Swapping out to 'daylight' bulbs for real estate shots

personalt

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I have been dabbling a bit more in real estate photography, mostly practicing on a building I own that will be a weekly shore rental. As part of the renovation process we have been replacing bulbs in the house with LED bulbs and that got me thinking about color temp for photographing the rooms. .

Ecosmart (HomeDepot) sells 3 bulb temps.
Softwhite 2700
Brightwhite 3000
Daylight 5000

We have been buying the daylight LED bulbs because we like that crisp look but I still have the original incandescent bulbs in some rooms. It seems like swapping out bulbs to daylight bulbs would make color matching a lot easier as the actual daylight, my flash and these interior light bulbs would have a close color temp.

Would I be right to think that it would be easier to photography these rooms if I swapped out the bulbs with daylight bulbs as a go? Any downside to this?
 
Would I be right to think that it would be easier to photography these rooms if I swapped out the bulbs with daylight bulbs as a go? Any downside to this?
I think attempting to color match the bulbs with window light is "iffy" at best. I'm not sure what the pros do, but I know they use flash for interior shots. You can use incandescent bulbs in lighting fixtures if you gel your flash(es) to match. Make sure all the bulbs in the room are the same, gel the flashes to match, and capture the Raw files. Then it will be fairly simple to correct the WB in post.
 
I don't believe its simple to correct for WB if you have various sources all over the place.

Since you're replacing bulbs as part of the job, I say pick a color that best matches the look/feel you want per job. Using a bounce-flashed exposure will make it much easier to keep the room neutral and then you can color the bulbs as desired. Depending on the job I might want to see a yellow glow to cozy houses, but a cooler feel in some industrial setting.

If I were to dabble, I'd probably try shooting bounce for my main exposure (with lights off) to get nice overall neutral exposure, but blend in ambient only (lights on) shots to bring out the interior lights. That way you won't have WB issues and can control how much/little interior light you want and you can blend luminosity and colors as needed.
 
Would I be right to think that it would be easier to photography these rooms if I swapped out the bulbs with daylight bulbs as a go? Any downside to this?
I think attempting to color match the bulbs with window light is "iffy" at best. I'm not sure what the pros do, but I know they use flash for interior shots. You can use incandescent bulbs in lighting fixtures if you gel your flash(es) to match. Make sure all the bulbs in the room are the same, gel the flashes to match, and capture the Raw files. Then it will be fairly simple to correct the WB in post.

Yeah I dont expect to get a 100% color match. But was thinking daylight is supposed to be around 5600, the strobe I bought is supposed to be 5000 and these blubs would be 5000 if I swapped them. The catalyst that started this idea was that I took some pictures earlier this week in a larger room at night with a speed light(didnt yet have a monolight). These were bulbs that were really warm, maybe 2600. white balance in my shots was all over the place, I assume it was because there was no ambient (because it was night) to pull white balance toward 5000 range. So it was just flash vs light fixtures fighting each other as I moved around the room. Taking pictures during the day time might make this all a mute issue as that will even things out a lot
 
I don't believe its simple to correct for WB if you have various sources all over the place.

Since you're replacing bulbs as part of the job, I say pick a color that best matches the look/feel you want per job. Using a bounce-flashed exposure will make it much easier to keep the room neutral and then you can color the bulbs as desired. Depending on the job I might want to see a yellow glow to cozy houses, but a cooler feel in some industrial setting.

If I were to dabble, I'd probably try shooting bounce for my main exposure (with lights off) to get nice overall neutral exposure, but blend in ambient only (lights on) shots to bring out the interior lights. That way you won't have WB issues and can control how much/little interior light you want and you can blend luminosity and colors as needed.

This seems to be the way the pro's do it. Do a flash exposure as main exposure and take a second ambient exposure. Blend in the ambiant to even out flash created shadows and to give some realism on how the light comes in the windows
 
..white balance in my shots was all over the place, I assume it was because there was no ambient (because it was night) to pull white balance toward 5000 range.
Taking a shot with more than one type of light does not "even out" to any one light color, rather you will see the different colors in different parts of the shot.
 
There is yet another option for Edison-based lights: a screw-in, Edison-based slave flash. These have been made for decades. Google Express

if you go roughly 5,000 degrees Kelvin on the light bulbs, you ought to get relatively close to most electronic flash. However, as Braineack mentioned, it _might_ look more-appealing to have some ares with warmer, more-incadescent-looking light. Keep in mind too, that lamp shades can "warm up" the light. Compare a wheat-colored lamp shade with a 60-Watt incandescent bulb (of ANY color temp output!) to say, an awful kitchen overhead fluorescent fixture with frosted plastic...

I am assuming you're going to light up the main interiors with electronic flash, and then use the shutter speed to control the brightness of the light coming in through exterior windows.
 
Thanks for all the good advice. I think my main color balance issues were most likely 1)Skill issues 2)Complicated by the fact that I was shooting at night long narrow rooms where there was a lot of flash light in foreground. As the flash fell off, the background was a lot warmer and poorly lite by warm incandescent ligh.

Without the window light I was slowing shutter and cranking iso which also blew out the lights more then I would like. Though I am sure a pro could blend in multiple flash lite images, actual daylight should make thing easier for me. I will try again tomorrow.
 

stairs_before_after
by Braineack, on Flickr


in this shot, the main light fixture is 5K florescent blubs, the rooms behind the mirror are like 3K LED bulbs, and the room with the vase is natural window light.

this is a simply 2.5sec exposure, was hell to correct for all the lights -- you can still see all the purple from the natural light after setting the WB for the florescent bulbs, and the other rooms are very yellow.

I went with good enough, as it was just a personal shot to document our renovation.
 
If you shoot in Raw try the adjustment brush in Adobe Camera Raw. You can do local adjustments that can do wonders for balancing out WB issues. FWIW, change your ACR settings so they always get saved as a Smart Object so when you are in PS and want to make some adjustments to the file you can go right back to ACR for tweaks.
 
From a practical PoV, which is not what you asked, I would go WARM white in the bedrooms, bathroom and hall between the bedroom and bathroom.
I found that "daylight" bulbs tends to wake up my eyes. Definitely NOT what I want before going to bed or going to the bathroom at night.
Living area (living and dining room, kitchen, halls, etc), I went with daylight bulbs.
 
I have been dabbling a bit more in real estate photography, mostly practicing on a building I own that will be a weekly shore rental. As part of the renovation process we have been replacing bulbs in the house with LED bulbs and that got me thinking about color temp for photographing the rooms. .

Ecosmart (HomeDepot) sells 3 bulb temps.
Softwhite 2700
Brightwhite 3000
Daylight 5000

We have been buying the daylight LED bulbs because we like that crisp look but I still have the original incandescent bulbs in some rooms. It seems like swapping out bulbs to daylight bulbs would make color matching a lot easier as the actual daylight, my flash and these interior light bulbs would have a close color temp.

Would I be right to think that it would be easier to photography these rooms if I swapped out the bulbs with daylight bulbs as a go? Any downside to this?

Let me wade into this discussion. Of the 700-1000 properties I shoot yearly for my clients, the one thing that really bothers me (other than "builder beige") is mismatched lighting. I am not just talking differing bulb temps, but also bulb temps that should never be used, especially when it comes to paint and staging. For the most part, Warm White is the most inviting and easiest to control if I am doing a run-n-gun shoot or blend/flambient (1 flash + 1 ambient) method. For those aspiring real estate photographers, unless you are Mike Kelley, are able to charge like Mike Kelley, or own the property, DO NOT change light bulbs or gel your lights! Why? Changing bulbs is definitely not your job and you will not make any money on the the typical $199-$499k property, which is the bread and butter of the average real estate photographer. Just my two cents from a working professional real estate photographer who has almost scene (I meant to do that) it all.
 

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