I am relatively new to this blogging thing, but even more so to food photography. Before yesterday, I didn’t even have a digital camera. I went to Penn Camera and explained I wanted to be able to get quality shots of food to be published on my blog. I also pointed out I was a beginner, so too many bells and whistles would just leave me on the floor in the fetal position crying for my mother. The salesman suggested the Olympus FE-310 because it had a mode for cuisine. I purchased the camera and happily headed home to start my previous blog entry.
I now wish I had waited for the advice of a more experienced food photographer before heading out to Penn Camera. The camera is easy to operate and does take great shots of everything else. However, in the cuisine mode, there is this weird yellow hue, faintly reminiscent of the documents you’d find in the National Archives. After playing around with the settings for the majority of the day, I have come to the realization that I need another camera. So the Olympus will be returned to Penn Camera on Monday (or sold on Craigslist…for some reason I am completely lazy about store returns but will put something on Craigslist at a moment’s notice). In the coming weeks, with a little guidance, I hope you will see an improvement with the quality of my pictures. Until then, please be patient as this is still a work in progress. If anyone has any suggestions on cameras or my blogging style in general, don’t be shy! I welcome any and all thoughts, musings and critiques!
Stumble It!
Adventures in Shaw 
That weird yellow hue is the way your camera is seeing the tungsten lights in your photography space. Photographer’s refer to the yellow part of the color spectrum as being too “warm,” whereas fluorescent lights produce a “cool” blue-green hue . . . neither of which are desirable for most photographs . . . unless you’re going for that particular look. The best solution is to shoot with a camera that allows you to manually set the “white balance” by taking a picture of a piece of plain white paper . . . to tell the camera “In this lighting, this is what white looks like.” Your camera then adjusts and your whites come out white, instead of yellow. I’m only a few months ahead of you on the photography learning curve, but I’m happy to share with you what others have shared with me. Most importantly, have fun with it!
I loved shooting the crostata and can’t wait to see what else I can do with the camera. I even took some great shots of Shaw for an upcoming blog posting. The Olympus doesn’t have the ability to manually set the white balance (or the other features you suggested), so back it goes. I am anxiously awaiting a camera suggested by the Kitchen Wench!