All Answers To Questions

If taking close-up or extreme close-ups, I find it best to use a normal digital camera. From personal experience with professional cameras, the auto-focus often focuses on the incorrect point. Most digital cameras have a straight forward 'one-point focus' (in simple terms), so it is easy to get the correct subject. For wider shots, using either a digital or professional camera is suitable. A camera with 5 megapixels or more (preferably) will ensure that the picture comes out sharp and detailed. I would also recommend the book 'How to Photograph Absolutely Everything' By Tom Ang. It has some great tips and inspirational photographs in there.

The one that you know the best. If you are confident in your equipment and understand how it operates, then just about any camera will do you well. More importantly, you'll want to consider the right lens. Does the lens you have or the lens on the camera you own provide adaquate color saturation, contrast and sharpness? Do you have proper lighting? Do you have the white balance set correctly? Photography of this kind relies heavily on the photographer knowing what they are doing and how to operate their equipment.

I would recommend going with a medium format, either a Hasselblad (6X6 or 6X4.5), or a Mamiya (either 6X7 or 6X4.5) You can use a small format, either a full frame or APS digital or 35mm, and get adequate results, but your best quality pictues are going to come from the larger format camera.

All the food photographers I know use view cameras, usually 4x5, but sometimes 8x10 is called for. The smallest camera is usually some kind of medium format camera. Most importantly the photographer has to be a wizard at lighting. I have seen setups shot inside walk-in refrigerators and using over twenty various lights.

I have to concur with Photoace, serious food and product photographers typically use a view camera. If you are not familiar with a view camera here is a modern example http://www.sinar.ch/site/index__gast-e-1770-50-1891.html this one happens to have a digital back, although they can shoot film as well. The reason for choosing such a camera is that they provide precision perspective control from shifts to swings that other cameras just don't have, even medium format. Another reason for choosing large format is because of the minimal grain and sharpness that these cameras are capable of producing either using film or digital backs(some digital scanning backs such as the ones from betterlight are rated at 416megpixels which knocks the socks off any image a Hasselblad can produce,then again these backs do have serious drawbacks). http://www.betterlight.com/ Although I think Hasselblad cameras are wonderful, especially the H3D, it is more of a camera suited for portraits.

To underscore what others have said, the camera used the most is a view camera. If you surveyed the top photographers in food photography, Sinar is probably the view camera most used. While image quality is very important, it isn't the fundamental reason for using a view camera, it's the type of control over perspective you get only through being able to adjust the relationship between the subejct plane, the lens plane and the film plane. This is where you get the natural look in the proportions, vanishing point, etc. No other cameras can do that and it isn't doable in photoshop. On the other hand, both 35 mm and medium format cameras can do an excellent job. It's a matter of working with the characteristics of the image they produce and setting up compatible shots. You'll see a lot of food shots by professionals who primarily use view cameras are done in the smaller formats, too, when the medium can deliver the minimum quality required and the fixed relationship between the film plane and the lens isn't a problem. It's just simpler and faster. The two absolute keys to successful food photography are lighting and styling. Most of the time the luscious photography you see has been set up by a food stylist, not the photographer. That's all food stylists do. If you have absolutely mastered lighting, and that doesn't mean just in the studio, but on location, too, then the choice resolves to what is the appropriate camera for the demands of the shot. If you arrange things so that the images will always be of a type that non-view cameras can produce, you don't need a view camera. Vance