http://upescalator.wordpress.com/2008/09/27/noma-hunter-gatherer-haute/

Wow, I really suck at this blogging thing.

Congrats on your new cool EOS-450D camera! And kind thanks for the flowers.

To answer your question first, the pics in this post were all taken with the same Canon 50 mm Prime f/1.4 IS USM lens. My noma posts from 2007 were all taken with either the kit lens (18-55 mm) or the Canon Ixus 950is.

You know what? I think I’ll write a camera page to make that the place for all these foodphotonerd comments so they are easy to find!

Happy summer greetings to you too!

Trine

Just reading these comments now.

First – once again a great report from Noma’s best costumer.

Your pictures are as always unbelievable (also kudos to the Camera wizard backstage, Klaus) and I have been reading the Camera tips with great interest. I have had my SLR Camera for 2 month now (Canon EOS-450D) and have now realized that I have been doing everything wrong .

My concept in life is “Never go down on the equipment” – so for sure I will have to invest in a utterly expensive lense of some sort – maybe this Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM, which looks crispier than the Noma Snacks.

Happy summer greetings from,

/Thomas

PS. Just a quick question – pictures of the restaurant, persons, ambience etc. are they also taken with your little Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 lense?

That said, noma, while still very expensive, was a bit cheaper than I thought it would be. I could spend more eating at some of the top restaurants here in L.A., with no currency exchange to make things more expensive. Though that might include a little more wine.

Apologies! Your comment got caught by by spam filter for an unknown reason.

Lovery with the tip on Kitchen’s – thank you so much.

And THANK YOU, for this comment and your question about the tipping:

Are there any readers working in Copenhagen’s best restaurants that might shed some light on tipping practices and expectations in the city?

I am in the same boat with your wife. Usually I don’t tip, but I also feel a little bad about not doing it.

You’re right about the extras for foreign credit cards! DK IS a mini put state. do you know whether all the fine dining restaurants in CPH charge the extra?

Trine, I would have to agree, especially given noma’s reputation for sourcing ingredients from the wild. Wild animals are supposed to taste better than farmed animals, right?

Allan, I’m sad to hear you had a bad experience at Kiin Kiin. I failed to take any wine notes, but I don’t remember experiencing any such mistakes. Chef Henrik served and presented nearly all of our dishes – the soup is the only one I distinctly remember as being served by someone else. Were the mistakes you experienced made by him, or by one of his staff?

I’m way behind with updating my blog – and I should write about Ristorante Cracco in Milano and Kiin Kiin. Hopefully I’ll do it soon, but I wasn’t impressed by Kiin Kiin, e.g. twice we weren’t told what we were eating and one of the times it was flat out wrong when we had it corrected. Even our dessert wine was presented as “…and then a sweet dessert wine”. No information about which one – and what’s worse, it wasn’t sweet.
Anyway I’ll get to it (some day)!

I just finished a little something on Milano, but not the restaurant yet, so it might not be interesting for you However please feel free to take a look
http://allancantona.blogspot.com/

JC: I choose to think the best of the brave noma guys and believe that this seven year old crab is caught in the wild! It bet they taste better too and these were certainly tasty. What do you think?

Allan: Thank you! Long time not much seen Ehm, the lamb was thoroughly done and so moist and tender that it almost fell apart. You know how the meat is when it’s close to the bone. The taste was meaty with only hints of lamb by with a gamy-ness to it as well. I don’t recall what they said about this preparation, but when you cook at low temperature and for a long time it’s usually to obtain moisture tenderness, as far as I know.
Btw, how did you like Kiin Kiin?

Laurent: Of course! But then it will have to wait until my noma quarantine is over…eh? )

I understand that the lamb dish was missing something, but how was the lamb itself when it was prepared that way? What arguments did they have for this preparation?

Great pictures

Dennis: if I may add to the camera/lens discussion, Klaus is right on. Get what your friends get, so you can borrow lenses from one another. However, Nikon’s lens collection is overdue for an update; expect to see new lenses next month. That said, I’m a Nikon user (including compacts, though I think Canon’s might be better – Nikon doesn’t seem to care about that market segment). But the important thing is to make sure whichever brand you buy, you can get the lens(es) that fit your needs. In my opinion, the “perfect” lens for shooting food as a diner, if you don’t have a high-end “full-frame” DSLR (a DSLR whose chip is the same size as 35mm film), would be something like 30mm fixed, with an aperture of f/1.2 or 1.4, have Image Stabilization (or Vibration Reduction (VR) in Nikon terminology), and it would also be able to focus from a distance as close as 20cm. Unfortunately, such a lens does not exist as far as I know (at least, not on the Nikon side). If it did exist, it would most likely be both expensive and big. 50mm f/1.4 is a great choice otherwise. I just jumped into the SLR world myself – my friend sold me his D70s at a ridiculously good price after letting me take it on holiday, and he threw in a free 50mm f/1.8D lens because he wanted to replace it with the 50mm f/1.4, and because he already gave away the kit lens. Still, I plan to get the f/1.4 myself someday, after I get a general-purpose zoom lens.

If you still decide not to jump into the DSLR world, f/2.8 will probably be the fastest lens you’ll find. Compact cameras, for any given focal length and aperture setting, have about four times as much depth of field as an SLR lens. That makes it easier to be in focus where you want to be in focus, but when shooting things larger than a plate of food, you won’t always be able to get that lovely gradual blur. Compact cameras also allow you to focus from shorter distances than most SLR lenses, which is the one way they can be superior (along with portability of course). Nikon compacts are especially good for super-close-ups, being able to focus as close as 7.6cm or so (though traditionally they’ve been bad in other ways, like being slow to focus in low light).

A few tips for shooting in challenging restaurant conditions, regardless of camera type:

1) If there is little light, set your camera to Shutter Priority or Manual Exposure. It is more-or-less a given that in low light, your camera would automatically open the aperture to its widest, or close to it if the dining room isn’t too dark (if you would rather just use the widest aperture all the time, ensure it by using Manual Exposure). From there, fine-tune the shutter speed to get the exposure you want. But be aware that, the wider the aperture, the less depth of field you will get, and other aspects of the shot (contrast, sharpness, etc.) will suffer a bit at the widest settings.

2) If that isn’t good enough, learn to control your camera’s flash. Dial down the flash power, and learn what White Balance setting to use in order to minimize the harsh blueness of the flash’s bulb. Or, use an external flash and aim it toward the ceiling. But you can get pretty good results even with the built-in flash, especially in a DSLR. Smaller compact cameras may not allow you to adjust the flash power and White Balance enough. But use flash only as a last resort – open up the aperture, turn on IS/VR if the lens has it, and increase the ISO first.

3) Learn techniques to minimize camera shake. Breathe normally, and press the shutter release on the exhale. Support your arms against a wall, table, chair, or your own body. And especially if you are using a compact camera, hold the camera with your right hand only, then hold your right wrist with your left hand. That is actually steadier than having both hands on the camera. It’s easier to be steady with SLRs because they’re heavier.

4) If the shutter speed is getting a bit too slow to keep the camera steady, shoot in Continuous (burst) mode. Pressing the shutter release causes the camera to move; if you shoot multiple shots with one press, the shots after the first or second will have less shake, and therefore be less blurry. I usually take 3-5 shots at a time this way.

5) If you can, shoot in RAW (not JPEG) mode. RAW allows you to make adjustments to the White Balance, exposure, etc., on your computer after the fact, which can fix color and exposure problems easier than adjusting Levels/Hue/Color Balance/Curves/etc. in Photoshop can.

6) The tip I always forget: be patient. I just want to shoot and get to the eating, so I always forget to be absolutely sure about where I’m focusing, that I can turn up the ISO, etc., and I wind up with inferior shots.

And make sure you have time to get used to your new camera, before you use it at an important meal. Good luck!

What a wonderful world…

And Dennis, good luck!

Laurent!? I know where we are going next time you are back in CPH. Have you checked the whites’ section of Nouveau’s wine list? I’m especially thinking the Languedoc-Rossillon part.

Today’s UK Observer newspaper carries a great Edinburgh review from a critic that I trust very much so you could do worse than to give ‘Kitchin’ a visit : http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/experts/jayrayner/story/0,,2281746,00.html

On the subject of eating on one’s travels, I’ve been following your advice to overseas visitors to Copenhagen with interest and a couple of issues crossed my mind. Firstly, the vexed issue of tipping and, secondly, Copenhagen’s (almost unique) habit of charging extra if customers pay with foreign credit cards.

Tipping is always an emotive subject but even after living in Copenhagen for 10 years I still am not really sure how to behave. Actually, my Danish wife finds it a struggle to come up with any hard and fast rule! For sure, there is no tipping culture here. An American visitor leaving a 20% tip will surely make serving staff extremely happy. And Michelin actually state in The Guide that tipping is unecessary but customers might like to leave a little extra.

But, Copenhagen restaurants most certainly present the credit card bill for signature with the option to add a tip. So what do they expect? On a bill of, say, 3300kr I tend to round it up to 3500. In percentage terms that is nothing – so the question is, is it insulting? The thing is, in a restaurant at this price level, a lot of staff are involved and service is normally excellent so my tiny tip is not really going to make a financial difference to anybody.

Are there any readers working in Copenhagen’s best restaurants that might shed some light on tipping practices and expectations in the city?

Foreign visitors might be shocked to find that their bill is inflated by 5% or so when they pay with credit cards. I suppose that it could be argued that it is simply being transparent with customers about real costs. But at first glance, it can appear to be extremely unfriendly to visitors and I’m not aware of the practice in other cities in the world. The thing to remember is that there really never has been a culture of credit cards in Denmark like there is in the USA or UK. So when foreign visitors started turning up with their cards, suddenly the restauranteurs took an unexpected hit to their margins.

I’d be interested in the thoughts of any visitors to way they are treated in this respect.

Neil

No prob

Canon/Nikon – it’s mostly a religious matter, I think. If your friends are into Nikon, so should you be. It makes it much easier to get good advice … and to borrow lenses, of course

Klaus… Wow, that almost not a blog post, but a PhD in macro photography Thank you very much for the write up. I can see that I still have a lot to learn in terms of photography. Your reply goes very much hand in hand with a saying of a good friend of mine, “when you buy a digital SLR camera you will soon notice that the camera is mearly an accessory to your lenses”. I was laughing at the time he said so, but I think I do begin to understand what he meant.

Most of my friends are Nikon freaks, but I guess that both Canon and Nikon are equal competitors and that it’s a matter of religion or existing lenses that makes it fall out to one over the other.

Again, thanks a lot for the detailed and professional reply. I will reconsider my compact camera buying strategy again.

Kind regards,
Dennis

As Trine’s unofficial photo advisor, I’d love to explain how the photos are made. Forgive me for getting a bit geeky here, but – as I try to tell Trine – an understanding of a few basic photo principles is necessary to get good shots.

Trine uses a Canon 350D. It’s a consumer end digital SLR, but a great, rugged camera that’s not too big to carry around. The new version, the 450D, would be the one to go for at the moment. The more “pro” Canon 40D is a very nice camera but a bit bigger and thus heavier to lug around.

She also has a small Canon IXUS 900is for emergency use – but it’s no good under low light. It simply hasn’t got the lens or the chip for it.

But even when talking about SLRs, the camera itself is really not the issue. It’s the lens that does the trick and that’s why SLRs are the ones to go for: You can change the lens.

Too avoid using flash (and you don’t want to use flash when shooting food) you must have a lens that lets as much light trough as possible – that is: It most have a wide aperture .

The lens’ F-number denotes the relationship between the lens’ focal length and the aperture (the width of the pupil, so to speak). The lower F-number, the bigger the opening (in relation to the focal length) and the more light gets through your lens. You want as much light as possible, as you want to expose your film (i.e. your chip) in the shortest amount of time possible – to avoid shaken images.

To control these settings, Trine runs the camera in “P”-mode. That means that the camera controls the aperture and the shutter time, but that she can set the ISO herself and turn off the Flash. Personally I prefer the “A”-mode, so I can control both aperture and ISO while the camera controls shutter time. Full auto mode (on Canon cameras the auto symbol is a green square) is a no go, as the flash will pop up all the time and instantly ruin your photos, not to mention your relationship with the waiters and the other guests.

The kit-lens (an EF-S 18-55 mm zoom) that comes with the 350D and 450D is an ok lens in good lighting conditions, but not a great one when shooting at low light. It’s got a max aperture at 18mm of f/3.5 (and that’s too wide an angle for food photos). There is an IS version of this lens that will probably do better under low light – I haven’t tried it, though.

So Trine uses a Canon EF 50 mm f/1.4 lens instead of the kit lens, to get as much light into the camera as possible. It’s a fixed lens (that is, no zoom).

When using an aperture as wide as f/1.4 the depth of field (DOF) becomes very shallow. That’s why it’s only possible to focus on a bit of the dish, and that makes the photo look “macro”-like. Fortunately a shallow DOF has been made quite popular by professional food photographers during the nineties, so what is basically a shortcoming of optic laws is now considered a nice touch

The EF 50mm is not a macro lens – in fact that’s a bit of a problem as you’ll need about 45cm or more of distance between you and the dish when shooting with the 50mm at f/1.4. That is sometimes hard too achieve at a restaurant as you’ll have to get up from your chair or lean back. Be careful not to fall

The best photos on this blog are shot at lunch time when light is good. Even when using a f/1.4 lens, the light at restaurants at night can be tricky. So it’s often necessary to step up the sensitivity of the camera’s chip to ISO 800 or ISO 1600. Even on a camera like the 350D, which is quite good at avoiding too much pixel noise, images shot at ISO 1600 will show some noise. Besides, the colours may often be too warm due to artificial lighting.

Too improve on the most problematic images they are run through Photoshop. Noise may be removed with the plugin Noise Ninja that can eliminate some of the pixel noise. Contrast and colours are adjusted with levels and sometimes a cooling “photophilter” or some manipulation of the Red, Green and Blue channels is needed.

Be careful, though, when removing noise with plugins like Noise Ninja – the crispy details may disappear too. Sometimes this may be counteracted by applying a sharpen filter, but the general rule is: The more you fiddle around with the image in Photoshop, the more quality you loose.

I guess that a great photo solution for food photography would be a fast, high-end zoom lens fitted with an Image Stabilizer (like this one). The IS will allow using a narrower and thus sharper aperture and shooting at shutter times well below the magic 50th of a second without any signs of shaking. But such lenses are typically more bulky than the 50mm and it’ll probably cost’ya the mean buck

Lord Rodney and JC – Hehe. I guess they would know the age of the crab from the breeding – no?

Hi Dennis,
Great to see you back here and your question about photography is not at all off topic!
It’s the lens, really that makes my pictures. I think I’ll let the expert reply to provide the best technical explanation here as it actually wasn’t me who bought it. I hope this is OK.

Cheers
Trine