How I Shoot It #3: Flaming Hot Ice Cream

Hello all, today I want to post another "How I Shoot It" material here. This time, it's somewhat a food photograhy-ish kind of photo, but it's actually more of a art-ish kind of photo. It's a photo of a flaming ice cream that you can probably find in Japanese Tepanyaki styled restaurant. I shot this around September 2015, using my Olympus E-PL6. Here's the photo:
 

 

  

The concept here is just an artsy kind of photo, utilizing shallow depth of field to soften the background and using relatively low key exposure to get rid of the room's ambient. The key here is to have a relatively still ice cream while having the flame burning with slight movement blur. A short telephoto lens was used as a crucial gear that can help to achieve shallower depth of field.

 

Technical Mumbo Jumbo

Camera Setting

I shot this picture using the already-sold Olympus PEN E-PL6, using the legendary M. Zuiko 45mm f/1.8 lens (90mm equivalent). This was shot at f/2.0, shutter speed of around 1/100, and ISO 3200. This was shot using Aperture Priority mode but with the spot metering on the ice cream/flame, so that the background is underexposed. This shot was taken indoor in a restaurant on a very dim lighting, so high ISO is a must.

  

Technique

 There's not a lot of technique here, it's all just a matter of framing the shot. The shutter speed was deliberately chosen at 1/100 sec because I could steadily handhold it to get the ice cream to look very still, while the flame could still move and have some deliberate movement blur.

  

The composition is just straight forward rule of thirds, with the ice cream slightly on the camera lower right, right where the rule of thirds guidelines crossed at that particular point. I filled the frame with the flame, and because it was very difficult to predict where the flame will move, I just shot a whole bunch of frames and pick the one where the flame looks the best.

  

How to Improve?

I could use off camera flash technique to further enhance the low-key feel of the image, and to get sharper ice cream. It will probably cause the flame to look washed out, but I haven't tried it yet, so I can't really comment on that.

  

I could also use a longer lens like the 75mm(150mm equivalent) to get shallower depth of field, but at the risk of having the ice cream only partially in focus. But the 75mm lens will definitely help to remove more background elements that are distracting.

  

Using a shorter focal length won't really give any benefit to the picture, it will introduce more background which could be distracting. The point here is to get rid of the distraction as much as you can. However, if you feel like the background should be included in the shot, that's entirely your artistic choice.

 

Processing wise, I don't do much on this picture. I did raise the shadow to get the ice cream to a more proper exposure, while I reduced the highlight to slightly tame the flame exposure. Noise reduction was necessary to reduce the grain on ISO 3200. But other than that, it pretty much looks almost like straight OOC.

 

That's all for today's "How I Shoot It" post. I hope you find this post to be helpful. Please stay tune for more posts like this in the future. In the meantime, good luck, happy shooting, and God bless you!