Food Photography & Aperture Priority
As a food photographer in Northamptonshire, I take a wide range of food photographs, both in my home studio and on location for clients. I follow a specific setup and process for every shoot. While I usually shoot in manual mode, recently I’ve been teaching students about aperture priority, which has also helped me better understand my own camera and lens.
When shooting at the widest focal length, my f-stop can go as low as f/3.5. Teaching aperture priority has highlighted the importance of depth of field in restaurant photography and product photography for restaurants.
Key Tips for Using Aperture Priority
To decrease depth of field in your photograph:
Use a narrow aperture (larger f-number)
Distance yourself from the subject
Use a shorter focal length
To expand depth of field:
Widen your aperture (smaller f-number)
Move closer to the subject
Lengthen your focal length
Every photograph has some form of depth of field, and you can adjust it using either focal length or aperture. For more details, read my previous blog on depth-of-field photography around your home & garden.
In this blog, I have explained my own process when taking a food photograph and using aperture priority.
If you have not used aperture priority before, this is when the camera lets you only control the aperture you wish to use per photograph. You are not able to change the speed, so depending on the lighting you may require a tripod if the speed drops below 1/60 or increase the ISO.
Planning the Shot
I always consider the foreground and background when composing a photograph. For this shoot, I wanted to create depth using a window in the background
The images above show how moving plants around helped frame the glass. I eventually placed the plants on both sides to create a natural frame, enhancing the depth of the photograph.
These images demonstrate the amount of depth of field achieved by moving the subject relative to the background.
Planning like this makes it much easier to capture the intended layout in-camera.
Final Styled Food Photography
The final image features a glass filled with strawberries and ice cream, focus-stacked so everything from top to bottom is sharp. Using aperture priority made it simpler to manage depth of field than relying on manual settings alone.
My Nikon 24–120mm lens, with an aperture range of f/3.5–5.6, can make controlling depth of field challenging, so moving forward I’ll primarily use aperture priority when I want to expand depth in my food photography.
Have you used aperture priority before?
How do you apply it in your photography?
Please leave any comments or subject suggestions that you would wish for me to cover on the subject of Photography.
Thank you for reading.
