Food photos to savour

The perfect pastry you ordered at a local cafe, your signature dish made with love at home, a main at your favourite restaurant – there’s no shortage of opportunities to photograph foodie delights.

But are you getting the best possible pic of each plate? A great food photo doesn’t require endless tinkering with the setup; paying attention to the little things can make all the difference – as can a powerful app that helps to enhance the quality of your image.

ProCam 8 allows you to set the shutter speed, exposure and ISO manually, and all the photos in this story made use of the app’s features. Read on for some tips on how to elevate your food photos, and try them out for yourself.

Consider adding blur to the background of your photo – not only will it add a sense of depth, but also amplify the subject. Using ProCam 8’s Portrait mode, you can adjust the intensity of the blur in your picture.

In Portrait mode, tap the subject you want to focus on. As you can see in the picture below, photographing the plate as the light shines on it creates interesting shadow effects and a more striking picture overall.

Alternatively, you can create a similar effect by turning on Manual Focus Assist and Manual Focus Peaking in the app’s settings, which makes it easier to see where the camera is in focus. The more distance you put between the subject in the foreground and the object you’re blurring in the background, the more blurry it will become. Try to get the AF value displayed above the shutter button to be as low as possible.

By angling the part of the dish you want to highlight towards the light, you can instantly make that section of the dish more impressive.

In the image below, photographing in a semi-backlit environment not only creates a three-dimensional shadow, but it also makes the tea and oranges glisten. Find the point where the light is best, and look at the same angle as the camera before you tap the shutter button; to enhance the look of a three-dimensional object such as a cake, position the angle below eye level.

You can adjust the white balance in ProCam 8 by selecting AWB from the items lined up above the shutter. The lower this number is, the bluer the effect, and the higher it is, the more reddish. Using blue tones for morning scenes and red tones for evening scenes will help you capture an atmosphere that tells a story.

Incorporating some objects in motion into your photo can add a sense of dynamism. In ProCam 8, select Slow Shutter and use the motion blur function within it. Slowing down the shutter speed means you can take a photo that’s similar to a long exposure, where an object in motion is intentionally blurred.

When using this motion blur function, you’ll want to fix your iPhone or iPad to a tripod to prevent it from shaking. And since this function captures the smallest amount of movement, it’s better to set the motion blur setting to the shortest duration of four seconds – this will slow down the movement.

If you prefer, it’s possible to capture objects in motion without any blur – by increasing the shutter speed, moving objects can be captured statically. Faster shutter speeds will reduce the amount of light and result in a darker photo, so ensure there’s enough light around.

ProCam 8 - Pro Camera

Manual Camera + RAW

View