When beauty is the brief – filming Nigella Lawson's TV series

From the sumptuous food to the celebrity host, rich colours to beautiful bokeh, Nigella Lawson's television cookery programmes are a feast for the eyes. Her most recent six-part series Cook, Eat, Repeat – based on a cookbook combining personal essays and recipes – covered lockdown classics like banana puddings and no-knead bread through to caramel custard and indulgent crab mac-and-cheese.

Behind the camera is director of photography Robin Fox, who filmed Simply Nigella in 2015, At My Table in 2017 and Cook, Eat, Repeat in 2020. His diverse experience also spans documentary, commercials and drama, and he has recently filmed in the West Bank for Netflix series Captive and shot skincare commercials for cosmetics company Estée Lauder, taking him "from the gritty to the glossy". But filming Nigella's programmes is something of a dream gig.

"I've been a fan of her shows forever, partly because they've always been beautifully shot," he says. "They've always looked gorgeous, and if there was one food show I'd want to shoot, it'd be that one."

Nigella's programmes have become synonymous with beauty, with images as rich as the food. Here, Robin shares how Canon's range of Cine Primes and a considered filming approach create this cinematic aesthetic, and how the Canon EOS R5 added a new dimension to the latest series.

"From cake to curry, there are certain things that you look for in each dish – colour, texture, contrast, sheen and form," says Robin. "The lighting has to be adapted for each one of those things to get the most out of it.

"I'm always looking for the best way to backlight something to give it shape and contrast whilst using enough 'fill' so you can see detail in the densely dark areas. Reflecting the light in food is often better than lighting directly."

At the heart of the series' cinematic look sits a set of Canon Cine Prime lenses. "I've always thought that as an owner-operator, the affordability and the results you get from them are just extraordinary," says Robin. "They easily compare to lenses at least twice their price, and the results are gorgeous. They're very fast, and they're sharp, but not to the point where they look video-like. Footage always looks cinematic and skin tones look beautiful. You can't really ask for more than that."

With the series shot on a soundstage, careful camerawork is required to create the aesthetic of being at home with Nigella in a cosy kitchen. "To try to make it look as believable as possible, we shoot very shallow," he says. "We also try to flare the lens whenever we can, to give it that sunny-day, real sunshine feel. Those two elements help gel things."

For the latest series, Robin added a new B-camera to his rig – the Canon EOS R5, which was released as he was preparing for Cook, Eat, Repeat. The full-frame mirrorless camera was used to capture 4K gimbal-mounted footage for on-location shots where Nigella is speaking to camera, as well as publicity stills. "I was absolutely blown away by it," Robin says. "It's the closest stills camera I've seen to replicate the look that we get on our main camera. I can't quite put my finger on what it is, whether it's the gamma curve, but the results are so accurate for what we shoot. It's fantastic."

The crew had a week of shooting pieces to camera out of the studio, filming Nigella walking and talking to camera in the streets of London. "We reviewed all the rushes at the end of the first day, and the footage from the Canon EOS R5 was just gorgeous," says Robin. "We couldn't fault it at all in terms of sharpness or quality. So, we stood down our main camera for the EOS R5 – when we saw the results, we didn't look back!"

When following Nigella at work in the studio on the Cine Primes, Robin relies on focus puller Ollie Lockett to keep time with her constant movements. "We shoot everything at pretty much T2. Nigella is backwards and forwards at the counter, so keeping her in focus is down to being in tune with her and the way she moves. It's a bit of a dance they do, but Ollie is exceptional – people have stepped in to replace him and found it very difficult."

But on the Canon EOS R5, after conducting tests, they found that the camera's powerful EOS ITR AF X autofocus system, which harnesses deep-learning AI first introduced in Canon's flagship action camera the EOS-1D X Mark III, was more than up to the job itself. "Once it locks on, it's locked on," Robin says. "The EOS R5 was absolutely bulletproof for what we needed it to do."

As well as creating some of the most visually arresting food videography, filming Nigella's programmes comes with some serious perks. "Because we cook each dish five times to film it, that means there's five dishes normally knocking around that go straight to the crew," laughs Robin. "We've all got a fork resting in our back pockets. By the end of the day, we've all got the recipe down and we'll be trying it at home throughout the weekend.

"Nigella's an absolute joy to work with," Robin adds. "The way she comes across on screen is how she is in real life. She's upbeat and positive and she carries our crew along."