Canon EOS 450D photography technique/lesson needed

[antz_1022]

May I request assistance on how to adjust the color when taking a photograph? Also may I know your recommendation as to what Mode Dial should I use for regularly taking photos without using the flash, specifically in taking shots of food? I would greatly appreciate it if you can provide me some specific tips since I am still trying to learn on how to use this camera.

Thank you.

[zona5101]

Adjusting the color? I assume you mean the color balance? There will be a white balance selector on your camera where you can match the color balance with the type of lighting in the room. Mode wise you are probably going to want to shoot in aperture priority (you pick the apretur, camera picks the shutter - I thin called Av mode on Canons) or manual mode. I say that becasue you are going to want to have specfic control over your depth of field...and food isn't (usually) moving so you don't care about shutter speed as long as you have a tripod to hold the camera.

[inkista]

If you're shooting under incandescent lights and your photos are turning out more orange/yellow than you'd like, try putting the White Balance setting into "Tungsten". That will shift everything blue-wards. You might also want to try shooting RAW instead of JPEG, and correcting white balance in post-processing.

Food photography is a pretty specific type of shooting, and may require a little extra equipment than a dSLR and 18-55 kit lens. The first thing you may want to consider getting is a macro lens. Unlike P&S cameras, dSLRs have large sensors and equally larger lenses. This actually means that lenses can have a minimum focus distance--so you can get too close to something to be able to focus. Macro lenses can decrease this distance, so you can get closer.

Lighting is the other big factor with food photography. You want soft diffuse light for the most part, so just putting a lamp over the food or blasting a flash at it isn't going to work well. Putting a piece of paper over a window to soften the light, or shooting in the shade or on a cloudy day can help. You can also use pieces of paper/white cardboard as reflectors to "fill in" shadows. Once you're comfortable with the camera, you may want to consider learning about lighting.

For basic guidance on settings and exposure with your camera, Bryan Peterson's Understanding Exposure is a great basic text. For some basics on easy food photography setups, just googling "food photography for bloggers" will pretty much get you a ton of good stuff.