Yes!
That doesn’t mean a stand alone camera with a lens on top (I call it camera system) is a thing of the past. A camera system is still the way to go if you are a professional food photographer and there are many reasons why that is.
This blog post is not about comparing a smartphone with a camera system, it’s about pointing out the truth about the tools we use. A camera system, even the most advanced one worth tens of thousand of dollars, is not going to able to capture great images unless the photographer who is using it knows the pillars of food photography (and every photography genre, for that matter): Lighting (primarily) and Composition.
The Pizza Oven Analogy
Say that you’d like to bake a fantastic pizza, but you know nothing about pizza making. Will the most incredible and expensive oven automatically produce fantastic pizzas? Not necessarily. If your ingredients are not good, you don’t really know how make and knead the dough, you don’t really know how long the pizza should be in the oven for, etc, your pizza is not going to turn out good. No matter the oven.
By the same token, if your Lighting (primarily) and Composition are not great, your food images are not going to be great. No matter the camera you are using.
I don’t believe you
If you don’t, it’s totally understandable. Most people don’t think about it and most people (me included) are always looking for ‘shortcuts’, tools that will get them where they want to be faster. Unfortunately, the reality of food photography (any photography genre, really) is that there are no shortcuts that a fantastic camera system will allow you take.
Please look at the two images below. One was shot on a smartphone, the other one on a $5500 Sony system. Image B on the right is clearly not as beautiful as image A, it’s actually pretty bad. Yet, it was shot on a professional camera. How Is That Possible?
Image A - Shot on an iPhone 12
Image B - Shot on a $5500 Sony system
If you observe the two images, you realize that only two things differ in how the images were created.
1) The light is different
2) The camera I used was different
Nothing else. Can we really blame a $5500 camera system for the bad photo? We obviously can’t. So the LIGHT is the only thing that can explain the difference between the two images.
All this to say that, if you don’t know lighting, the camera is NOT your problem and throwing money at an expensive camera system will result in extremely small improvements, if any at all.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t invest in it, after all, it’s your money. It just means you can’t expect the camera alone to up your food photography game in any noticeable way. In fact, it could just create a lot of frustration because your expectations (great camera = great food images) would not be met. On the other hand, and this has happened to me several times, the excitement of owning a new ‘toy’ can spark the creativity in you and maybe that can push you to create and learn more.
How Far Can You Go with Just a Smartphone?
You can go very very far and I strongly suggest you start with that. You already have a camera you can use to learn lighting and composition. Once you understand the fundamentals of food photography and are consistently creating images that are great from a lighting standpoint, it might be time to consider switching to a more advanced system (a camera body with a good lens).
If you are wondering wether you should invest in a camera system or not, keep in mind there are many other factors to consider when you compare a smartphone with a camera system. The first thing that comes to mind is size and weight, which so often is the primary reason why photo enthusiasts stop using their camera system.
As I wrote above, this blog post is not about a comparison between food photography shot on a smartphone vs a camera system. It’s about understanding how important lighting is when it comes to food photography and photography in general. After all, photography means painting with light.
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May the right light be with you! ☀️📷😀