Best Lenses For Food Photography: Must-have For All Food Bloggers | Most Searched Products

First of all, you do not need to have a broad range of lenses to take great pictures of food, or to spend a lot of money on lenses upfront. Especially if you’re new to photography. Having said that, lenses are where you should spend the most significant part of your budget. You should look at them as a long-term investment in your photography skills. Though, yes, any camera can help you produce great results when shooting pictures of food, you’ll need to add the right type of lens to the recipe.

So here’s our compilation of some of the best lenses for food photography, depending on your type of camera and shots you want.


If you want something that is more versatile than a prime or macro lens, then this Canon EF 24-70mm f/4.0L IS USM will be a great pick for food photography. This lens sports a lightweight design and L-series build, but also has many other add-ons for the food photographers. The constant maximum f/4 aperture is handy, but the hybrid image stabilization system is really useful. Another trick up the sleeve of this lens is the max magnification factor of 0.7x.

This is much greater than most standard zooms and is activated by an extra push-action on the zoom switch. Image quality is very pleasing overall, with good contrast and sharpness, although vignetting at wide apertures is a little severe for an f/4 lens.


When shooting food, everybody expects and wants to do minimum editing later afterward. And when you need an incredibly sharp lens that offers a focal length and has macro qualities, a 60mm macro lens is a smart choice. Because, macro lenses help you show off the most minute details of the food.

With a maximum aperture of f/2.8 (and bigger in others), this type of lens captures light really well and its macro optics allow a short minimum focusing distance for taking close up shots.


The 50mm lens can be really useful, especially if you don’t have a zoom. This lens is good for shooting food top-down and for tablescapes. For food photography, 50mm is actually considered a wide-angle lens. Built with renowned NIKKOR technology and Nikon optics, this lens delivers cutting-edge innovation and excellence.

Delivering smooth bokeh and precision shots at fast shutter speeds, the NIKKOR Z 50mm f/1.8 S captures crisp and high-resolution images under extreme lighting conditions. Designed to be light and easy to carry, this lens is perfect for photography on the go.


A Sony SEL30M35 30mm f/3.5 e-Mount Macro Lens can give you a very natural viewing perspective. It is pretty lightweight and is exceptionally portable, making it versatile enough for everyday use. In fact, the lens has a high-quality aluminum alloy construction that assures maximum durability. Its internal stepping motor and rear-focusing design lets you capture brilliant videos.

The SEL30M35 is a true 1:1 macro lens with a 2.4 cm minimum working distance and manages to render close-up detail with superb resolution and contrast. Instead of a standard polygon-shaped lens aperture, this lens features a 7-blade circular aperture for more natural, rounded defocusing or bokeh.


The need for a tilt-shift lens for food photography is crucial. But not many photographers consider having one of these because it is more popularly used in architectural photography and it can be pricey too. But only once you have one of these, will you know that it may just end up being your most favorite lens for this niche.

The Tamron SP 90mm F/2.8 Di Macro 1:1 USD Lens can give you precise control over the perspective and plane of focus, which means you can easily isolate an entire dish by blurring everything else out and correct the perspective so you don’t distort the scene using its tilt movement.

DISCLAIMER: The Times of India’s journalists were not involved in the production of this article.