Rooms -any advice?

[davholla]

I might need to photograph a couple of rooms to rent, obviously I know that they need to be tidy first.
Any ideas about the best way to photo of them, I guess the best way would be not to use flash but use a long shutter speed to get natural light.
They are small rooms btw what aperture would be good.
I will be using a Canon 7D MKII and 18-135 STM lens, would HDR be an idea?

 

[tirediron]

HDR is an option; I prefer to multiple speedlights, gelled to match ambient. As for aperture, that will depend on the DoF you need. Use a table such as this one.

 

[Derrel]

Hmmmm...maybe not a JUST long shutter speed. In many cases, its best to open the curtains to get some sunlight or daylight into the room, and use some flash bounced off of a wall or ceiling or door to "bring up" the non-sunlit areas. Of course, this depends on season, and climate you are in, and the rooms and their windows too. Some rooms might have a LOT of outdoor light coming in. Aperture depends on the DOF needed. Shorter end of the 18-135 (12,19,20,22,24) would likely show the most angular view of the room. F/stop? I dunno....f/13 to f/22 for the most in-focus. Shutter speed, depends on the sun-light areas; flash fills in the rest of the room.

Again, this somewhat depends on the climate: on a BRIGHT day in California near the beach, ISO will be 100, f/stop 16; shutter 1/100 to 1/125 second for SUN-light, a bit slower for sky-light like 1/50 to 1/80 second; flash at somewhere from Full power, down to 1/4 power, depending on how powerful the flash actually is, and where it is aimed to bounce off of.

 

[beagle100]

actually off-camera flash is good for photographing room interiors
But HDR is also good, take several bracketed pics and merge with photomatix or photoshop

 

[Dave442]

It would be very good if you could do a set of shots, then be able to go back and do it again. I tried HDR one time, but usually just blending in a few things is easier - you can do a shot with a lamp turned off then blend in a shot with the lamp turned on, same for blending in a window so the outside is not blown out.

I would think that just a single good shot can give better results than what most people are posting for rooms to rent.

 

[Designer]

I guess the best way would be not to use flash but use a long shutter speed to get natural light.

Have a look at how professional photographers shoot interiors. They not only use flash, but multiple flashes (hidden, of course) that illuminate the room's darkest corners. They're not evenly lighted, but the best features are lighted more and the less interesting parts are darker. This is not an easy genre to break into, but check out some examples, and give it a shot.

 

[photo1x1.com]

Every single answer above is correct.
I guess you don´t have multiple off camera speedlights, correct?
I´d consider different approaches and take the image that best works for you. Of course it depends a little on your budget, your time and with it on the money you can make renting it. The better your images, the bigger the chance you can rent for a higher price and/or to get more customers/sell quicker and therefore get the investment back.

Is the view out of the windows important to potential clients because it is a nice view, I´d switch on the lights indoor, and wait for the evening when the ambient light outside is low and matches the light indoors. The difficulty about this technique is white balance. The light outside will be very blue. If you don´t like that, you can correct it in two ways: the cheaper way is to get some smaller blue gel filter and cover the indoor lights, cutting them into pieces and sticking it on the lamps The more expensive would be to get a roll of orange gel filter (see these from B&H) and cover the windows from the outside. It´s not quite easy to decide which filter you need, but I´d go for a rather deep orange - even if the color is too deep, it rather looks like a sunset. This is an approach they use for movies btw, but it works really well.

Second option for capturing the nice view: wait until around 1 hour before sunset - the light outside will be more yellow, but not as bright as during daylight (hopefully your window is not oriented towards the west, and you get light falling in). Put the camera on a tripod, set the focus to manual after you focussed and best use a cable release or something wireless - not touching the camera (and setting the focus to manual) is better to have the images perfectly aligned. Use off camera flash and take multiple exposures, each with the flash lighting at a different part of the room. Then you go to photoshop, open all images in one file as layers, auto align the layers and carefully mask out the darker areas of each image, revealing the flashlight for the different parts of the room. You might have to work with different brush opacities to blend them all together nicely.

Third option for capturing the nice view: HDR as suggested above - don´t overdo the HDR look though and keep it natural.

If the view is not that nice which is valid for the majority of the rooms rented, you don´t want to show it. So I´d overexpose the windows. Then you can still go with HDR and leave the windows overexposed, but a single shot might also work (even without flash to fill the darker parts). Using this "technique" will also make darker rooms look much more friendly and bright. Don´t be afraid to totally overexpose the windows and even get some lens flare.

Other things to consider: you definitely want to shoot RAW and edit later in photoshop and/or lightroom (or similar software) to brighten the shadows and lower the highlights for non-HDRs. Don´t be afraid of noise when bringing up the shadows - most potential clients are no photographers and wouldn´t care at all - especially for the smaller web images.

Set the aperture to around f 8-11 and choose the right shutter speed to get a correct exposure (with a good tripod or a bad one with using an additional cable release you can choose any shutter speed you want).

Regarding the focal length: wide lenses will make a room appear bigger which in my experience is what attracts customers. Architects tend to like longer focal lengths to present their work in a more artistical way, showing the details. Especially for wideangles: keep your camera level in every direction whenever possible to avoid perspective distortion. Having said all that, you might want to rent a wider lens. That 18mm you have equals 29mm on full frame. I´d go for somewhere around 10-12mm, like this lens which is quite a bargain depending on where you live you will probably find a store that rents lenses.

There are even more ways to achieve great images, but these are the ones which are most cost effective and not too difficult to achieve for people with not the biggest experience in architecture photography.

 

[davholla]

Thank you all, I should have said that I am in London UK and that the rooms are small - sadly most of them are here.

 

[dennybeall]

You can "stage" the rooms with regular size furniture but if you can find apartment size or what's called "Model Home Furniture" the rooms will look a bit larger.

 

[TCampbell]

The outdoor light is typically the problem. The exposure outside on in the middle of a sunny day is almost always going to be EV 15 (ISO 100, 1/100th sec, f/16). The exposure "inside" will be ... less ... much much less. So the exposure that nicely captures the room will have a blown-out over-exposed shot out the window. The exposure that doesn't over-expose the view out the window will leave the room extremely dark.

If you bring your own lighting to the party (photo strobes) then you can boost the light level "inside" to match the natural light level "outside" and the shot looks great.

But light has has a "fall off" where things get darker the farther away they are from the source of the light (the "inverse square law" of physics). This means just one light is generally not going to be enough.

Hence you can use several lights... or do HDR ... or wait for the light "outside" to get dim (evening) and shoot it then. Regardless of "how" you solve the difference in lighting, you're trying to get the "indoor" vs. "outdoor" light to be fairly close. They don't have to match. Usually if the "outside" isn't at least a little brighter it'll look strange (we expect it to look brighter) -- but hopefully by not more than 1 stop brighter.

 

[davholla]

The outdoor light is typically the problem. The exposure outside on in the middle of a sunny day is almost always going to be EV 15 (ISO 100, 1/100th sec, f/16). The exposure "inside" will be ... less ... much much less. So the exposure that nicely captures the room will have a blown-out over-exposed shot out the window. The exposure that doesn't over-expose the view out the window will leave the room extremely dark.

If you bring your own lighting to the party (photo strobes) then you can boost the light level "inside" to match the natural light level "outside" and the shot looks great.

But light has has a "fall off" where things get darker the farther away they are from the source of the light (the "inverse square law" of physics). This means just one light is generally not going to be enough.

Hence you can use several lights... or do HDR ... or wait for the light "outside" to get dim (evening) and shoot it then. Regardless of "how" you solve the difference in lighting, you're trying to get the "indoor" vs. "outdoor" light to be fairly close. They don't have to match. Usually if the "outside" isn't at least a little brighter it'll look strange (we expect it to look brighter) -- but hopefully by not more than 1 stop brighter.

To be honest at the moment the light outside seems to be dim until about 12pm and from 2pm onwards.

 

[tirediron]

To be honest at the moment the light outside seems to be dim until about 12pm and from 2pm onwards.

No doubt, but even though it's not apparent to your eye, it's probably at least 4-5 stops lower inside.

 

[davholla]

One problem with these photos, is that I am not sure what they should be like as they are not for me.
If I take a photo of a bird and I am happy with it, that is the main aim - although I like it, if it goes to flickr explore but these are for other people's consumption which is different.

 

[greybeard]

Especially for wideangles: keep your camera level in every direction whenever possible to avoid perspective distortion. Having said all that, you might want to rent a wider lens. That 18mm you have equals 29mm on full frame. I´d go for somewhere around 10-12mm, like this lens which is quite a bargain depending on where you live you will probably find a store that rents lenses.
.

Keeping the camera level on all plains is crucial for this type of photography. If not you will have cartoon looking door ways and corners.

 

[photo1x1.com]

One problem with these photos, is that I am not sure what they should be like as they are not for me.
If I take a photo of a bird and I am happy with it, that is the main aim - although I like it, if it goes to flickr explore but these are for other people's consumption which is different.

I don't know if it helps, but this is how we sold our appartement:
Galerie
Most of the images shot with 17mm on a full frame Canon or 10mm on a 1.5x crop Sony.