canon Lee

Hi Gene Lucky that the windows had curtains... My luck would be no curtains, bright sunlight at noon....limitied lamps.... dark walls and furniture... LOL For me Gene, I have found that bracketing is the ticket for me.... 3 shots for the dynamics..... I don't know what the beef is about HDR??? I simply use it to even out the lights.... ?????? I just had to tweak your shot in LR.. Remarkable that you were able to get this shot with just one frame... Forgive me for tweaking your shot without your permission.... I just cant help myself at times... That shot I would give to my client... Its warm and inviting.... I took a 3 ambient shots in my office... bright sunlight...dark room.... then merged in LR in HDR for the final image...1st image HDR, Took very little time to shoot... I set up the exposure in Manual mode 1/4sec @7.1 iso 100, 1/13sec 7.1 iso100, .8sec 7.1 iso 100, bracket at +/- 2 stops, tripod, 17mm lens, Canon 7D, 3pm bright sun light....

AndyH Loc: Massachusetts and New Hampshire

Yes.

I shoot interiors professionally in my work, sometimes for documentation of conditions, sometimes for presentation. Ambient lighting with a tripod is generally the best, but sometimes hand held is the only option. When it is, I use fill flash pointed toward the ceiling and generally get decent results. Again, this is not “sales” photography, but I think slow first, fill second is the best general approach.

Andy

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Ah, but you missed a couple of spots . . .

The highlights on the carpet that your brightening revealed are quite blue. Which was the color of the light coming from the window.

Seriously, I don't mind people adjusting my work to illustrate a point.

However, the mood of the lighting in this dining room is darker and a bit more intimate - it is incorrect to make it as bright as you did, though it does make for a slightly better looking, if a bit disingenuous picture.

It is an east facing dining room with tall houses to the east, so it is never "washed in sunlight" except for a few minutes very early in the AM.

The tease about the rug highlights is my making a point. In the original I posted it was not accentuated, so I didn't bother to address them. But making the image brighter made them very obvious - and they need to be addressed.

You are correct about the curtains. It's all part of staging the home. You can't do proper RE photography without someone doing the staging for you. It is nearly impossible to do it yourself. I selected my RE agents because I saw the quality of the staging, even though the $150/house RE photographer they usually use did not do their work justice. They were happy to save the $$ and get better and more faithful images, or so they told me. As you know, the images that are posted on UHH are usually oversaturated and overly contrasty, so I don't put much weight on what is there. And there is a shift in color and contrast when you compare the thumbnail to the downloadable image.

This is my home, and the house has been on the market for 10 days and has already gotten almost 150 views and 35 saves. I hope to sell it in the next couple of weeks.

The office space you shot is a good illustration of proper HDR for RE.

As far as doing it with one image, the D810 has really good dynamic range, and a little post processing does a nice job of keeping the highlights, (bulb in the chandelier), in balance with the shadows under the table, and doing away with a lot of the noise in the darker areas.

imagemeister Loc: mid east Florida

Yes, you go to HDR mode, tell it how many EV spread between exposures you want ( 1-6EV) Then, you will be setting the middle exposure by using the EVF and shutter speed/f-stop. Push the button, the camera does the rest - gives you the middle exposure and the combined result also. In lower light, you must of course be on a tripod - and, you must be shooting JPEG.

I do not have any interiors to show as I gave that up long ago - but here is a waterscape where I used the HDR with the Sony A77II. The underside of the tree details were all in deep shade. Shot with 16mm f2 Samyang.

..

(Download)

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Have you tried HDR with just two exposures?

canon Lee

Gene.... You owe me no explanations, as you are a professional and do good work... My tweak was to my own taste and agree with you that your subtle editing brings out the flavor you intended.... As you see my eye is a bit different as to WB and agree that this forum does not post pictures accurately.... You have a lovely home Gene and you will get your price.....
Thank you for your gracious complements of the HDR I posted... Gene I didn't really spend any time perfecting the image as I was just showing the HDR results of ambient shooting....
I heard from my RE agent and she let me know the value of good professional shots.... I think I have a good gig doing RE shoots... Summer is an off time for me as youth sports clubs are off when school is closed for summer vacation... So I'm looking to fill my schedule for the summer.. It was important for me to practice how to do RE photography, & with a little practice I was able to develop a technique.... Its simple, quick and easy.....

canon Lee

Image... your posted landscape is right on the money.... I am impressed with what that camera can do automatically...

canon Lee

Hi again Gene... No I have never tried it... I think LR HDR is designed for 3 shots... as in typical 3 shot bracketing .. Why did you suggest that? My Canon 7D brackets with 3 stops... I wish I had 6 stops ..... 3 seems drastic... If I chimp and see that the bracketing is too bright I can on my camera move the bracketing down or off center...

canon Lee

Just noticed that you live in Yonkers NY... I was raised in Yonkers.. Lockwood area... (white city). Went to school 24 and 5...

Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

If you want more stops or bracketing with a 7D, you could consider using Magic Lantern. Gives some useful capabilities above and beyond the native Canon controls. I have used it without problems on a T2i and T3i, and tested it on a friends 7D. It can be useful for HDR on Canon cameras.

SonyA580 Loc: FL in the winter & MN in the summer

Nice job on those 2 rooms Gene. My niece does RE photos and showed me a trick when shooting a room with sun coming through large windows. She shoots the room first and lets the window blow out. Then she shoots the exact same shot and meters for the window only. In Photoshop she cuts out the window, exposed correctly, and splices it into the room picture. The results are very natural looking.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

I thought your shot was a very good use of HDR. So often photographers overuse tonemapping, which is great for creative purposes, but has no place in RE.

My experience is similar to yours. RE agents are not happy with most RE photography, and with good reason. They are generally disillusioned, but are so far unwilling to pay more for better, preferring to stay "in budget" even if it is an unrealistic one. But some photographers are delivering the goods, and those RE agents that hire them are just doing better. But more importantly, the quality of the images are becoming a selection criterion for selecting agents. In my case I bought a house, but not because the shots were good - they were awful. But I can see past bad images. When looking for an agent to sell my current home, again, I looked at pictures, but I was looking for staging, not image quality - which just wasn't there anyway.

When they asked what I would charge for a similar home - 30 shots - I told them. Their jaws dropped. It was quite a bit more than they are accustomed to paying. But they saw the difference.

My feeling, especially in this area, where agents are selling homes in the $500K to $800K range, and they write contracts for 5% commission - earning $25K to$40K - they should have better sense to hire a photographer that can really make a property look good, sell for more, and sell faster.

It's the reason I have no interest in doing RE photography these days. They just don't want to pay more than $150-$200 for shooting a house.

You did choose a good time to develop a new facet to your business. There is not a lot of property for sale, interest rates continue to stay low (but this seems to be on the verge of changing), there are a lot of buyers out there - all of which are driving the listing price of properties higher. So much so that when some properties come on the market inexperienced agents are undervaluing a property and are getting quick sales, sometimes the day a property goes on the market or within the week.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Thanks!

That does work very well, especially when the room lighting is good, and it allows for white balance issues to be easily resolved. If I used 2 images, I would simply place the shot of room with the blown out windows in a layer on top of the layer of the room with the correctly exposed one, then create a layer mask on the top layer, painting out the window areas (and any highlights on surfaces) to reveal the correctly exposed windows in the layer
below. It might be a little easier and faster to do this than to make selections and copy/paste them.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

I do two shots all the time. I rarely do more. Makes for better results and faster post processing. And it gives you the opportunity to use a layer mask to composite two images which is often all you need, as opposed to HDR merging.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

I was raised in the Bronx, but moved to Yonkers in 1981. We live in the Lincoln Park area a block south of Lincoln HS.