Shooting flooring in an entire room

<p>Hi All,<br>

I'm using a Canon Rebel Xsi. I have a requirement where I need to go to some houses and shoot rooms of 200-500 sq ft to feature the flooring in the rooms. The floors have anywhere between 30-55% gloss on them, so reflections are an issue even with polarized filters.<br>

I've dabbled with photography for a while but I've never needed any type of lighting for a project. Can somebody give suggestions for the best bang for buck lighting setup for this type of situation - I'm on a relatively slim budget. I'm leaning towards a strobe vs continuous, but I'm not sure how many, what wattage, etc. I've tried using natural lighting but it's just not bright enough.<br>

Thanks for the advice.</p>

 

<p>Can you link to a photograph somewhere that conveys the sort of look you're after? Do you need to balance ambient light (say, from a window) with your own light, or will you be exposing entirely for the light you provide? Are you shooting across the floor, or down at it? Are you in spaces with even, white ceilings?<br /><br />Need to know more about the circumstances, more about the intended results, and more about your budget. <br /><br />Without knowing any more, I'm certainly going to say: strobes, not continuous light. But please, do tell.</p>

<p>If natural lighting looks nice and even, but is just not bright enough, a tripod would probably solve your problems.</p>

<p>Maybe you need to expose for the ambient light and fill with your flash(es) to highlight the areas you want to bring out. Check out strobist.blogspot.com for some real great tips on how to light rooms taking advantage of ambient light. </p>

<p>You could try adding some nd filters to the lens, so a wider aperture can be set. It would give you the option of selecting a focal point not affected by specular highlights within your composition...and help soften the speculars not useful to the outcome.</p>

<p>How professional do the photos have to be?</p>

<p>A pro would use a viewcamera, or a tilt/shift lens on a DSLR, to get the depth of field needed. If you are going to try something like a wide angle lens and tiny f-stop you you are going to need a lot of light, and you are still not going to have that flooring advertisement look to your photos.</p>

<p>Lighting is rather easy you just bounce off the ceiling giving a smooth even base light on the floor, then use accent lighting as needed. But you are going to need a lot of power, depending on ceiling height and room size. This is the kind of job where the pro uses those 2400ws power pack strobes. More than one if the room is large. Since these are static shots you may get by with multiple pops of smaller strobes, but it is not the type of job you use a hotshoe flash for. Since the rooms you are talking about are rather small, you may be able to get by with a couple of 400ws monolights.</p>

<p>To be honest, back when I was a pro, that was the kind of job where I would recommend a good architectural photographer to my clients. It is rather specialized work.</p>