Hooray! My first behind the scenes of a lighting set up. I have been working on taking one photograph a day at least for an entire year. Today I really had a hunger for some frosted sugar cookies and I ended up getting some donuts as well. So when you have some really yummy and beautifully decorated food you might as well photograph it right? Thats what I thought.

So here is my lighting set up – I am using a Nikon SB-800 on a Manfrotto light stand. I am using the Nikon CLS (Creative Lighting System) to trigger the speedlight remotely. It is shooting through a 24″ Lastolite Ezybox softbox. I often use this lighting set up when photographing people and it works for photographing most anything. I have a reflector on the other side of the donuts to fill in the shadows cast on the food.

Food looks best when it is brightly lit and it looks best when lit from the side or from behind.

Behind the scenes of food photography

The next two photos show off the difference of the shadows with and without the reflector. This would also work with people. I love to have dramatic lighting where the light come from one side or the other – but sometimes that is too much drama and you can put a second light on the opposite site OR you can use a reflector. And reflectors are a lot cheaper.

Donut light with softbox and reflector

Softbox only - no reflector

Yeah, I was and still am saving up money for the Canon 85mm f/1.2 lens – that is the gold standard lens that I have been lusting after for quite some time now, however, it is about $1900 online and it is going to take a while to save up the dinero for that bad boy.

In the meantime I figured I would take a baby step in that direction by investing in the Canon 85mm f/1.8. Is there a difference in the two lenses besides that magic f-stop? No, that is ridiculous what kind of stupid question is that?! I kid. The 85mm f/1.2 comes with a lens hood. Oh, and the 1.2 is an L series lens.

Right now I have one Canon lens – which is ok – but what happens if I am out photographing and that lens breaks? Then I have a camera body with no lens. I have my Nikons to pick up the slack – but it’ll be nice to have a few Canon lenses.

Also – photographing with a full frame camera – such as the Canon 5D Mark II I have realized that 50mm almost feels like a wide angle lens. So the 85mm will give me a little bit of a feel of a telephoto.

My luck? I will probably get the 85mm in the mail before my Canon 5DII gets back from repairs.

And I am also thinking of buying a Canon 28mm f/1.8 – that would be a baby step till I can afford the Canon 24mm f/1.4. It is weird – Canon has a HUGE selection of lenses – much more than the Nikon world.

I think most photographers have a favorite lens – and that they keep that lens on their camera almost all the time. I would say that I am a fan of my Canon 50mm f/1.2 (although that lens is my only Canon lens right now). It is on my camera 100% of the time. For my Nikons I find that I use my Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 80% of the time and only change it when there is a need for a different lens.

So I decided to ask photographers on Twitter and Facebook what their favorite lenses were and here are some of the responses:

• favorite lens is the Canon 24-70 f2.8L USM. It is pretty much glued to my camera body.
• I love my 70-200 2.8 IS.. I love the depth of field I can get with it &I love the crisp photos it creates. I use it 50%
• My 85 1.8 is my favorite, but it’s my least used since it’s not practical for my usual applications. 28-75 2.8 is most used
• Canon 28 2.8 (I’m on a crop sensor) is on my camera 60% of the time.
• I use my 50mm 1.8 the most. Want to replace it soon though, it’s getting old..
• Great question. My favorite lens is my 35/2 Leica, but I don’t use it the most. The lens that gets used the most is the 24-70 on the D3.
• 24-70 2.8 %95 of the time

Recently I received an email asking which lens to buy – and they were comparing a Canon 24-70mm f/2.8 and the Canon 24-105mm f/4 IS. They like the functionality of the IS (image stabilization) but they also like the f/2.8 of the other lens. (hey Nikon and Canon – when are you going to build a lens that is 24-70mm with f/2.8 AND VR or IS?)

My recommendation was to buy BOTH! Actually I am joking. I recommended he try them out first and then decide from his experience which lens he could buy. I recommended he check out http://borrowlenses.com. For about $100 he could rent both lenses for a week and see which lens he liked more.

There are so many types of lenses out there – and lenses that meet the different needs and budgets for each photographer. And I would highly recommend renting or borrowing a lens to try it out before you buy. There is nothing worse than buying a lens and then never using it. I have one or two that just stay in my camera bag.

Me? I will go for aperture over VR or IS. It isn’t just photographing in low light – it is creating the magic blur behind the subject and you really can only do that with a wide open aperture.

Maybe I should write my next post on which lenses you should consider…

Most people will hook up their camera to their computer and copy photographs to the computer. That is so SLOW! I use to do this – but stopped when I discovered the magic that is the memory card reader. Memory card readers can plug into a USB or a firewire port and will help transfer your photographs to your computer.

There are two good reasons to use a card reader:

First, the transfer from your camera is slow and memory cards are faster – especially if you have firewire. I use a USB card reader that supports compact flash and SD cards.

However, you can use the Lexar Compact Flash Reader and get some even faster transfer speed – you can even stack the card readers and transfer several memory cards at one time.

Second, transferring photos from your camera directly will drain your battery. Yes, you can recharge the battery but if you are on a shoot or on location you might not have the time to transfer photos with the camera, then recharge the battery and then go photograph again.

With a card reader you can start the card transfer and go out and shoot some more because your camera isn’t tied to a computer.

If you are interested in HDR (high dynamic range imagery) then check out this video of Trey Ratcliff – he is lecturing at Google on the whole concept and practice of HDR. Really cool to watch if you want to get into HDR. It is an hour long so grab a banana, drink, and a notepad. I think I watched this twice.