On Assignment – Ming Thein

On assignment: Bistro food

March 29, 2012 by Ming Thein

This set shot with a Nikon D700, AFS 60/2.8 G Micro and several SB900 flashes.

I’m seeing an increasing shift in my commercial work these days towards food – as a gourmet (or perhaps as a greedy person) I’m certainly not complaining. Interestingly, food photography actually shares a lot of techniques in common with watch photography – with the huge benefit of not having any reflective surfaces to worry about. But from a lighting point of view, it’s the same.

Last week, I shot what was probably my final job with the Nikon D700 – some highlights of which are presented here. The D800 studio update will probably be towards the end of next week due to job scheduling.

I wanted to use this opportunity to say a few things about both food photography, and draw some conclusions on the D700’s use as a studio camera.

Food may not have any reflective surfaces, but it certainly presents some challenges of its own: firstly, temperature. Things don’t look optimally appetizing for that long (think ice cream) which means you’ve got to work quickly, and studio strobes are pretty much out of the question because the heat would make anything fresh wilt in less time than your fastest flash sync speed. The solution I’ve found to that is either use low-temperature LED panels or use flashes. For the most part, I use flashes because they’re more flexible in terms of light output deliverable, and have enough power to accommodate larger setups. LED panels don’t have as much throw or power, and go through batteries like crazy. And there are also color temperature issues – so far, very few panels can deliver a relatively even, neutral spectrum – and those that can are both hideously expensive and not all that bright.

The next challenge is actually detail: most people don’t want to look too closely at what it is they’re eating. I mean, a steak looks great as a whole, but I don’t think you want to start looking at meat fibers and thinking about exactly what motor function that muscle did when it was still part of the cow; there’s a huge compositional tradeoff between detail, suggestion, and emotion.

Bottom line: food images are about emotion: they must make you feel like you want to eat them. The ultimate litmus test for me is: would I want to order the dish if I saw this image in a menu? Lighting is your one control here: both softness and position of the light sources, and less intuitively, color temperature. (I’ll go into this more in a future article).

I’m going to conclude with a few words about the D700 as a studio camera. It may not deliver the most resolution, but it does have a few advantages over say a D3x or medium format – providing you don’t have clients that must absolutely have that pixel count. Firstly, there’ the built in flash with commander function – that was the #1 reason why I went for a D700 instead of a D3s, and I don’t regret it one bit. Speed isn’t an issue, but putting an ENEL4a in the MB-D10 grip gives you both speed and an incredible amount of shooting time: I can easily shoot a full day assignment on one battery. This assignment (2,000 frames in total) was completed with 60% power left over on the ENEL4a, and the ENEL3e in the camera still full. Finally, base ISO of 200 gives your speed lights a boost – and even if you don’t need the extra power, it reduces cycle time as well as extending your battery life.

Curiously, the internal flash can’t handle more than about a dozen shots or so in reasonably rapid succession before it cuts out to take a breather – unclear whether this is due to the capacitor’s limitations, or an overheat protection system of some sort to prevent your prism catching fire (which would probably be a fatal disaster considering the camera is both touching your face and made of highly inflammable magnesium.)

I’m looking forward to the quality the D800 brings, though I can’t say I’m so enthused about the amount of retouching it will require – especially for watches and other similar product. But for food, bring it on! MT

I will be attending the World Gourmet Summit in Singapore at the end of April to conduct some sessions for Leica; details to come soon. MT

Filed Under: On Assignment Tagged With: d700, flash, food, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, nikon, on assignment, speedlight, thein

On Assignment: Diner food

March 4, 2012 by Ming Thein

The majority of commercial work I do usually centers on studio work – I wish it was photojournalism, but sadly this isn’t the case. By this, I mean anything where the composition is delicately adjusted to be perfect, lit with controlled lighting – usually flash – and then retouched to perfection. Depending on what you’re shooting, the latter stage can be extremely time consuming (think watches, for instance).

Diner reflections in maple syrup. (Lame photographic irony: I used the 20/1.7 pancake on the Pen Mini to shoot a flapjack.)

Today’s On Assignment was a photoshoot I did last week for a new diner. I originally thought the majority of the food would be shot with the Nikon D700, 60/2.8 G macro and a handful of speedlights. I brought two umbrellas, and four flashes in case I needed specular fill, or one of them failed. Landed using just two. However, the client wanted a slightly different perspective; something more dynamic. The 24/1.4 was useful for a shot or two, but simply didn’t focus close enough for most things. Luckily I’d also packed as backup the Olympus Pen Mini, a couple of LED lighting panels and a full lens set; the 12/2 saved my bacon; it focuses slightly closer than 20cm – to the sensor plane.

The chef at work.

Food is a tricky beast to shoot. If the lighting is too perfect and diffuse, the food looks flat; if it’s too point-sourced, you get reflections off the little bits of oil and uneven surfaces that is, by its very nature, food. The trick is you need to use a mix of both; or use an imperfect diffuser (I consider an umbrella to be an imperfect diffuser).

Big breakfast

I don’t know how many people know this, but the vast majority of food you see in photographs is not edible. What does that mean? Well, I know some menus in Japan are shot using plastic food as props; I’m not talking about that. To get food to look the way it does, there are often some cosmetic tricks – healthy applications of water and olive oil, for instance; or using colored mashed potatoes for ice cream to prevent them from melting; sauces aren’t necessarily accurate, just made of something from the right consistency and color to stop them from migrating where you don’t want them to go when repositioning the plate, for instance. There are other tricks, but I’d have to kill you if I told you. 🙂 This used to be the preserve of the food stylist, which has become a dying profession – there are precious few left, and to be honest, I prefer not to use one. I do dabble in cookery occasionally, which helps me to understand the objectives/ focus of a dish; this in turn helps me to ensure I capture the right elements to present it. I’m happy to rearrange things as required, but usually what I prefer to do is work with the chef to ensure he or she is happy with the presentation: after all, it’s their food; if it doesn’t look right to them, then chances are the end viewer won’t be getting the right impression, either.

X burger

I did discover something on this shoot though: the LED panels, which I thought would be useful for macro work (and are only good for model lighting) are actually great for food; they run cold, which keeps things fresh and not wilted; they’re adjustable in continuous steps, and you can instantly see what the effect of the light looks like – the only catch is that to get a large diffuse source, you need to either put them close or use lots of them, and that gets expensive. But I could see myself picking up another couple for future jobs. MT

Chili con carne glow

Seasoning

Filed Under: On Assignment Tagged With: food, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, on assignment, photo, photography, thein

On assignment: Thaipusam 2012

February 12, 2012 by Ming Thein

Master of the cave. M9P, 35 FLE

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The limestone Batu caves are alive with primal energy through the night as millions of Hindu devotees bring offerings to the temple of Lord Murugan after a 25km trek from the companion temple in downtown Kuala Lumpur.

The main cave in 2011, but this year looked much the same. I didn’t have the right lens for this perspective, for reasons I’ll get into later. D700, ZF.2 2/28 Distagon

The offering dance. M9P, 35 FLE

This person – it’s not clear if it’s a man or woman – was very much in a trance, holding the bowl of fire and dancing in a haunting way. Her/his eyes were closed almost all of the time, but knowing when to pause to let an assistant or friend pour more oil into the bowl to keep the fire going. Leaves were waved through the fire, ostensibly for purification or offering. Lit mostly by the fire and the dim lights inside the cave, by her/himself she would have been a spectacle. Yet this was just one of dozens, or even possibly hundreds, of similar scenes going on at the same time. One can’t help but admire millions’ dedication to their faith – and yet at the same time wonder where the divergence lies, because if all religions fundamentally preach the same thing, why do people still lie, cheat, steal and kill? Why is there less and less honor and honesty in this world? I can’t answer that. Towards the end of shooting the sequence, one of her/his assistants advised me not to take so many photos; I probably wouldn’t sleep well that night. Things visit people, he said. I thanked him and left; I’d finished anyway. Most nights I don’t sleep that well, unless I’m absolutely exhausted. Strangely enough, I slept like a deep, satisfying dreamless sleep that night – for a solid eight hours, a lot more than the two or three I normally manage.

Release. M9P, 35 FLE

What makes people act the way they do? What determines the nature of self? These are the two questions that come to mind after watching a devotee get released from their trance by what is presumably a priest of some sort (bald, at left) though I have also seen the procedure performed by another devotee. The releaser grips the head of the devotee and blows on his forehead; a grimace of pain and he collapses, supported by his friends or family. It can’t be physical pain, becuase he carried a heavy portable shrine 20+km on foot from the main temple in downtown Kuala Lumpur, with offerings of lime and milk pots attached to his flesh via hooks; it looks to be spiritual pain as something is separated inside and his own self is restored. Where does the self go? Why is there pain when it returns, not a sense of happiness or at least familiarity? Instead we see devotees slumped exhausted (understandable) and looking confused, lost and vulnerable. We are but a small, unimportant and impotent part of this world. And timing and luck are pretty much our only ways of being in ‘control’ – for instance, if I wasn’t exactly where I was with exactly the right camera settings and focus set, I wouldn’t have gotten the shot. Could I have controlled the elements, replicated the emotion of the subject? No.

Proof that they do bleed. M9P, 35 FLE

Exhaustion after the event. M9P, 35 FLE

Let’s revisit this exercise from a photographic point of view.

I’ve shot this event three times – in 2008, with a D3; 2011 with a D700; and this year with an M9P. Which was easiest? Without a doubt, the D700. I was using f1.4 or f2 primes with a very capable 8fps low-light body. Which was the hardest? Duh – this year. The M9P is a great photojournalism camera, but very, very challenging to use under these conditions. Subjects were fast moving. Light was uniformly very low, and very erratic; the center weighted meter on the M9P is very careful to protect your highlights, so if you have a few point sources in your frame, you’ll find the camera reporting 1/2000 at ISO 160 is sufficient at night. That means you’re both metering and focusing manually, all when the world is moving around you at a million miles per hour. Oh, and I only had one lens – the 35/1.4 Summilux-M ASPH FLE (which is truly outstanding, by the way.)

But which images did I like the best? Again, the nod goes to the M9P set. There is a disconnect in the D700 images, which are more mature than the D3 images – if I can’t say I’ve improved as a photographer in four years, then I’m not trying hard enough. This year’s set has a rawness and direct connection that is lacking in the other sets; it’s more obvious the further after the event we get. Do I think I could do better next year? I certainly hope so. Would I change equipment? Probably not, actually. MT

The full set is available here on flickr.