That depends! There are three main options:
Top Down or 90 degree angle
45 degree angle
Straight on or zero degree angle
How do we choose the camera angle?
Your job is to find the camera angle that enhances your food subject as much as possible and tells the story you have in mind in the best way possible. That means the camera angle will depend on the food and the story. In other words, there is no straight answer to the question: What camera angle should I use?
That being said, there are guidelines that will help you quite a bit, specially if you’re just starting out and you don’t really know where to start from. So, forget the camera angles and instead start by looking at the shape of the food you want to capture.
Is the food predominantly tall (burger, stack of pancakes, tall cake, etc)?
In most cases, and especially if the food item is the true protagonist of the story (it’s NOT a tablescape with several different protagonists), you should NOT use a Top Down camera angle. If you do, you’re going to miss the height of the food and the food will look flat! You should instead start exploring the angles ranging from 45 degrees or so all the way down to 0 degrees or Straight On camera angle. I want to stress the exploring part of the previous sentence. You need to try and explore as much as possible and you need to observe as many images as possible in order to develop your eye and understand what works and what doesn’t.
Is the food predominantly FLAT (pizza, some soups, slice of bread, etc)?
In this case you can safely exclude the Straing On camera angle and start from the Top Down camera angle and explore the angles all the way down to maybe 45 degrees or so.
Is the food not really tall and not really flat? (pasta, some sandwiches, salads, etc)?
You can start with the 45 degree camera angle and explore moving towards the Top Down camera angle AND towards the Straight On camera angle. In most cases, you’ll end up with best results in the range 25-70 degrees.
We might not have the exact answer to the question above, yet these guidelines should be able to provide you with a pretty good idea of where to start with. I suggest you observe as many images as possible and focus on the camera angles used in those images. Also, more than one camera angle could work in some cases, so make sure you keep exploring, even if you think you’ve become quite good at this.
Hope this helps!
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