Camera Question: Photographing in a Restaurant

Here is a question I got on one of our posts:

Eddie says:

February 3, 2010 at 4:24 am

I have a Nikon D60 and use a 18-200mm VR 3.5-5.6 lens. I am taking photos of foods for a book I am writing and need some help to choose the right lens.

The foods I photograph are at the restaurants that I buy them at, so lighting is dependent on each restaurant. I suppose I could use flash, but I don’t really want to get into flash photography inside the restaurants I visit.

I noticed with my lens that I have to zoom in to get the AF to work best. Also, the depth of field is pretty shallow, and shutter speeds become slow.

I started to consider using a macro lens, but I’m wondering if I really need one. I don’t intend on shooting anything smaller than a muffin.

My goal is to be able to shoot a plate of food and to have most or all of the food in focus. And to be able to do this in a restaurant where the lighting will most likely be less than perfect.

Can you give me some advice?

Hi Eddie,

Good questions! I sound like you are running into two different things. The reason you have to zoom in, in order to correctly focus has do with your lens minimum focusing distance. When you are zooming, what you are actually doing is moving the camera farther away from the food, but keeping the image the same. Lens have a minimum distance they need to be away from the subject in order to correctly focus. Most Macro lens don’t enlarge things any more than a regular lens. The difference is that they have no minimum focusing length. You can get as close as you want to, which works out great for shooting in a cramped environment(restaurant).

Both Nikon and Canon have a 100mm~ & 60mm~ lens. I have the 100mm Macro lens from Canon and I sort of wish I went for the 60mm version. With the zoom factor of my Camera (50D) that 100mm lens ends up being about 160mm and that is a lot of zoom. In order to fit plate in, I have to back up quite a bit. That said, it is an amazingly well made lens and great for taking close-ups of things. If you have a camera that does not have a full-sized sensor, a 60mm macro should be about perfect.

As for the shallow depth of field,that has to do with the amount of light in the restaurant. In order to increase the depth of field, you have to increase the f-stop number. For that to work though, the camera needs more light. You have a couple of options here. The easiest is to increase the ISO setting on the camera. That makes the camera more sensitive. The other option is to increase the amount of time the shutter is open, but that means holding the camera really steady. A small tripod might come in handy.

One other thing to look at is bring a piece of printer paper or a reflective disc. You can uses these to better help bounce light and fill in any shadows if the light is not right.

Here are some things you might want to check out:

Macro Lens –

Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM Lens