer TS-E 50mm Macro and TS-E 90mm Macro can focus closer than the older lenses, but most food photography doesn't get anywhere close to macro magnification anyway. The newer TS-E lenses also have more adjustability... Where the old lenses had a single rotational plane, the new ones have two. This allows you to quickly and easily reorient the tilt and shift movements relation to each other as needed. The older lenses needed to be partly disassembled to make any change to the alignment of those movements. This wasn't too big a deal with small product photography because I was mostly just using the tilt movement to control the plane of focus. Occasionally with reflective items I used shift, but that was rare.

If using a crop sensor camera, for food photography a wider lens like the TS-E 24mm II might be necessary. If using a full frame camera, I imagine the old 45mm or the current TS-E 50mm Macro would be a good starting point. Even if unable to focus close enough or render the images you want, it might be good to experiment with different focal lengths on a standard "walk around" zoom, to see what works best for you

The TS-E lenses can mount directly to any of the Canon DSLRs (EF mount). If using an R-series or M-series mirrorless camera, an EF to RF or EF to EF-M adapter would be needed. All the TS-E lenses are manual focus (currently... rumors are that there may be some autofocus versions in the future). If interested in but unfamiliar with them, study up on the uses of tilt and shift lens movements.

***********

Alan Myers
San Jose, Calif., USA
"Walk softly and carry a big lens."
GEAR: 5DII, 7DII (x2), 7D(x2), EOS M5, some other cameras, various lenses & accessories
FLICKR
.

P.S. The last time I did any food photography was a long time ago. I remember one session using 4x5" film camera to shoot ice cream products. In the studio the ice cream products would melt before we could get the shots we needed! It was Winter in Colorado, so we took everything outside and worked with flags and reflecting panels to light the product, rather than strobes and hot lights. For some of the pics I had to shoot from atop a 6 foot step ladder. That was fun!

Re: Best Lenses for Commercial Food Photography

Tintype_18 — Fri, 02 Dec 2022 17:57:12 GMT

Alan, did you get to eat the ice cream? BTW, good idea to move outside.

Re: Best Lenses for Commercial Food Photography

amfoto1 — Fri, 02 Dec 2022 18:01:12 GMT

FYI...

All Canon cameras with interchangeable lens capability are "EOS". This includes the the EOS R-series mirrorless, the EOS M-series mirrorless, all the DSLRs and even 35mm film SLRs from 1987 onward.

***********

Alan Myers
San Jose, Calif., USA
"Walk softly and carry a big lens."
GEAR: 5DII, 7DII (x2), 7D(x2), EOS M5, some other cameras, various lenses & accessories
FLICKR

Re: Best Lenses for Commercial Food Photography

amfoto1 — Fri, 02 Dec 2022 18:56:24 GMT

@JaylinG1402wrote:
I have an EF 75-300mm zoom lens and an EFS 18-25mm lens

I am pretty sure your 2nd lens is an EF-S 18-55mm.

Those are a couple of the least expensive zooms Canon makes, often bundled in kit with their most entry-level APS-C cameras.

That being the case, very likely you aren't going to want to spend the $1000 + that a TS-E lens costs.

Someone suggested the EF-S 35mm Macro lens, which seems ideal. Unfortunately it is discontinued and is a little difficult to find used. I only found one... on Amazon.com... where it is selling for $480. In addition to being able to shoot extremely close (probably closer than necessary for most food photograph) and the built-in LED lighting, this lens also has Image Stabilization, which may be helpful in some situations.

Two less expensive options that might work well for you are the Canon "pancake" lenses... The EF-S 24mm f/2.8 STM and the EF 40mm f/2.8 STM. Both of these are very compact. While not "macro" lenses, both are quite close focusing. The EF-S 24mm is on sale right now, for $129 new. The EF 40mm appears to have been discontinued, but I found it used several places for between $150 and $180.

An excellent, but discontinued lens is the Canon EF-S 60mm f/2.8 USM Macro. This is capable of very close focus for high magnification of very small subjects, but may be too long a focal length for some types of food photography. I was able to find some used examples selling for $300 to $350.

DO NOT get the Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 Macro lens. it will likely be more expensive than you care to spend, but it also is a very specialized high magnification ONLY lens. Way too high magnification for food photography, the LEAST it can do is 1:1 and it can shoot 5:1. It can fill your viewfinder with a single grain of rice... but can't back up and focus upon a bowl of pilaf.

***********

Alan Myers
San Jose, Calif., USA
"Walk softly and carry a big lens."
GEAR: 5DII, 7DII (x2), 7D(x2), EOS M5, some other cameras, various lenses & accessories
FLICKR

Re: Best Lenses for Commercial Food Photography

ebiggs1 — Sat, 03 Dec 2022 16:26:31 GMT

"I was wondering what lens would be best for food photography."

Like I said, there is way too little info to recommend the best lens as you might tel from the potpourri listed above.

I imagine the OP is no further along info wise then they were.