Starting a photography business can be very expensive. Even the most basic equipment adds up to a startling large amount of money.

Although it’s difficult to not give into gear envy, start with the basics and add to what you have as you grow your income.

Here are my recommendations for the most important equipment to have when starting a food photography business.

Full Frame Camera

If you want to shoot professionally, you need a high-resolution, full-frame camera. The resolution of your camera is directly affected by the size of the sensor.

A cropped sensor is cheaper for camera manufacturers to make. This allows good cameras to be available to a wide variety of consumers but won’t give you the resolution you need for professional work. 

Lenses also behave differently on a camera with a cropped sensor than they do on a full-frame. When you put a 50mm lens on a full-frame camera, it acts like a 50mm. Put the same lens on a camera with a cropped sensor, it’s more like 96mm. This is because of the crop factor, so you get very different framing.

A model like the Canon 6D is a good entry point for serious photographers and is the least expensive full-frame in the Canon lineup.

A Couple of Lenses

You can have an older camera model but if you have a couple of good quality, fast lenses, you can get the sharp, high-quality imagery that you need as a professional.

When investing in your photography gear, lenses are where most of your budget should go. You may opt for a couple of prime lenses, or you can choose one prime lens and a zoom to give you more versatility.

Prime lenses tend to be sharper than zoom lenses because they have fewer moving parts that affect the optics and quality of the image.

However, there are some great zoom lenses like the Canon L-series f/2.8 24-70mm.  It’s actually very sharp for a zoom lens. I use mine all the time in my food work. A 50mm that is great for overhead shots, and a 100mm macro for close ups. My favourite focal length for my style of composition and framing is the 85mm.

It’s easy to get caught up in lens lust, but you don’t necessarily need many  lenses in your kit when shooting food.

Sturdy Tripod

In food or product photography, a tripod will ensure that you have consistent framing from image to image. It will free up your hands to compose and style your set-ups.

You also need a tripod so that you can work at lower shutter speeds.

I also recommend that you get a tripod with an overhead extension arm to do tablescapes and 90-degree shots. Some tripods come with this feature, or you can purchase one separately.

A tripod is an important investment. Like lenses, they will last you forever so buy the best you can afford. A $200-$300 dollar tripod may not give you the stability and features that you need. It also means you’ll need to buy another one a year down the road.

Lighting Kit and Modifiers

As a blogger or influencer, you can get away with working with natural light only, but if you want to shoot commercial food photography, you need to learn artificial lighting.

I recommend that you invest in a set of two strobe lights, preferably in the 500 watt power range. For jobs where you need more power, you can rent lights and put the cost as a line item in your estimate.

Having your own lights will allow you to use them at any time, and you won’t have to worry about getting to a rental house before and after a shoot. A lot of rental places don’t open early. You won’t have time to pick up what you need, get to your location, set everything up and test it before shoot time.

Another problem is that when you’re starting out you may not be working with a budget that can accommodate several hundred dollars of rented gear.

It makes sense to invest in your own lighting and charge your clients a small equipment fee to cover the investment over time. Lights can be expensive and the pricier ones deliver the best light quality.

Godox is one brand that has been getting more popular lately because of the affordable price point. If you decide to go with this brand, get the options at the top of the price range.

Personally, I use the Elinchrom Pro HD 500 and love the clean light it delivers.

Lens Filters

Lens filters, like a polarizing filter or a neutral density filter, will help you achieve certain effects in your photography such as cut down on reflections or boost colour.

You should have a good quality UV filter on your lenses at all times to protect it from dust, sand, and scratches etc.

Make sure you get a very high-quality filter. There is no point in putting a cheap, low-quality filter on an expensive lens. You will get a drastic reduction in image quality.

Lens Hoods

A lens hood for each of your lenses has a couple of functions.

The primary use for a lens hood is to prevent light from hitting the front lens element from the sides. If this happens, it will reduce contrast and cause flare. In addition, a lens hood can also protect your lens from damage.

One time my camera took a nosedive off my desk and the fall cracked my UV filter. Because I had a lens hood on, there was no damage sustained to the body of the lens. The hood took the brunt of the impact.

For this reason alone, a lens hood is an important purchase.

Memory Cards and Card Reader

You’ll need to have at least a couple of memory/SD cards.  Get memory cards with a higher number of gigabytes. They are a bit more expensive than cards with fewer gigs, but you won’t need as many. You’ll also need a way for your computer to read the images off your camera. You can use a USB cable but a memory card reader is a quick and portable option.

Some card readers help you speed up your photography workflow. They enable simultaneous transfers from multiple cards

These days, most readers are compact in size. You can slip them into a small pouch or a pocket in your photo bag. Plus, you don’t need any external power connector. The reader is conveniently energized by USB power.

Extra Batteries and Battery Charger

You should have a couple of spare batteries for when you’re on a shoot and running low. If you’re shooting in a studio you can recharge the battery immediately while you use a freshly charged one. It’ll be ready to go when you need it again and you won’t have to remember to charge it when you get one.

Tethering Cable

If you shoot food, you should be shooting tethered with a program like Lightroom or Capture One Pro. This will allow you to hook up your camera to your computer or laptop and see a larger rendition of your image on the screen. This is crucial in still life photography so you can make sure that you have the correct exposure and composition, and don’t miss any flaws that will become obvious in a larger file.

You should choose a cable with gold tips, to avoid corrosion. Look for a USB 2.o to Mini B. The top choice of the pros are the cables offered by Tether Tools.

Backup Drives

As a professional photographer,  you need to be backing up to at least three places–a couple of hard drives and a cloud system. Losing client images can be disastrous. 

Each photographer has different preferences around this part of their workflow. Some have larger drives, for example 4TB each. Others have several smaller, more portable drives that they can carry around.

Portable drives are great if you keep a drive off-site, like many photographers do. That way if your place gets robbed or burns down, you won’t lose your images. If that sounds like overkill or paranoia, realize that these things do happen. It’s better to be safe than sorry. Some photographers keep a back up in a safety deposit box.

Colour Calibrator

When looking at photos on the Internet, we’re not all seeing the same thing. Most screens are too bright and have a default colour the monitor set by the manufacturer. The quality varies between models and brands. These colors will also change as the monitor gets older.

If you’ve ever printed your images and were unhappy with the results, it’s likely that your screen wasn’t properly calibrated.

A color calibration system like those made by ColorMunki or Spyder Pro is an important part of every pro photographers toolkit. This device will help you create the best colour profile. Lightroom, Photoshop and colour-managed browsers like Safari will use it for your images.

You should do this calibration every couple of week for the best results. I calibrate my monitors every time I edit a shoot.

Colour Checker

There is a difference between good colour and accurate colour. A colour checker is a way to replicate the natural tones that food photography demands. 

Your camera, the build of your lens, and your lighting all affect colour. Also, your choice of lens can directly influence the quality, colour, and saturation of your images. Cheaper lenses are notorious for colour shifts.

The Color Checker Passport by X-rite analyzes the colour checker in your image for overall colour and tone. It then creates a custom DNG profile for your camera, lens, and lighting combination. With this device, you can rest assured that your colours are true to what they look like in-person.

Grey Card

 A grey card is the easiest way to help you get your white balance your right 100% of the time.

All you need to do is take a picture with your grey card in the shot every time the lights scenario or shooting location change. Use the white balance eyedropper tool in Lightroom to select the colour. You can then sync your white balance across the set of images. Get a good quality grey card that will last. The card has to be 18% and very accurate to help you get the right white balance. Be wary of cheap imitations. Any old grey paper won’t do.

Note that a grey card will help you get accurate white balance. It doesn’t necessarily account for every single colour in your image. A grey card accounts for the overall temperature and tint, not each colour individually. Using a colour checker helps you adjust for the individual colours, as well as overall colour in your images.

Reflector Kit

A reflector can be an indispensable but relatively cheap part of your photography set-up. These are foldable discs that come with gold, silver, white, and black material. You can use them interchangeably, depending on your lighting scenario. The gold reflector adds warmth to your subject, while the silver brightens it.

A reflector kit will help you to manage your shadows and direct the light to where you want it. Eventually, you should have a few of these in different sizes, especially in the diffusers. They will help you to soften the light when you needed.

Diffusion softens the light and affects how much light hits your set-up. If you’re working in strong sunlight, a large diffuser will keep too much light from spilling onto your subject and creating hard shadows.

Light Stands

In the photo industry, c-stands are crucial to have. “C” stands for “Century”. Commercial shooters have a few of these and rent even more when doing jobs. They’re necessary for rigging your camera from above, holding lights, fill cards, diffusers, scrims etc.

If you’re using a strobe system like a couple of monoheads, you’ll need light stands heavy enough that the weight of the heads won’t cause them to topple over. This is where the c-stand comes in.

You’ll sometimes need sandbags to counteract the weight of your lighting, or your camera and lenses. C-stands come in different sizes and can be folded flat so that you can lay them down. They’re on the heavy side.

If you’re using light stands to hold your reflectors, you can buy regular light stands, which will be more portable and lightweight.

In Conclusion

When shopping for gear, my recommendation is to buy only what you feel you really need and get the best you can afford.

There is a saying in Spanish, “lo barato se vuelve caro”, which means the cheap becomes expensive.

You can end up spending more in the long run if you buy a lot of cheap gear that you have to replace in a year or two. .

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