Taking pictures in dark rooms (Page 7): You may be right. Thanks I recorded a Photoshop action to reduce the red saturation.

GoofyNewfie Loc: Kansas City

anotherview wrote:

In addition, I understand the modern camera sensor has a color sensitivity shifted to emphasize reds. Skin tones of course contain red. Our perception my adjust for an over-red skin tone, but the camera sensor records it as it finds it.

One fix: Select the red face, and then adjust its color using the Hue/Saturation Adjustment layer.

You may be right. Thanks
I recorded a Photoshop action to reduce the red saturation.

anotherview Loc: California

Ditto: "Just meter for the background ambient light you want and let TTL and flash compensation take care of the subjects at your sync speed."

Modern ETTL does a remarkable job of adding just the right amount of flash lighting to the main subject for a good exposure. And yes, flash compensation can adjust the flash lighting for the best result.

Let me please note once a photographer learns flash lighting, then he may take a useful or better photograph under almost any condition. The use of flashing lighting opens more photographic opportunities.

jdubu wrote:

There are some suggestions that you should be in m... (show quote)

marcomarks Loc: Ft. Myers, FL

JR1 wrote:

Instead of higher iso why are you not shooting slower say 1 second

I would think that capturing people at an an event with 1 second would result in virtually everybody being blurred in 100% of her shots - especially kids running past.

marcomarks Loc: Ft. Myers, FL

Starr wrote:

Please help. The last two events I photographed were held in rooms that were all wood - walls, floors, ceiling and furniture. I had a terrible time getting any photos to work out. There was nothing to bounce my external flash off of so pictures turned out too dark. My ISO was at 1600/3200 and metered my camera but still the colors were all off. I spent way too much time in post processing. Any suggestions?

I don't think there's a perfect solution in that event situation with moving subjects except grouping tight and shooting them with diffused direct flash. Bouncing flash on dark surfaces obviously only makes the problem worse because the light is not reflected to the subjects and the amount of available light on the subjects is actually decreased. I have been using a frosted diffuser clone of a Gary Fong Lightsphere for a year now and that helps because a portion of light is bounced through the top translucent lid and a portion comes out of the sides of the translucent round sphere as a ball of omni-directional light so it doesn't cause a direct facial blast.

While not the same as shooting people, I have this problem in real estate interiors often. Home owners here in FL about 50% of the time decorate with dark wallpapers and/or paints, and even light brown, wood, or smoked gray ceilings.

My worst ever was an unmarried professional golfer's multi-million-dollar "man cave" 5-bedroom house that had dark woods like walnut, mahogany, cherry, etc. dominating the walls of every room, dark wood floors, dark wood cabinetry and furniture, dark burgundy wall paper or dark painted walls, black marble counter tops, and milk chocolate ceilings in every single room. Many rooms were long and wide but only had 10-foot ceilings throughout most so if I bounced flash the area around me was overexposed but the other end of the room was still dark. Combine that with a lot of windows across one whole side of the house facing a water view and golf course and I couldn't crank up the ISO which would blow out the outdoors view.

There was absolutely no way to do that interior with a single flash near the camera taking single shots. I could have had a flash with a guide number of 400 (no such thing available) and still couldn't have reached the other other end of most of these rooms - certainly not bounced from a chocolate ceiling. But the cheapskate realtor was trying to get this place shot using a $125 virtual tour package while complaining all the time that it wasn't up to her $600-800 photo shoot expectations compared to architectural magazines she had at her office.

I found out later I was the second photographer from the same company who was doing the place over because the first one failed to get it right. And a local independent photographer had also failed before that.

A solution would have been to shoot it in HDR or with multiple radio controlled flashes but that wasn't an option the cheapskate realtor wanted to afford. It's also not an option that you have at events.

The only suggestion I would have for your situation would be ISO 800 to 1600, a diffuser that allows bounce plus forward deflection of some light at the same time, and a flash with a guide number of at least 160. Good luck.

Starr Loc: St. Louis, MO

marcomarks wrote:

I don't think there's a perfect solution in that event situation with moving subjects except grouping tight and shooting them with diffused direct flash. Bouncing flash on dark surfaces obviously only makes the problem worse because the light is not reflected to the subjects and the amount of available light on the subjects is actually decreased. I have been using a frosted diffuser clone of a Gary Fong Lightsphere for a year now and that helps because a portion of light is bounced through the top translucent lid and a portion comes out of the sides of the translucent round sphere as a ball of omni-directional light so it doesn't cause a direct facial blast.

While not the same as shooting people, I have this problem in real estate interiors often. Home owners here in FL about 50% of the time decorate with dark wallpapers and/or paints, and even light brown, wood, or smoked gray ceilings.

My worst ever was an unmarried professional golfer's multi-million-dollar "man cave" 5-bedroom house that had dark woods like walnut, mahogany, cherry, etc. dominating the walls of every room, dark wood floors, dark wood cabinetry and furniture, dark burgundy wall paper or dark painted walls, black marble counter tops, and milk chocolate ceilings in every single room. Many rooms were long and wide but only had 10-foot ceilings throughout most so if I bounced flash the area around me was overexposed but the other end of the room was still dark. Combine that with a lot of windows across one whole side of the house facing a water view and golf course and I couldn't crank up the ISO which would blow out the outdoors view.

There was absolutely no way to do that interior with a single flash near the camera taking single shots. I could have had a flash with a guide number of 400 (no such thing available) and still couldn't have reached the other other end of most of these rooms - certainly not bounced from a chocolate ceiling. But the cheapskate realtor was trying to get this place shot using a $125 virtual tour package while complaining all the time that it wasn't up to her $600-800 photo shoot expectations compared to architectural magazines she had at her office.

I found out later I was the second photographer from the same company who was doing the place over because the first one failed to get it right. And a local independent photographer had also failed before that.

A solution would have been to shoot it in HDR or with multiple radio controlled flashes but that wasn't an option the cheapskate realtor wanted to afford. It's also not an option that you have at events.

The only suggestion I would have for your situation would be ISO 800 to 1600, a diffuser that allows bounce plus forward deflection of some light at the same time, and a flash with a guide number of at least 160. Good luck.

I don't think there's a perfect solution in that e... (show quote)

Thank you marcomarks. I just have to realize dark rooms are going to be difficult. I was in Ft Myers last October on my way to Sanibel/Captiva Island. I'm so envious you live so close to such a beautiful beach.

Mudshark Loc: Illinois

marcomarks wrote:

I don't think there's a perfect solution in that event situation with moving subjects except grouping tight and shooting them with diffused direct flash. Bouncing flash on dark surfaces obviously only makes the problem worse because the light is not reflected to the subjects and the amount of available light on the subjects is actually decreased. I have been using a frosted diffuser clone of a Gary Fong Lightsphere for a year now and that helps because a portion of light is bounced through the top translucent lid and a portion comes out of the sides of the translucent round sphere as a ball of omni-directional light so it doesn't cause a direct facial blast.

While not the same as shooting people, I have this problem in real estate interiors often. Home owners here in FL about 50% of the time decorate with dark wallpapers and/or paints, and even light brown, wood, or smoked gray ceilings.

My worst ever was an unmarried professional golfer's multi-million-dollar "man cave" 5-bedroom house that had dark woods like walnut, mahogany, cherry, etc. dominating the walls of every room, dark wood floors, dark wood cabinetry and furniture, dark burgundy wall paper or dark painted walls, black marble counter tops, and milk chocolate ceilings in every single room. Many rooms were long and wide but only had 10-foot ceilings throughout most so if I bounced flash the area around me was overexposed but the other end of the room was still dark. Combine that with a lot of windows across one whole side of the house facing a water view and golf course and I couldn't crank up the ISO which would blow out the outdoors view.

There was absolutely no way to do that interior with a single flash near the camera taking single shots. I could have had a flash with a guide number of 400 (no such thing available) and still couldn't have reached the other other end of most of these rooms - certainly not bounced from a chocolate ceiling. But the cheapskate realtor was trying to get this place shot using a $125 virtual tour package while complaining all the time that it wasn't up to her $600-800 photo shoot expectations compared to architectural magazines she had at her office.

I found out later I was the second photographer from the same company who was doing the place over because the first one failed to get it right. And a local independent photographer had also failed before that.

A solution would have been to shoot it in HDR or with multiple radio controlled flashes but that wasn't an option the cheapskate realtor wanted to afford. It's also not an option that you have at events.

The only suggestion I would have for your situation would be ISO 800 to 1600, a diffuser that allows bounce plus forward deflection of some light at the same time, and a flash with a guide number of at least 160. Good luck.

I don't think there's a perfect solution in that e... (show quote)

RE: Golfers joint...
And what would have been wrong with using a sturdy tripod...an ISO of 800ish on a full frame camera, say a 5DII or 5DIII, an aperture of f8 or f11 and a 1 second or something like that time exposure...with the available lights controlled to your benefit...?

marcomarks Loc: Ft. Myers, FL

Starr wrote:

Thank you marcomarks. I just have to realize dark rooms are going to be difficult. I was in Ft Myers last October on my way to Sanibel/Captiva Island. I'm so envious you live so close to such a beautiful beach.

That's just one of many beautiful beaches. This whole coast is white beach! I spend a lot of time going down to Naples and it has a lot of beaches too.

One would think that as a resident here I'd visit beaches all the time. That's what I thought when I lived up in MI and visited here once a year or once every two years. As the temperatures rose 10 degrees for every two hours of driving south from the Georgia line, the excitement level grew. As soon as I hit the area of the state where palm trees started showing up along I-75, the excitement level grew even more. But when you're here in tropical conditions all year long you're not as enthused about it like visitors and you soon start to take it for granted. It took me about 8 months.

When I'm at the beach with visiting friends or family I enjoy it but if I'm not there I don't crave it.

Personally I more enjoy the water views available from the high bridges, from tall skyscraper condo buildings, and homes sitting near the water. There's just something about being above the water level and seeing it's expansiveness instead of being at it that intrigues me more.

Sanibel/Captiva is certainly a nice place with great beaches but it's out of my income bracket to live there, for sure. I spent a lot of time over there last year at a restaurant called Jacaranda's but that's about it for me.

A condo view of a bay off of the gulf

17th floor condo view very close to Ft. Myers Beach

Bridge to Sanibel-Captiva

marcomarks Loc: Ft. Myers, FL

Mudshark wrote:

RE: Golfers joint...
And what would have been wrong with using a sturdy tripod...an ISO of 800ish on a full frame camera, say a 5DII or 5DIII, an aperture of f8 or f11 and a 1 second or something like that time exposure...with the available lights controlled to your benefit...?

This was recommended earlier. What is it about the word "event" that isn't clear? An event has people moving around the room, activities going on, possibly waiters and waitresses walking around serving, speakers at a podium waving their arms around as they talk, people moving positions on their folding chairs, etc. A shot at 1 second is only going to create a room full of blurred ghosts. You couldn't even set up a posed group shot and have them all stand still like statues with their eyes not blinking for 1 second. An "event" is just not conducive to 1 second time exposures.

Wall-E Loc: Phoenix, AZ

marcomarks wrote:

I could have had a flash with a guide number of 400 (no such thing available)

Not so fast.
https://www.cheetahstand.com/A-New-Bare-Bulb-Flash-Arrives-p/cl-360.htm
Or the Lumedynes
http://www.lumedyne.com/products/flashheads.asp

Mudshark Loc: Illinois

marcomarks wrote:

This was recommended earlier. What is it about th... (show quote)

some obvious confusion afoot...I will repost below in a manner of clarity...let me know if this helps...

Mudshark Loc: Illinois

While not the same as shooting people, I have this problem in real estate interiors often. Home owners here in FL about 50% of the time decorate with dark wallpapers and/or paints, and even light brown, wood, or smoked gray ceilings.

My worst ever was an unmarried professional golfer's multi-million-dollar "man cave" 5-bedroom house that had dark woods like walnut, mahogany, cherry, etc. dominating the walls of every room, dark wood floors, dark wood cabinetry and furniture, dark burgundy wall paper or dark painted walls, black marble counter tops, and milk chocolate ceilings in every single room. Many rooms were long and wide but only had 10-foot ceilings throughout most so if I bounced flash the area around me was overexposed but the other end of the room was still dark. Combine that with a lot of windows across one whole side of the house facing a water view and golf course and I couldn't crank up the ISO which would blow out the outdoors view.

There was absolutely no way to do that interior with a single flash near the camera taking single shots. I could have had a flash with a guide number of 400 (no such thing available) and still couldn't have reached the other other end of most of these rooms - certainly not bounced from a chocolate ceiling. But the cheapskate realtor was trying to get this place shot using a $125 virtual tour package while complaining all the time that it wasn't up to her $600-800 photo shoot expectations compared to architectural magazines she had at her office.

AND THEN...I POSTED...

RE: Golfers joint...
And what would have been wrong with using a sturdy tripod...an ISO of 800ish on a full frame camera, say a 5DII or 5DIII, an aperture of f8 or f11 and a 1 second or something like that time exposure...with the available lights controlled to your benefit...?

DOES THIS HELP...???

marcomarks Loc: Ft. Myers, FL

Mudshark wrote:

While not the same as shooting people, I have this... (show quote)

Okay, that makes sense now. You were replying to my situation, not the author's situation.

The main problem is trying to get the outdoor light, which is intense, and the indoor light, which is not intense, balanced. If I took a 1 sec exposure, the scene outside the windows would be completely blown out although the interior would be correct - or the scene outside would be correct and the interior would be black. Yes, I could do two exposures, one for the windows and another for the interior then combine them. But then I'm essentially into a rough version of HDR.

But that is also the real solution to getting it done right - HDR. The best real estate photographers I've seen use HDR with 7 to 9 bracketed exposures covering + - 6EV. But those photographers are independent, self employed, and take as long as they like to do a shoot with very best equipment, likely full-frame, then spend as much time as they like post editing. Once you get the hang of your workflow for HDRs it's actually faster than what I'm doing now with LR4.

In contrast, I'm supposed to go in with any 12 to 16MP dSLR that I already had, with a 10-20mm lens and one flash on camera and do a 5-bedroom, 3 bath, 4,000 square foot house in "theoretically" 35 minutes (that's what the company tell realtors although I always take over an hour despite what they say) plus that includes (4) panoramas of 12 shots each.

The pay is too low, the effort would be too high, the time to shoot the home would extend even more, and post-editing would become more complicated - when working for a national company.

If and when I become independent and make twice as much because I don't have to share it with anybody, I will certainly start to use HDR, even for panoramas, because it's the perfect solution for this kind of real estate work.

What you recommend is actually what I do for bathrooms and kitchens if there is no window involved. It also doesn't typically require 1 second. I typically shoot a bathroom at about 1/15th second on a mono-pod with me or the mono-pod braced against a door frame to stabilize (I use a mono-pod for all the other rooms that have windows so I leave it on until it's time for the panoramas).

Mudshark Loc: Illinois

marcomarks wrote:

Okay, that makes sense now. You were replying to my situation, not the author's situation.

The main problem is trying to get the outdoor light, which is intense, and the indoor light, which is not intense, balanced. If I took a 1 sec exposure, the scene outside the windows would be completely blown out although the interior would be correct - or the scene outside would be correct and the interior would be black. Yes, I could do two exposures, one for the windows and another for the interior then combine them. But then I'm essentially into a rough version of HDR.

But that is also the real solution to getting it done right - HDR. The best real estate photographers I've seen use HDR with 7 to 9 bracketed exposures covering + - 6EV. But those photographers are independent, self employed, and take as long as they like to do a shoot with very best equipment, likely full-frame, then spend as much time as they like post editing. Once you get the hang of your workflow for HDRs it's actually faster than what I'm doing now with LR4.

In contrast, I'm supposed to go in with any 12 to 16MP dSLR that I already had, with a 10-20mm lens and one flash on camera and do a 5-bedroom, 3 bath, 4,000 square foot house in "theoretically" 35 minutes (that's what the company tell realtors although I always take over an hour despite what they say) plus that includes (4) panoramas of 12 shots each.

The pay is too low, the effort would be too high, the time to shoot the home would extend even more, and post-editing would become more complicated - when working for a national company.

If and when I become independent and make twice as much because I don't have to share it with anybody, I will certainly start to use HDR, even for panoramas, because it's the perfect solution for this kind of real estate work.

What you recommend is actually what I do for bathrooms and kitchens if there is no window involved. It also doesn't typically require 1 second. I typically shoot a bathroom at about 1/15th second on a mono-pod with me or the mono-pod braced against a door frame to stabilize (I use a mono-pod for all the other rooms that have windows so I leave it on until it's time for the panoramas).

Okay, that makes sense now. You were replying to ... (show quote)

Yup...trying to match the sun with a dark interior is indeed a problem. Some problems, given your restrictions, don't really have solutions. About all you can do is bring up the interior light and obviously that presents many challenges. Sometimes pros take velum or somesuch and cover the windows from the outside but I suspect your boss wants to see greens, etc., not just a milky white nothingness...

marcomarks Loc: Ft. Myers, FL

Mudshark wrote:

Yup...trying to match the sun with a dark interior is indeed a problem. Some problems, given your restrictions, don't really have solutions. About all you can do is bring up the interior light and obviously that presents many challenges. Sometimes pros take velum or somesuch and cover the windows from the outside but I suspect your boss wants to see greens, etc., not just a milky white nothingness...

Yes the milky white wouldn't work. My goal (and of course, the company's goal) is to have the outside look like it's inside and there is no window glass between. Almost impossible using this fast-shoot method but I now always get the outside to at least have detail and be visible and sometimes get it really right. The percentage of time that I get it right improves over time but sometimes I just can't find the right combination to get it to happen.

The first two examples did not have white walls or ceilings, by the way. That's the real color of the rooms.

A NOT good example that I shot

A good example that I shot

What I'm striving for but this is HDR

Mudshark Loc: Illinois

Take a hard look at Phase One software...they can mitigate some of this problem...also multiple exposures may be the only option...
Phase One and Photoshop...hard to beat the magic...
Nice work above but I see the conditions were somewhat in your favor...not a dark man cave...