What’s the best camera for Food Photography?
ME: What’s your goal? What do you want to achieve with the camera you’re willing to buy? (Don’t you hate it when people answer a question with another question, let alone two questions? 🤣).
THEM: I want to take great food images.
ME: Do you know the fundamentals of Food Photography?
THEM: I guess….maybe… I’m not sure and that’s why I need a camera that takes great images.
ME: Are you aware of the fact that the camera alone will not guarantee great images, no matter how advanced, fantastic and expensive that is?
THEM: Oh, no, I just thought a great camera is what I needed to get started in food photography.
ME: Have you considered learning the fundamentals before investing a ton of money and time into a camera system?
THEM: What do you mean?
ME: That you can start learning the fundamentals of Food Photography right this second. In fact, I’m pretty confident you own a smartphone and that is not older than 3 years. So, you do have a camera already.
THEM: Really?
ME: Yes, really. Unless you know how to light and compose a food image, an expensive and complicated camera will not bring any tangible benefits. On the contrary, it can be a huge source of frustration because you might be expecting great food images from the very first moment you start shooting with it and that is very unlikely to happen, unless you know lighting.
Look at this image, do you find it beautiful? Do you find it pleasant to look at?
THEM: Not really.
ME: I agree, it’s horrible. Yet it was shot on a $5500 Sony pro system. You see where I’m going with this?
THEM: Wow.
ME: Now take a look at these images.
ME: Pretty nice, right? Well, they were shot on an iPhone.
THEM: Really? But that’s probably because you know what you are doing.
ME: Bingo! You FIRST need to know what you’re doing, then you can worry about the camera. Your first worry needs to be to learn lighting!
THEM: How do I learn about lighting?
ME: YouTube ‘University’ of course! 🤣 I’m not kidding, there’s more free content on Food Photography online than anyone can ever consume! And you might consider enrolling in one or several courses in order to speed up the learning. Yes, it normally takes a lot longer to learn things through free content, because that content happens to be scattered around across so many sources, hardly an efficient way to learn. I happen to have designed a great and compact course on the subject, but I think you should still explore your free options first and see if those works for you.
Just remember: your goal is to first learn lighting.
THEM: But what if I still want to start from the camera?
ME: Be my guest, nothing wrong with that, of course! As long as you are aware that the camera by itself is not enough to take great food images. Tell me what your budget is and I’ll be glad to point you in the right direction.
At this point the conversations can go on for quite a while as there’s no shortage of options when it comes to gear for food photography. On the bright side, it’s really hard to go wrong when it comes to the actual camera body, the quality is extremely high even for the low-end options. Lenses are a totally different story on the other hand and they can really make a difference. For that reason, I strongly encourage you to focus on the lenses (the good ones will last you a lifetime) and NOT on the camera body (you will upgrade it several times throughout the years).
My answer to the question above
Put as much of your budget as possible on the lense(s) and as little as possible on the camera body. Pretty much any brand will do.
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May the right light be with you! ☀️📷😀