Lighting for the Point and Shoot

Do your bento photos ever come out like this? Sort of dark and hard to see?

Or maybe like this, sort of washed out and too bright.

Lighting the scene has to be one of the most difficult things to do when taking your bento pictures. Things seem to come out blurry, too dark, too bright, or some other combination that just makes you maybe not quite so happy with your pictures.

Or at least, I know that has happened to me in the past. Recently, I have had a few commenters ask on Not Exactly Bento about how I take my pictures for this site. First, I have to say that a big help has been the fact that I upgraded from a point and shoot digital camera to a dSLR camera earlier this year.

Regardless if you have a dSLR or a point and shoot, there are some simple things you can do to help with the lighting of your photo subject. This first post will deal with bouncing light off a reflector (of sorts) to help with the flash situation. I’m not going to talk about shooting in natural light, near a north-facing window, or anything like that. Many of us don’t have those options. Quite frankly, some of us might not have the option of what I’m about to show. But let’s get to it anyway.

Let’s go back to that first photograph.

This picture was taken in my kitchen without the flash firing. There wasn’t enough light in my kitchen for the sensor of my camera to capture and make a properly exposed photo. This picture came out too dark.

For the next picture, I turned my flash on and fired.

Everything in this picture can be seen. However, it is too washed out. How do I know this? That background is supposed to be a tannish-green wood. Not the regular tan you see now. As well, look in the back left corner of the bento box. See that white streak? That’s an overexposed area where my flash bounced off the bento box and back at the camera. Too bright. On my camera, I can easily fix this by adjusting the power of my flash. On many point and shoot cameras, this might not be an option.

Now, I feel like Goldilocks. This picture is too dark. This picture is too bright. I need a picture that is “just right.” How do a fix this? In a situation like this, you need to change how your light source shines on your bento.

There are a couple of ways to do this. We are going to explore both today. The first is bouncing light. The second is diffusing light. Now if you’re a professional photographer, you probably skipped this post. If you didn’t, try not to fuss at me too much for my non-technical, and hopefully not too erroneous, explanations. LOL!

Bouncing Light Setup – Point and Shoot Cameras

This example is setup specifically with the point and shoot camera in mind. If you have a basic point and shoot camera, you may not be able to adjust the strength of the flash or to be able to move the flash on your camera.

Bouncing light is a great way to take pictures, and is often how professional photographers will get their pictures, especially in portrait situations. By bouncing light off a white surface, the light comes back to the object being photographed softer. You avoid harsh glares and washed out looks. This is how I take 99% of my pictures. I bounce my external flash (a flash unit I attach to my camera) from a white surface.

While bouncing my flash might work well with my dSLR, I wondered how it might work out for the point and shoot camera owner. The only way I know of to bounce light in this situation is to use another light source. Enter, the desk lamp. Let’s take a look a the below lighting setup.

In this example, you can see that the desk lamp is not pointed directly at the bento box. If I shine the desk lamp directly on the bento box, I would have the same situation as the flash firing directly at the box: a washed out look.

The lamp is pointed at a white background: a piece of posterboard. It will reflect the light back out, some of it will fall on the bento box. Let’s see the result of this setup. When I take this picture, I’m going to turn my camera’s flash off. The desk lamp has a compact flourescent daylight bulb.

Hmm, not bad. Here’s what I see. First, the white strip in the back corner of the bento box is gone. The background place mat that the bento box is sitting on is the correct color as well. The problem is the raisins box. If you look at the setup picture, you’ll see that the raisins box is sitting directly under the desk lamp. It is getting too much light. Not all the light from the desk lamp is falling directly onto the posterboard for reflection. Some of the light is falling on the right hand side of the bento box causing the raisins box to become washed out.

This is much closer to the type of picture I want, but not quite there. I could play around with how I bounce that desk lamp and could probably get it to work. However, I think that diffusing the light might be a better solution. so let’s try that.

Diffusing the Light

In this example, I’m going to shine the light directly on the bento box, but I’m going to place something between the bento box and the light source to help soften the light: a piece of posterboard. Here is the setup with the same desk lamp featured in the first setup.

Let’s see the result.

This isn’t bad (except for the fact I didn’t manually focus quite right LOL!). The color of the placemat is just right, the brownie and raisins box look good, though slightly out of focus. The only thing I see is that the word raisins isn’t quite as white as it could be. This could be a bit of a “color cast” in the picture due to the light source I’m using and shining that light through a piece of posterboard. I can fix that easily, and will show you how in our next blog tip.

Let’s look at all four pictures together.

I hope this gives you a little help with your digital photographs. It’s not perfect, it’s not professional, but it’s not too bad either!

Be the bento everyone!