Lighting set ups for kitchens/foods/tabletop

[sergio maldonado]

Hey guys I wanted to see if we could talk about how these shots were lit.

Also I wanted to talk about lighting set ups you guys would use or "go to " for this Food, Table top type work i understand most shots are different and lighting will change but i wanted to see if there's set ups you guys use often for scenarios like these. Thanks ahead of time.

 

[sergio maldonado]

Also can we talk about how to achieve theses looks with Kinoflos !

 

[Marc Wielage]

A lot of the look for food product shots is created in post, but it always starts with great lighting.

I was on the set of a beer commercial a couple of years ago, and I was floored to see that the DP lit the thing at something 2000 foot candles, just an immense amount of light. The resultant pictures were astonishing, just beautiful stuff: every bubble pin-sharp, the foam perfect, the label colorful and vivid. And I also think they took 3-4 hours to light what might appear to be a simple tabletop setup. A ton of work goes into this stuff. And then even more goes into it in post, literally down to a VFX level.

 

[Scot Yount]

A lot of the look for food product shots is created in post, but it always starts with great lighting.

I was on the set of a beer commercial a couple of years ago, and I was floored to see that the DP lit the thing at something 2000 foot candles, just an immense amount of light. The resultant pictures were astonishing, just beautiful stuff: every bubble pin-sharp, the foam perfect, the label colorful and vivid. And I also think they took 3-4 hours to light what might appear to be a simple tabletop setup. A ton of work goes into this stuff. And then even more goes into it in post, literally down to a VFX level.

Marc, do you have an example of that spot you can point to?

 

[Josh Wilkinson]

I haven't done anything majorly huge yet, But this has been my go to for small commercial/branded stuff.

 

[Alastair Duffield]

The sample shots you've shown are pretty straight forward from the look of things, I'd say they have a large key camera right, not quite at 90 degrees to the image plane but pretty close (see how the light doesn't wrap around to the front of anything on the table but it does on the background) I would guess they've used an M18 or M40 through an 8x8 full grid with the frame only a couple feet from the floor - the light looks pretty cool so I'd guess that's what textile they've used. On camera left there is another source, reflections in the blender don't show signs of using an eggcrate so they have likely used cutters. You can see it's smaller and higher than the key light. I'd be using a s-60 or similar through a soft box. They have then cut the spill from the background as can be seen by there only being 1 set of shadows in the BG. The rest of the setup will be neg placement. I'd assume a 12x12 solid behind the camera with 4x4 floppies to fill in the gaps. Depending on if the ceiling is low and white or Not they would also have put something up there to kill that, possibly even repurpose the 12x12 and clip a skirt around the back edge to fall behind the camera if space / budget is tight.

 

[Marc Wielage]

Marc, do you have an example of that spot you can point to?

It was actually done as a demo a couple of years ago for the ASC, and I think it's in the "Friends of the ASC" portion of their website. The set was surrounded by scrims, then they had a ring of 10Ks all the way around just smashing a ton of light through. Hot as hell. This was on the old Mole-Richardson stage on LaBrea in Hollywood, which got torn down about a year ago.

 

[Joesef o.]

Well here's something I can personally talk about, I am/was the DP for a series of Weight Watchers tabletop shoots. I used to do table top photography, so that helps as well. We shot everything in their main headquarters in NYC.

As for cinematography the same rules apply somewhat...

First of all, the biggest challenges are in the details, the difference from an OK shot to a great shot is in the details. That being said, details take a LONG time. I devised a lighting setup that allowed to move through our table scenes per day. Although it's still slow moving because of the food prep/styling time.

You need a lot of light, and a lot of options for either flagging off lights, or moving them around. You also need space. You need a work space big enough to accommodate all the lighting, stands, surfaces, ect. You need a dedicated food stylist for sure, and a large monitor on set helps as well to evaluate everything.

For my particular setups, they required larger surfaces, we were doing a lot of camera movement in our shots, so the camera need to travel distances over the surfaces. We wanted to avoid the thing that is done by "Tasty" which was the static top down food shots. They hired me to make everything have more "glamour" I guess? So this had more dramatic lighting than just blaring even light. There were specific moods for different dishes. There was an "evening" feel for a setup or two which isn't normally done for food, again which is why I did it. We wanted the Weight Watchers cinematography to stand out from the things you normally see.

We changed backdrops, changed lighting, changed plates, surfaces, angles, movements, we never repeated anything which allowed for a very cinematic look. Again this all takes time, space, good people, and detailed skill to handle it all. On set we took over 2 large spaces, one was dedicated for food prep, cooking, dressing, ect, and the other was blacked out for the filming, which was a large table surface which also had a backdrop setup behind it.

With all this said, we were NOT going for a "kitchen set" we were going for a beauty set. Again making it stand out and different. Ask me questions and I'll try to fill in what I did. Also just so you know, sometimes we only got 1 60second table done a day, sometimes even less. There was a day we got about 3 tables done, however it was more simple product, and a lot less cooking/prep for them was needed.

Attached are some small screen grabs from what I had done.