Hotel Room Photography

[samvegas]

Hey guys, total noob here. I just have a question. A few years back a photographer was hired by our hotel to take photos of the rooms and restaurants. The person came with a DSLR camera and a tripod, no lights or anything. He took the attached photos, all i remember is he did some settings, then stood back and the photos were shooting on their own. If I was to re-create these, what camera, lens, and settings am I looking for? And what editing will take place to make it look this way? Also, are these or similar to these possible with mobile phone cameras? Thanks for the help

 

[Braineack]

You shouldn't try to recreate those...

 

[adamhiram]

Any decent DSLR or mirrorless camera should do, including most entry level models. A wide angle lens is your friend here - looking at these, I would guess the wide end of a standard zoom, so around 18mm on a crop sensor camera or 24mm for full frame. The kit lens should be fine since you'll be using a smaller aperture anyway, although higher end lenses will likely be sharper, and something wider may be useful in smaller spaces. You'll want to shoot from a medium height to avoid perspective distortion and keep the vertical lines vertical, so assuming 8' ceilings, shoot from a height of around 4'. The automatic shooting you observed was likely bracketing, where the photographer took different exposures to combine in post, rather than relying on their own lighting. This allows for brighter shadows without overexposing brighter areas. Architectural and real estate photography is a skill unto itself, but with a few simply rules you can achieve some pretty nice results.

 

[wfooshee]

These were shot with a very wide lens, perhaps as short as 14mm on a full-frame camera, or 10mm on a crop frame. Look how much taller the right-hand corner of the room looks than the left-hand in that first shot. That exaggerated perspective distortion comes from an ultra-wide lens, which would be the only way to see the entire room from actually within the room. I don't think a kit lens will allow you to see enough of the room to be useful.

As for "photos were shooting on their own," it was probably bracketing as mentioned before, so he could apply HDR in post-processing. He sets the camera to bracket a certain number of shots with a certain variance from the metered exposure, and just tells it "Go!" At least three images, perhaps as many as nine, with a different settings for each image, the center image of each sequence being "correct" metered exposure, the rest a certain amount darker or lighter. HDR can combine those and pull out the "useful" parts of each frame, where a single image will have sections that are blown out or too dark to retain any detail.

 

[Rickbb]

While the lighting and composition is fine the quality is pretty bad. That may be just the jpeg file you had to upload here though.

As has been said any good brand of “pro-sumer” DSLR with a wide angle would work. Just don’t go too wide as that will introduce distortion at the edges of the image.

 

[JoeW]

Others have talked about the equipment. I'll talk a little about the settings.

If you have a good tripod (as in rock solid, probably pay at least $150 for it) then you can do a long exposure without any blur. You likely need to shoot with a narrow aperture (so a DoF that is something like f20) so the foreground and the farthest point are all in focus. As others have side, you absolutely need a super wide angle lens. With that comes distortion so you'll need to be good enough with post-processing software to correct for that. Additionally, it's very easy to get "hot spots" (and these photos have them from the lights) or glare (off of metal frames or tables) from the lights unless you use post-processing to eliminate them. You will want to shoot with a very low ISO (100).

 

[vintagesnaps]

Realistically you won't be able to recreate these. What matters more is the person behind the camera and the person's skill level.

Camera settings would need to be determined by metering the scene, then determining how to set ISO, aperture, shutter speed, etc. to get a proper exposure. The photographer would need to know what lenses to use, how to frame and compose images, etc.

A disadvantage to a super wide lens and trying to get most all of the room in photos like the first two is that about 1/3 of the photo is ceiling (and there's distortion as mentioned).

In all of Vegas I imagine there would be plenty of pro photographers. Look at their websites and view their portfolios. It's going to be necessary to hire a pro, and one that charges a competitive rate; if rates are cheap then you'll probably get what you pay for.

 

[weepete]

that looks like it was shot by an experienced professional, the light look really well balanced in it to me.

It's one of these things that looks simple, but takes quite a bit of skill to pull off.

As ponted out, most DSLRs or quality mirrorless cameras should do, but there's a few things that can make life a lot easier. You'r pro probably shot with a full frame camera with good colour reproduction and very sharp glass, with a decent tripod.

A camera that can take 5 or 7 bracketed shots and that's ISO invariant wil help but is not essential. He may have used focus stacking, luminance masking or another HDR technique but a decent computer, a good quality and colour accurate monitor, a photometer for screen calibration (x-rite or datacolor), a copy of photoshop, probably lightroom too and quite a lot of learning will be needed.

It would be suprising if you could get similar shots with a mobile phone camera, the sensors are a too small, the lenses have quite a bit of distortion and the software isn't quite there yet to balance the light. You could try it and see if you can get close, mobiles are pretty good these days but I think you'll need something with a bigger sensor and better glass.

 

[samvegas]

Thanks for all the replies guys, it was extremely helpful. So I have beem to much few stores with the information I got here and narrowed it down to the Sony A7C body and FE 12-24mm f/4 G lens. What is your opinion on this setup?

 

[ntz]

Thanks for all the replies guys, it was extremely helpful. So I have beem to much few stores with the information I got here and narrowed it down to the Sony A7C body and FE 12-24mm f/4 G lens. What is your opinion on this setup?

just go and try it ... I would recommend to do some focus/exposure stacking in postprocess to get incredibly sharp photos like this .. tripod will definitely help ... I believe that you should use tripid + AP > 11

 

[weepete]

Thanks for all the replies guys, it was extremely helpful. So I have beem to much few stores with the information I got here and narrowed it down to the Sony A7C body and FE 12-24mm f/4 G lens. What is your opinion on this setup?

That looks like a great setup!

The A7C has fewer pixels than it's rivals, but it's well within the range to produce good quality prints. It's a full frame, Sony sensor so low light performace will be as good as it comes. For bracketing it'll bracket 3 or 5 shots with a self timer which is perfect for that kind of HDR/exposure blend. Dynamic range is exllent at 14.5 stops, and it's ISO invariant. The lens you've chosen looks like a solid choice with excellent sharpness, though there image quality does drop i the corners at wide focal lengths but that's pretty much to be expected from an ultrawide.

That camera and lens should be comfortably capable of producing the quality and standard of the example shots you are after.

 

[PixFixer]

Hey guys, total noob here. I just have a question. A few years back a photographer was hired by our hotel to take photos of the rooms and restaurants. The person came with a DSLR camera and a tripod, no lights or anything. He took the attached photos, all i remember is he did some settings, then stood back and the photos were shooting on their own. If I was to re-create these, what camera, lens, and settings am I looking for? And what editing will take place to make it look this way? Also, are these or similar to these possible with mobile phone cameras? Thanks for the help

This person really knew what they were doing and giving you a lesson will not make you able to do the same work with this same quality. This had to be shot thoughtfully and rest done in post would be my guess. I do work like that in my market. Goes to show you, ya' don't need a trucks worth of equipment to get the job done. You need the right tools and a tone of working experience to use it. You need more like this, and what matters to you is selling your hotel, rehire that guy.

 

[JBPhotog]

I was sitting next to a pilot in a small plane once and all I saw was a bit of stick work and he moved his feet a few times. Should be easy enough to do that, I'll let you know how it goes.