Cinematography : Filming Food by Alyssa Rasmus

Check out this blog entry. http://www.foodbloggersofcanada.com/2012/08/how-to-make-a-cooking-video/

Also, you will need a lot of incandescent soft lighting. Your lens is a bit slow, so I would consider renting 1.8 prime lens.

An actual food stylist will do wonders !

Food videos are very simple concepts. Prep, cooking, and presentation. Make sure to show what is being talked about. The link that Vidas provided gives a lot of good information that is well worth reading. However, the videos in the link do not seem to follow what was said in the article, so just read the article. Of course now you will watch the videos and see that the presenter has a pleasant screen presence and descent delivery but then it is very downhill from there. Why do the video and where will the video be seen? Is there a budget? Single camera or 4-5 cameras? You imply single camera so make sure the food being prepared is simple and cheap because you will have to do it 3-4 times. The easiest way is to pick a food show on TV that you like and note the angles that are used, then sincerely flatter that show by copying it. And please remember that the tripod was invented for a reason. Food is not difficult but there are always folks running around shouting that it is VERY SPECIALIZED and only an expert should shoot food so you should not do it. Total BS. Food is a subject, you treat it like any other subject, lighting for the images you wish to create that best show the subject. The most basic approach to lighting a food show (or any show) is simply make the host look good then illuminate the rest of the set. The presentation shots of the food at the end are where you will need to make it look good so; background light to set the location, kicker lights to bring out the shape and important points of the finished food, and fill light for contrast correction and illumination. The lens you have if an f3.5-5.6. To get consistent exposure with any angle focal length on that lens you will need to light to the slower stop, in your case 5.6. As there are a lot of variables involved, could you tell a bit more about what you wish to see in the finished product and what equipment you have to work with, stage or location, etc.

Here's a link, stills related, that just showed up via a newsletter : http://www.seriouseats.com/2015/03/beginners-guide-to-food-photography.html

The nifty 50 (50mm f1.8) performs okay for about $100. I would rent some better glass. I have purchased some used lens. Tamron 15-80 f2.2 which has some great colour rendering $180.00 and a Canon 28-70 L series $650 this is great. Better glass will make a huge difference to your images. Audio wise Rode Videomic Pro. Not the stereo. The stereo version is great for doco work, but you want a tight pattern and the Videomic pro is great for that.

Thank you all for your feedback this has been very helpful! To answer some questions, I am working with only 1 camera, as that is all I have. I am looking into renting a better lens, so thanks for the tips on that. I will be shooting at home, so I will be using a lot of natural light, but I am hoping to add some good video lights to get the right look, but I have to rent those too. Again, thank you for all the feedback, I will be working on this this coming week, so if anyone thinks of something else, I'm happy to hear it.

Shooting food is a career in itself. Lighting is everything. One could write a book on the lighting of food. I've done a great deal of table top food shoots and the best thing to have is a good home economist who can use a host of tools to make the food "LOOK" good. Remember your viewers can't taste the food so it doesn't need to be actually food. Shoe polish on a steak will make all the difference, I know this is hard to explain but using small units like peppers to rake light along the front service, towards camera, will emphasise the texture of the food and make it look rich. Soft light works against this. Muriatic acid and ammonia will allow you to paint the food and it will look like it is steaming hot without continually heating the dish which will kill the look. Good luck

I've done several episodes of cooking program for a local TV channel. We had 3 cameras. One camera was shooting the whole set, another was filming a presenter and what she was doing, and the third one was hand-held camera taking close-ups of food and cooking process. We lit the set with a couple of 1K bounce lights and 2-3 500W lights as backlight and background lights. I wish we had more powerful light, but at those moment it was all we had. p.s. Sorry for my English, I'm Ukrainian

I really appreciated all your help with this project. I ended up using your advice to create a trailer for the canon trailer contest and another future project. You can check out my contest entry on my blog (https://pinkcameramedia.wordpress.com/2015/04/29/project-imagination-tra...) Any feedback is always good :) And again, thanks for the tips!