Interior Room Photos

[brett23]

Hi all, hope someone can help.

Bit of background to start with. I run a building company with my Dad and we are looking to take some photos of the interiors of a just finished house for our web site. Every bit of marketing helps these days!

Would anyone have some advice for what settings to use.

The rooms are all bare with white walls and dark wood flooring.

The equipment i have is my D5000 and tripod. Lenses are a 18-70, 18-55 (kit lens) and 35mm 1.8.

What out of my kit would be best to use and what settings on the camera. I have not ventured past Auto yet. Do i use flash??

Thanks for any help guys

Cheers

 

[Nod]

Is the kit lens the 18-55 VR? If so, use that; the VR should give you enough to handhold at the slow shutter speed you're likely to get, even shooting wide open. I would suggest stopping down a little (to get some depth of field and the extra sharpness the narrower aperture should give) and letting the camera decide what shutter speed you'll get. Thw white walls will throw as much light as possible around but may confuse the meter slightly and make the floors too dark, meaning that you may need to dial in a little exposure compensation to bring them up a bit (which may in turn cause the walls to blow out a little).

Experiment a bit to get as good a balance as possible. If you have the software, you could also try shooting a raw and HDRing to even up the exposure.

 

[whipspeed]

You shouldn't need flash, but a tripod might be a good idea. You might also need photoshop to correct the perspective.
Having done a few of these shoots for work, empty rooms don't look that appealing as people can't see themselves in the house or how the space works. It might be worth hiring some furniture for the shoot and for viewings, you don't need much and it makes a big difference. Few fresh flowers in shot as well is a nice touch.

 

[brett23]

You shouldn't need flash, but a tripod might be a good idea. You might also need photoshop to correct the perspective.
Having done a few of these shoots for work, empty rooms don't look that appealing as people can't see themselves in the house or how the space works. It might be worth hiring some furniture for the shoot and for viewings, you don't need much and it makes a big difference. Few fresh flowers in shot as well is a nice touch.

Sarah thanks for the idea of the flowers. Good one. Furniture is not an option as it is being handed over to the clients on Thursday.

 

[Dab]

A good tip for doing interiors is to make sure you keep your verticals vertical. That means keeping the camera level, so might be better to use the tripod. You need a decent depth of field to get the whole room in focus, so my advice would be to put your camera in aperture priority mode at around f8, and let the camera choose a shutter speed. Or if the room is bright, you can leave the tripod out of it.

Another thing to think about is barrel distortion. Using the widest zoom on your lens usually means your shot will distort. This can be fixed in post-production, but if you can zoom to 20+ on your lens you reduce the effect.

Scott Hargis is an excellent interiors photographer and has a great tutorial on what I've mentioned above which can be found here.

There is an excellent group on flickr called "Photography for real estate" which has been a great help to me. Take a look in the pool to see if there are any pics of empty rooms for inspiration and read the discussion threads.

 

[brett23]

A good tip for doing interiors is to make sure you keep your verticals vertical. That means keeping the camera level, so might be better to use the tripod. You need a decent depth of field to get the whole room in focus, so my advice would be to put your camera in aperture priority mode at around f8, and let the camera choose a shutter speed. Or if the room is bright, you can leave the tripod out of it.

Another thing to think about is barrel distortion. Using the widest zoom on your lens usually means your shot will distort. This can be fixed in post-production, but if you can zoom to 20+ on your lens you reduce the effect.

Scott Hargis is an excellent interiors photographer and has a great tutorial on what I've mentioned above which can be found here.

There is an excellent group on flickr called "Photography for real estate" which has been a great help to me. Take a look in the pool to see if there are any pics of empty rooms for inspiration and read the discussion threads.

Dabs thanks for that. Had a look on the websites and loads of good advice. Off to start snapping now.

Thanks for the advice guys

Cheers