One of my favourite cafés in Korea wanted to grow its business by being more visible online. One way to lift a brand there is professional photos of the menu, much as big brands hire food stylists to shoot theirs.

This post walks through how I photographed the coffee: setting up and positioning the lights in the café, choosing the camera and flash settings, timing the shot, and finally post-processing to clean up the bright spots the flashes leave behind.

The short version, if you’re after food photography tips:

• Use a long focal length (200mm here) to flatten the picture, so the glass doesn’t look stretched.
• Don’t rely on the flash on the camera alone; put a second one above the subject.
• Use a fast shutter speed (1/640s) so the flash lights the drink and the ambient light, and the background with it, drops away. Above the camera’s flash sync speed that needs high-speed sync.
• Stop down to around f/6.3 so the whole glass, front to back, is in focus.
• Clean up the flash’s hot spots afterwards in Photoshop.

Equipment

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Godox TT350 speedlights

A Sony A6000 with the SEL70200F4 (70-200mm f/4), which works out at 105-300mm in 35mm-equivalent terms on the A6000’s APS-C sensor.

Light Positioning

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Master (Light One)

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On the camera’s hot shoe.

Slave (Light Two)

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On a monopod above the subject, as in the diagram.

Why speedlights

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• A faster shutter speed means sharper pictures, which matters most when there’s no tripod to hold the camera.
• Without high-speed sync (HSS), a flash only works properly up to the camera’s sync speed, which is 1/160s on the A6000. The TT350 supports HSS, which is what makes 1/640s possible with flash.

Camera Settings

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200mm

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A long focal length flattens the picture and takes away the stretched look a glass gets when you shoot it from close up.

ISO 800

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Low enough to keep the image clean, while still giving enough exposure.

1/640s

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At a fast shutter speed, whatever the flash lights up shows clearly and everything behind it goes dark, because the ambient light barely registers.

f/6.3

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A higher f-number gives more depth of field, so everything from the nearest point of the glass to the far rim is in focus.

Post-processing

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Photoshop

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Flash on glass leaves hot spots. I cleaned them up with the Healing Brush set to Darken mode, which only darkens pixels that are brighter than the area you sample, so the glare goes and the rest is left alone. The video below covers removing hot spots.

Final Image

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