Technique assessment

Change your mode

Victoria says… I almost always shoot in Manual mode because it gives me the versatility to control every aspect of the image, without the camera making decisions for me. I was delighted, then, to see that Hannah was very comfortable shooting in Manual mode, as this would make it much easier to direct her to change camera settings, as and when needed, throughout the course of the day.

dial in the settings

Victoria says… I showed Hannah the base settings I like to work with when shooting. An aperture of f/5 gives a decent depth of field, meaning the foreground and background drop out of focus, but the food remains sharp. I advised her not to go below 1/80 sec handheld, because of the risk of introducing camera shake. We set ISO at around 320 to increase the sensitivity of the sensor and thus enable a faster shutter speed, as we were shooting inside on an overcast day.

aim to underexpose

Victoria says… I encouraged Hannah to slightly underexpose her shots as a good rule of thumb to avoid overexposure of highlights. White plates and brightly coloured food often clip when you expose for the darker areas of your shot – and this clipped data is unrecoverable. To underexpose, I suggested setting a faster shutter speed to reduce the amount of time the image sensor is exposed for.