The Camera Never Lies ... But The Light Meter Might

First impressions are as important in the culinary world as they are in the business world. As human beings, we tend to embrace every experience with as many senses as we have available. Before we taste food, we smell it. Before we smell it, we look at it. And before we look at it, we can hear it being prepared and coming our way. How often have you been in a Mexican restaurant and heard the sizzling fajitas approaching before you ever see it? Like a Pavlovian dog, just hearing that noise causes you to salivate in anticipation.

For those of you who have been reading my blog for a while (and thank you, by the way), you may have noticed a trend over the last nine to twelve months that my food pictures have gotten better and better. Until roughly one year ago, I was taking all of the pictures you see on my blog with my cellphone camera. It was convenient, it was inconspicuous, and it did an okay job in better lit restaurants. The problem was trying to get a good picture at the darker restaurants, the Momocho's, the L'Albatros's, the Greenhouse Tavern's of the world. Even though my cellphone camera had a flash on it, it was so dark that the darn thing couldn't even focus.

So, I decided to upgrade to an actual camera. A Canon G12 point and shoot to be exact. And then over the course of the next year, I actually upgraded twice more, first to a Canon Rebel t3i and finally to a Canon EOS 60D. I won't go into the nuts and bolts of why I upgraded, but let's just summarize by saying that as I became more proficient, I realized I needed a more capable tool. And that is a perfectly valid reason why a lot of people spend more money and upgrade to a better camera.

The problem, however, is that from the cheapest point and shoot to the most expensive professional camera out there, if you don't take control of the camera, you will get crappy food pictures in restaurants. Many people put the camera in fully automatic mode, point the camera at a plate of food, and think that is all that needs to be done. In a well-lit restaurant or outdoors in the sunlight, you might be right. The camera can reduce the shutter speed enough where even being handheld is possible without blurring. But in a moderate to dimly lit restaurant? Game over.

Today I met up with a friend at Hudson's Restaurant in Montrose for a beer and some much needed catching up on our respective lives. We went back and forth about what we had been up to and when we got into my recent food photography, I was explaining to her that I always shot in Manual exposure mode because it gave me full control over the resulting picture. Since I am a bit of a control freak, this style of shooting perfectly fit with the pictures I was taking. She didn't believe me when I told her that were I to set the camera to one of the automatic modes, that it would take a crappy picture.

"Fine," I said, "I'll prove it."

We had ordered an appetizer off of the menu to split. I mounted my $1600 camera (including lens) to my tabletop tripod, set the little dial to the "green square" (which is fully automatic on my Canon), and pressed the shutter button. The on-camera flash popped up, the picture was taken and here was the result:


Wait a minute, now ... what is that large gray area at the bottom of the plate? That would be the shadow where the light from the flash couldn't reach to illuminate it. The other problem you may notice is that the light falls off the further back it goes on the plate, so even without the large shadow in the front, the light level isn't even.

Okay, then, so flash is out. By switching the mode from Auto (green square) to Program AE (P), the camera would still pick out all of the settings without using the flash. This would be equivalent to what most people would pick on their cameras when shooting food in a restaurant. Surely it must be better, right? Let's see:


Ack!! What's with all of the gray? Last time I checked, most restaurants served food on whites plates, not gray ones. The problem here is that the light meter built into every single camera (which basically measures the reflected light off of the subject) are programmed to expect 18% reflected light. This number was determined many decades ago when an analysis of thousands of photographs revealed that, on average, 18% of the light striking the subjects reached the film in the camera. So, in the case of Program AE (P) mode, since most of the scene above is reflected white light, the camera toned down the light in order to meet the 18% value. If you've ever taken a picture of a snowy day and wondered why the snow appeared gray and not white, this is the reason.

Okay, enough horsing around. It's time for me (the photographer) to take charge of the camera. In order to set the correct color balance, I pulled out my handy "gray card":


This is literally a 8 1/2" x 5 1/2" cardboard card that I keep with me at all times in my bag that is 18% reflective on one side. Resting the card on my water glass, I used my camera's controls to set the white balance. White balance, for those who might not know, is also referred to as color temperature. If you've ever taken a picture of something white and it appeared a bit blue or yellow, this is due to the type of lighting illuminating your subject. In Hudson's today, the lights above the bar were incandescent bulbs, which tend to make white look yellow.

After obtaining a proper white balance, I switched my camera into Manual (M) mode, selected my settings and took this picture:


This was the picture as it came straight out of the camera. The only alteration I made to all of the pictures above was to correct for barrel distortion and resize them for this blog post. As you can see, when *I* selected the shutter speed and aperture, I managed to capture what I think is a much better exposed picture. Of course, my camera thought the image was too bright, but I simply ignored its suggestion and went with my own.

Once out of the camera and into my photo processing software, I barely tweaked a few color settings to make the image look its best:


I'd suggest you open the images up side by side. The differences are quite subtle. And then open up the first two images and compare the first two to these last two. Big difference, eh?

Okay, fine, so this was in a moderately dim restaurant. What about a real challenge ... say, a really dark outdoor patio around 9 pm where I couldn't even see my dining partner's facial features anymore? I'll take that challenge.

Last Friday I met my friend Elizabeth at Basi Italian Restaurant in Victorian Village located north of downtown Columbus, Ohio. We arrived around 7 pm and they sat us at a quaint little table for two on the patio, just outside of the bar. As we ate and chatted, the sun began to set and by 8:30 or so, the only light source was from the thin sparse strings of white Christmas lights adorning the bar. At that point, I took this picture of our table:


The light you see reflected off the table came from those Christmas light strands. When the dessert finally arrived, it was so dark that not only did auto-focus fail to work, but when manually focusing the lens, I had to use the light from my cellphone in order to properly do so. Once I got everything ready, I pushed the shutter button to take the picture and fifteen seconds later, I got this:


Now, granted, I did do some work on that photograph to optimize it. But it didn't take very long and I don't even think I could've gotten that picture had I set it to one of the automatic settings. By the way, just so there is no confusion, no flash was used to take that picture. And I don't lie, it really was that dark.

So what is the take away from all of this? If you want to take good pictures of food in not-so-great lighting conditions, you're going to have to take control of your camera and get out of the automatic exposure settings. You'll probably also need to get a tabletop tripod, too. Is my new rig a bit more conspicuous at restaurants? Absolutely. But I've discovered through a lot of trial and PLENTY of error, that there just isn't any other way to get consistently good pictures.

A Birthday Dinner At L'Albatros

Having not been back to L'Albatros in almost a year, when friend Diane arranged for a surprise birthday dinner party for her husband Steve at the aforementioned restaurant, I have to admit that I had mixed feelings. While I've enjoyed the food during my previous two meals at the restaurant, both times I felt cramped and honestly, unimpressed with the uncomfortable white patio-esque plastic chairs that dot the various rooms of the restaurant.

Their penchant for incredibly low lighting has not only hampered my ability to take a decent photograph, but also walks that fine line between romantic restaurant and bar scene where you might not want to continue the conversation with the person across from you were the lights turned to a level where you could fully embrace your partner's looks. However, it was the favorite French brasserie of the birthday boy, so I put aside my reservations and focused on having a delicious meal and good conversation instead.

As opposed to my other two meals at L'Albatros, I actually arrived early enough in the day to finally get a good picture of the front entrance to the restaurant:


Once inside, we were shown to our rather long table which quite quickly filled up with guests. So many guests, in fact, that the restaurant needed to add another extension to accommodate all eleven of us. Once we were all seated, I realized that the menu had changed fairly significantly since my last visit. I decided to include updated photographs of both the top and bottom of the menu:



Bread has traditionally been metered out a slice or two at a time and this visit was no different. The only oddity about tonight's bread service was that an overzealous busser attempted to clear bread plates off the table after our appetizers, forgetting that some people enjoy bread with their main course. As such, new bread plates had to be brought out to replace the cleared ones.

The bread itself,


as always, was fresh and tasty. At one point, I believe that L'Albatros got their bread from On The Rise bakery in Cleveland Heights and the quality of tonight's version seemed in line with that fact. Accompanying the bread were plates of olive oil:


To L'Abatros' credit, they were actually pretty good about returning with the bread basket to see if guests wanted additional pieces of bread. In times past, after the initial round of "breading," the bread basket never seemed to make a second round.

After filling the drink orders, our server began taking everyone's food order. Not having had it in a while, I decided to go with what seemed to be a French specialty, Escargot. Here was a shot of the dish as it arrived at the table:


After the server removed the lid, you could see the pool of melted butter in which the little snails swam:


A lot of the non-foodie folks that I know (including most of my family) would absolutely make that funny squishy face that somehow indicates utter disgust at the notion of ordering snails, but I have to tell you, gentle reader, that when done correctly, they are quite delicious. They don't really have a strong flavor on their own, but tend to take on the flavors of the other ingredients in the dish, usually butter and garlic. Tonight's version contained TONS of butter (I can hear Paula Dean squealing with delight), cooked onion and fennel, and bits of toasted crouton, all swimming in the same pool.

The big trick with snails is cooking them properly. Too long and they turn into tough little balls of rubber. Fortunately, L'Albatros knew how to cook them properly and these were tender with just a tiny amount of chew. The crouton added a nice element of crunch and I used the fresh bread to dip into the sauce. I did end up squirting some of the lemon juice into the tiny crock, but I think I would've needed a wedge or two more to cut through the fattiness of that much butter. The dish, overall, was quite good and I ate almost all of it, leaving only the pool of melted butter behind.

For my main course, I decided to go with a French classic made popular here in America by the one and only Julia Child, Boeuf a la Bourguignonne:


This dish was only available on Saturdays and even though I had seen it on the menu in a previous visit, it wasn't until tonight that I actually had a chance to try it out. Traditionally, this was a braised dish using red wine as the primary braising liquid. L'Albatros' version lacked any red wine flavor or the acidity that the wine would bring. The birthday boy was very familiar with this dish and commented that the sauce was rather thin as well. And while I was surprised to find a lack of wine flavor, I wasn't disappointed in the taste of the dish. The salt level was quite nice and the meat was tender and juicy. The accompanying root vegetables were also pleasantly cooked through and while not mushy, weren't also crunchy and raw either. Additionally, the level of smoke added by the bacon was balanced and didn't overpower the dish.

After our dinner plates were cleared, dessert menus were distributed to the masses:


Not being in a particularly "dessert" mood tonight, I decided to pass, but quite a few people ordered something sweet or savory (in the case of the cheese selection) to finish their meal. L'Albatros is known for their cheese board and when it arrives, you will know because both your sense of sight and smell will be assaulted. The level of knowledge possessed by the fromagier was quite impressive as he was able to answer all of the questions presented by tonight's guests.

Sadly, there were a few mishaps in tonight's experience, although they happened to others and not to myself. Some dishes didn't come out as expected and one diner's dish was served stone cold. When it was sent back to the kitchen, instead of re-firing the dish, they simply reheated it which caused the perfectly cooked meat to overcook. Others commented that their dishes didn't live up to expectations while some were completely content with tonight's meal. I will give kudos to the kitchen staff as all eleven appetizers and entrees came out to the table at the same time. Not an easy feat to accomplish for a large table of people on a busy Saturday night. Additionally, I wanted to give kudos to our server, who managed to split the check for the table into eight separate bills without a single error.

Negative blips aside, I still enjoyed the food tonight at L'Albatros and suggest that if you'd like to take a trip to a French brasserie without having to purchase plane tickets and take a flight across the "pond," give L'Albatros Brasserie and Bar a chance the next time you are in Cleveland. Reservations are highly recommended, even for smaller parties.

(In my best Julia Child voice) Bon appétit!

Another Visit To L'Albatros

I was recently invited to join a group of other diners at the latest Cleveland Eats group of Meetup.com. The group schedules periodic dinner dates at some of Cleveland and Akron's newest and hottest restaurants. Tonight's dining destination? L'Albatros in University Circle. Having eaten there several times in the past, I was excited to return again to experience some of Zack Bruell's amazing country French fare.

Parking has always been a bit tight at L'Albatros. In the past there was a self-service machine at the front of the lot where you inserted cash or a credit card, paid for the number of hours you needed, and proceeded to walk into the restaurant. I don't know if that system has been replaced, but tonight there was a gentleman at the front entrance to the parking lot taking cash and doling out parking passes. Fortunately I managed to snap one of the few remaining spots available.

Here was a shot of the entrance to the restaurant:


Once inside, I was seated at the exact same table I've been at time and time again. Apparently there are only a few spots to put large parties. And as last time, the lighting inside the restaurant was extremely dim. In my last post, I had to pretty much discard all of my photos as they came out way too dark. This time, I had the advantage of having a flash camera. Fortunately, I sat at the end of the table where both food photographers were sitting, so we could minimize the exposure to others at the table.

As our entire party finally settled in for a much anticipated meal, one of the servers began doling out slices of French bread:


On its own, this was excellent bread, a sourdough version. Of course, I remarked about how good the bread tasted during my last visit, too. While there was softened butter for those who wished to partake, one additional condiment was present on the table that I hadn't seen before, a whole-grain, country-style Dijon mustard:


I thought that this was an even better condiment than the butter would have been. It was sweet, tart, spicy and salty all at the same time. And since the mustard seeds were only partially ground, they gave the spread a lovely texture that contrasted nicely with the bread.

Even though I had a flash camera tonight, menu shots are more or less pointless because of the physical size of the menu. Don't misunderstand, the menu was only a front and back side of a single piece of heavyweight paper. However, the physical dimensions on that piece of paper would've made photographs either incredibly hard to read or oddly disjointed. A better use of your time would be to check out the menu already posted on their website.

In the end, I decided to go with three tastes tonight. First, a salad from the daily specials. Second, a dish from one of their standard menu appetizers. Finally, an entree from one of their standard menu dishes.

Having given in to my relatively recent love affair with fresh roasted beets, once I heard that the daily salad special contained them, I was sold:


Consisting of a mixture of golden yellow and red beets, goat cheese, and arugula, this was simply dressed in a very light and slightly sweet champagne vinaigrette. Between the sweetness of the beets, the tanginess from the goat cheese, and the pepperiness from the arugula, this was quite the taste sensation. The leaves were perfectly dressed and by the time I reached the bottom of the plate, not an extra drop of dressing could be found.

For my appetizer course, the chicken liver and foie gras mousseline was simply calling my name:


Served with pickled red onion, cornichon and toasted bread slices, this was a sinful and unctuous way to celebrate liver. The mousseline was incredibly smooth, spreading easily on the toasted bread and delivering a mild liver flavor that literally melted in your mouth. Paired with the acidic onions and cornichon, this dish hit all the right spots on my tongue. I didn't ask my server, but I'm certain based on how light the mousseline tasted, it must have contained either whipped heavy cream or butter. Either way, it was decadent and delicious.

Finally, the main course. Having recently seen an episode of Bobby Flay's Throwdown series on moules frites (aka mussels and fries), I knew that once I saw it on the menu at L'Alabtros, I had to order it. Here was a shot of my entree tonight:


The mussels were sitting in a white wine and butter sauce with lots of fresh garlic. The frites were topped with a chili-spiced aioli that gave a mild, but successful "zing!" to each bite of the frites. The mussels themselves were perfectly cooked and very tender. The broth, while delicious, really needed something other than frites in order to soak up the amazing juice ... perhaps some nice crusty French bread. Sadly, by that point, the "bread guy" had stopped making his rounds at our table. The frites were decent enough, clearly they were homemade, but they just don't have that nice crispness to them that I really desire in a fried potato. That being said, they were consistent with other versions of frites that I've had in Cleveland.

While some of our group still had room for dessert, I needed to pay my check and leave a little earlier since it was a work night and I still had to drive back to Akron. Overall, I really enjoyed my return trip back to L'Albatros and I'm happy that Chef Bruell's vision of a French brasserie is enjoying continued success. I know I am looking forward to returning soon for another excellent meal. The casual, yet intimate feel of the dining room should appeal to diners who are looking for a romantic evening out or who might just be looking to be transported to a small countryside restaurant in the southern part of France.