Gỏi cuốn, almost like home

Nothing brings family together year round (but especially on warm lazy days) like cold served gỏi cuốn.

Boiled Shrimp, Boiled Bacon strip, rive vermicelli, and spinach together in banh trang (rice paper).  Accompanied with dipping sauce.

Boiled Shrimp, Boiled Bacon strip, rive vermicelli, and spinach together in banh trang (rice paper). Accompanied with dipping sauce.

Today’s dish was staged on our granite counter-top in our modern-day designed kitchen with typical high-volume builder-grade overhead can lighting.  To avoid unwanted reflections from the counter-top from showing up, I attached my handy Hoya Circular Polarizer Filter[*] to attenuate them out.  With the camera on the tripod, I composed the shot and triggered the self-timer.  The 10-second beeps were enough time for me to position the Diffuser Disc [*] for softening the overhead light source to reduce shadows.

A diffuser disc placed after the camera has metered the exposure (i.e. self-timer is running) does have a reducing effect on total exposure, since it is reducing the light into the camera that it originally thought it was getting.  This can be compensated by adjusting color levels post-process, and/or adjusting up the EV compensation on the camera.  On my shooter, +2/3 EV gets it pretty close when diffusing light.

If necessary, consult your camera’s documentation for exposure compensation.  Its typically denoted in the viewfinder and/or body LCD display by a linear gauge usually ranging from -3 to +3, in 1/3 increments.


As I’ve previously written, a circular polarizing filter is really nice to have on hand, as a versatile color enhancer (in the right conditions) and reflection tamer.  I’ve been happy with the Hoya line of Circular Polarizers [*].

For a lot of the close-up photos I’ve done, diffusing the light soruce with the diffuser disc core of a kit like the Neewer 43-inch / 110cm 5-in-1 Collapsible Multi-Disc Light Reflector [*] makes a difference in little-to-no shadows around the delicious tasty food items in the shot, vs having hard dark hues surrounding them.


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This entry was posted in Accessories, Cameras, Filters, Food, gluten-free, Lighting. Bookmark the permalink.

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