new light

I’ve been wanting to do a blog about this for a long time, but for some reason we never actually took good comparison photos. So we decided to do it tonight!

When I started my blog, my boyfriend was using my Canon PowerShot SD600 to take pictures of my bento. I got it because it was small enough to carry it around in my bag, and my friend was able to get it me for pretty cheap using her employee discount. My boyfriend had a much better camera (Canon PowerShot G2) but it had stopped working around the time. He studied photography in NYU before he changed his major to film, so after we started getting mentioned in other websites, it really made him want to take better pictures of my bento. Then he heard about Canon’s trade-in program. You can ship them your working or non-working Canon camera and get a refurbished camera for cheap. (not all models though) He traded in his broken PowerShot G2 and got a Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT at a super discounted price!

Anyway, even with a good camera, it was very hard to work with the lighting in the kitchen. The bento is always shot in natural light, but when I did how-tos at night, the pictures would come out orange-ish. My boyfriend would try his best to color correct the photos but it’d take long, and the photos would still look very very warm. A couple of month ago, we finally decided to get a light kit. After he did some research, we purchased “Lowel EGO Digital Imaging, Tabletop Fluorescent Light Unit.” It was around $96 and came with a white reflector.

Lowel EGO Digital Imaging, Tabletop Fluorescent Light Unit

The light unit may look like a lamp from IKEA, but look at the difference between the photo taken with regular kitchen light at night, and one with the light unit! The most important difference is that the light is daylight balanced which gives a more natural look. It’s also bright enough that photos can be shot at 100 ISO speed for optimal color quality.

Regular kitchen light at night

With Lowel EGO light unit at night

A big difference, isn’t it?

Now we can do a how-to in the middle of night. If you’re crafty, you probably can make it on your own too, but we think this light unit is worth every penny!

EDIT: My boyfriend found a webpage that has more pictures comparing a regular light and Lowel EGO light unit. The review and comparison are so easy to understand (even for me) on the site. Go check out Lowel EGO lights for food photography on SteamyKitchen.