Food photography turned out to be an entirely different beast than the outdoor photography I was used to; I had to think about light, focus, depth of field and so many other things in a completely different way. My pictures were bad. Really bad. Some of them still are! I'm getting better, though, and these are the things that are helping me get there.
{CAMERA}
I have a Canon 6D and I love it. It is a professional level camera that is great in low light and has a screen that can flip open so I can see overhead shots when I'm not tethering.
{LENSES}
You will need at least one camera lens to for the body of your camera. If your camera came with a lens, great! Start using that one. For years my favorite lens was my Canon EF 50mm f/1.8. It was a steal at around $130, and was the lens I used for all of my photography for the first 5 years of my blog.
{MEMORY CARD}
It may seem silly to list this, but I am anyways because I totally forgot to get one when I bought my camera. Oops! Don't make my mistakes. Get a memory card that is at least 32 GB so that you don't have to constantly switch out cards as you are taking high resolution photos.
{CAMERA CLEANING KIT}
Nothing fancy, but you are dealing with FOOD. There will be splatters. A little inexpensive cleaning set can save you a lot of headache ( and save your camera! ). For weeks I couldn't figure out why my pictures looked so hazy -- one quick clean with this guy and they were back to clear as day. My lens had gotten greasy...
{COOKIE SHEET}
Don't buy it. Use the old, gross one you stole from your parents house when you left for college a decade ago as a background for your food. Not that I did that. I totally didn't do that.
{FOAM BOARD}
A plain ol' white foam board is ( other than the camera ) probably the most useful tool I have in my food photography arsenal. It helps bounce the outside light coming through the door or window I'm shooting in off the other side of the food, brightening the scenes and making my photos look much better!
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