YUM

This was taken at a restaurant in Antioch Illinois called David's Bistro.  David is an up and coming chef in the area and a blast to work with.  He has such a great sense of humor and an excellent eye for designing his dishes.  His food tastes great too.

Because this is a food shot the first thing we had to consider is the depth of field.  We wanted a fairly shallow depth to bring out the mushrooms and de-emphasize the background.  The shutter speed did not matter as we had a tripod and food does not move.  This was shot with a Canon 40D with a 28-105 lens set at 80mm with an f-stop of 4.  The closer the object of the photo is, the shallower the depth of field.

Okay, now as for the corrolation between the shutter speed and f-stop.  To maintain the same exposure on your subject, each time your shutter is closed down a stop your f-stop must be opened by 1 stop. Example, if you are shooting at 1/125 at f5.6 and wish to have a shallower depth of field-say f4, you must close the shutter down one stop-1/250.  So the first thing you need to do is decide whether shutter speed or depth of field is the most important aspect of your photograph.