Cake smash

Hayley Pallett

Hayley Pallett

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Hayley
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Hello everyone,

I am new to this forum and just needed some help regarding a cake smash that I am going to do for my son.

I have a canon 500d, with the kit lens 18-55mm, and a 50mm f1.8 lens, however I feel my kit lens doesn't get the depth of field that I am looking for and my 50mm lens seems to close. I will be shooting the cake smash indoors in a small space and wanted a lens that can achieve a good background blur. What prime would be best after the 50mm that would get my soon to be one year old in the whole frame?

Or should I look at alternatives such as shooting outdoors, or getting a tallish cake stand and just doing headshots with the cake in the frame?

Any tips would be much appreciated!

Hayley :) x
 
It depends on the space you have (and, I guess, the amount of money you want to spend). If you can get him in the frame positioned how you want using the kit lens, see what focal length it is on when you do this. For example, if it's at 35mm, then that will be the focal length you need, so look at 35mm primes or better (than the kit lens) zooms which cover that range. If you are having to shoot nearer the 18mm end, then you need to look at a wide angle lens (which will probably cause distortion) - something like a 24mm. I had a similar problem for shooting in tight spaces indoors (and like you I already had the 50mm f1.8 and an 18-55 kit lens (the STM version). I bought a second hand 17-40mm F4 L which is proving to be a good investment so far (but this won't give you the shallow DoF of the 50mm f1.8).

See what focal length you need first, and take it from there. Sigma do some well thought of 35mm lenses (art series, f1.4) but they are quite pricey!
 
Thankyou for your advice Morbid! I am going to set up my backdrop later like you advised and see what focal length best suits what I am after, then I will compare prices and apertures of both the prime lens and zoom lens. Ideally I can't spend much since my partner would go nuts at me, but a couple of hundred should be okay, especially since I have some vouchers to put towards one from my birthday. I have been looking at the 40mm prime lens to see if that will be slighly better then my 50mm since I am enjoying using primes. Only problem is shooting the cake smash I will have to be very quick moving and getting to the right angle, my son moves fast and I am guessing he will destroy the cake very very quickly haha. I will have a look at the 35mm sigma lens too I have heard very good reviews on the product.

Thanks again for you help :)
 
Hayley Pallett said:
Hello everyone,

I am new to this forum and just needed some help regarding a cake smash that I am going to do for my son.

I have a canon 500d, with the kit lens 18-55mm, and a 50mm f1.8 lens, however I feel my kit lens doesn't get the depth of field that I am looking for and my 50mm lens seems to close. I will be shooting the cake smash indoors in a small space and wanted a lens that can achieve a good background blur. What prime would be best after the 50mm that would get my soon to be one year old in the whole frame?

Or should I look at alternatives such as shooting outdoors, or getting a tallish cake stand and just doing headshots with the cake in the frame?

Any tips would be much appreciated!

Hayley :) x
Click to expand...


I used a cheap ASDA shower-curtain as the floor cover (stops the mess) for about £3. Dont use Chocolate cake if you can help it - it looks like poop (I've done that mistake).

As long as you have some good distance between the child and any background/wall/anything that is distracting and you're standing far enough back and zoomed in (even on your kit lens) you should be able to get a nice enough blur in the background.

You can always buy another shower curtain to hang up behind and have a flash bouncing off the shower curtain to get a white backdrop.

Here are some I took - with a 24-105 F4 - shooting at F8, on the 35mm end (so kit lens can cover this) 1/160th

Cake Smash test by Carl@CDHPIX, on Flickr

Cake Smash test by Carl@CDHPIX, on Flickr

Cake Smash test by Carl@CDHPIX, on Flickr

These were taken a while ago, I think I had only been taking photographs for about 1 year before attempting this and Im sure you can get much better images if you're used to your camera and lighting. I've done a bit of PP on the background to make it look seamless too.
 
Sigma 18-35 1.8 if you can convince your partner the extra would be worth it ;)
 
I wouldn't blur the background, hang up a coloured sheet as the background. Too wide angle and the person looks distorted. The 50mm would be great for this, but I guess it depends on the space you have and the light available. Otherwise use the kits lens.

f1.8 at 6 feet on the 50mm lens gives you a near limit of 5.9 feet to 6.1 feet, so roughly about 2.5-3 inches of in focus before you start losing focus. Very easy to have the ears out of focus like that.
 
Hayley Pallett said:
I will have to be very quick moving and getting to the right angle, my son moves fast and I am guessing he will destroy the cake very very quickly haha.
Click to expand...

I'd suggest you are set up ready to take the shot (with camera in continous shooting mode) and have your partner holding your son near the cake. My son is 11 months (one next week) and I know how fast they can destroy things - if you are not careful you could end up with a destroyed cake, messy son/room and no shot at all for all the trouble you went to. I agree with Byker28i's comment about depth of field, it gives you more leeway using a narrower aperture (F5.6 and higher) if your son moves towards you or away from you (you should still have the majority of him in focus). If you shoot at F1.8 and he moves, you'll be lucky to get a sharp shot, plus with a larger DoF you'll get the cake in focus too. Carl shot at F8 for a reason - look at his pics, everything is sharp/in focus.
 
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Hey everyone sorry I have taken a few days to reply, been ever so busy. I have been playing around with my camera tonight with my kit lens and found the best kind of focal length was around 30mm/35mm using the space I have. And my backdrop is a 5 x 7 ft (I think) and any more zoomed out and you can see the sides where the backdrop ends. My kit lens probably could take okay photo's but whenever I upload any photo's to my computer they all seem a bit too soft and not as sharp as I would like,I have had this lens for quite some time and it has endured many bumps and knocks and I must admit I haven't cared for it as much as I should. The max aperture is 4.5 so not very large and I think overall I would prefer a prime.

Karl your cake smash photo's are incredible and thanks for your tips on the shower curtain. I have a spare blue spotty shower curtain that I may use instead of the plain blue background I have, since I could just put it straight in the wash after and save all that messy wiping and cleaning down of my vinyl.

What would your guys take be on the 30mm sigma 1.4 be? It's a tad cheaper then the 35mm version and since I am currently not back to work money is tight. I understand though I would not need such a large apperture to get the pics pin sharp I would need to shoot at f8 like you said above morbid. I think it would be handy to have in my kit collection though as a mid range prime and apparently because my camera is crop sensor would act more like a 45mm camera on full frame. Not sure if all that is right what I have said. Still learning!

Thanks for all your advice, you have all be helpful.

Hayley :)
 
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