Food Photography: Experimenting with Camera Tripods

Hey everybody, today I wanted to share some lessons I learned through some photography experiments and to get some feedback. Recently I purchased a new tripod for my camera to improve some of my photographs on the blog. There's three main aspects I'll be posting about over the next few weeks: camera positioning, lighting, and props. Today's post involves camera positioning.

I find camera positioning to be something that you can experiment a ton with and still have lots to learn. This past weekend I made some gluten free French toast for breakfast and decided to take the opportunity to take shots of it at different angles. The first I'd like to talk about is the image up above. I positioned the camera to about 4 inches above the table, and situated the tripod as close to the table as I could. I angled the  camera slightly downwards. I like this camera angle in a situation where there are multiple props in the entire view, or multiple plates of food in one image. 

The next perspective I tried was one where I had increased the height of the camera by 6 inches, and angled the camera further downwards to keep the toast in view. I prefer using this angle when I want to focus on one plate of food while capturing 1-2 props  in the peripheral view. In my opinion, one drawback with this method is it is harder to capture finer detail of the food, especially if you are not using optimal lighting.

The third position that I tried was a height in between the previous two. This allowed me to achieve a greater camera zoom without losing focus. I prefer this angle to the previous because it has less empty space in the photo, and obtains a greater level of detail in the food itself.

What are your thoughts? Any recommendations or things you would change?