Photographing Kitchens

What's a good lighting strategy for photographing kitchens? This could be in a show room or in a home.

For example, I may need to photograph a dark kitchen with walnut cabinets and dark granite counters.

 

I have both hotlights, 3 DP's and a Tota light, and flash, three Dynalite 2040's. As to the latter, I have

more power packs than lights, 2 1000's and 2 2000's. If I need more equipment, I can probably get it.

Recommendations would be appreciated. I also have softboxes, but they're kind of large. (Might be OK

for the showrooms.)

 

I'll photograph these digitally at about a 180 ASA.

If you're including a window with daylight in the shot, as a home kitchen might have, you'll probably want to use daylight balanced strobes. In a tungsten lit showroom you might be able to use your tungsten lights.

 

I'd use strobes and do a ceiling bounce for overall illumination then use a softbox to one side to create some direction to the light and maybe a grid spot on the third light to place an emphasize on an area or feature etc.

 

I'd use an appropriate shutter speed to place the view outside the window at one stop brighter than the interior of the kitchen.

 

If there was no window or the window was covered by shades or blinds, I'd use a shutter speed that recorded the ambient light from any small continuous effect lighting in the scene, such as under cabinet lights or ceiling pots.

it's always better to do most of the illumiantion of large sets like this from above with

individual ights through a large set-covering scrim. The problem that solves is glare and

reflections.

Ellis, Could you please describe the scrim you mention and its use in a little more detail? I'm

not understanding how large the scrim would need to be, how the lights would be suspended

above the scrim, etc.

 

I'm shooting digitally, and I'm planning on taking multiple images at different speeds and

blending them later in PS. This will enable me to bring in windows, etc.

"it's always better to do most of the illumiantion of large sets like this from above with individual ights through a large set-covering scrim"

 

It's kind of hard to do this sort of thing in a home kitchen, or in a store's showroom. To do so would require very heavy duty stands and a large metal pipe framed scrim the size of the kitchen. Then you'd need a ceiling height of over 12 ft. with room above the scrim for the lights which would have to be attached to a ceiling grid or perhaps suspended from individual booms.

 

Now, if you were building a set on a sound stage or in a TV studio this would work.

Neil,

Used to do this kind of stuff for GE Appliances years ago when I worked for their ad

agency; use the window light as your main light, your fill will come from bouncing light

from your strobes into 4'x8' sheets of foamcore. If you have areas that are a bit dark, hit

them with light from a softbox, medium ones will do. Since your windows will probably be

blow out, you can replace any scenery that might be there with a stock image...vinyard in

Tuscany? Without actually seeing the sets all I can give you is some general advice. If you

are in a showroom and they have a mock kitchen setup with windows consider renting

some heavy duty Mole Richardson Frenels...at least 1K, don't worry about the color

difference between the tungsten light and the strobes, just balance the quantity of light

between sources, it isn't uncommon to use multiple pops on a open shutter to build up

the light, the warm glow will look like early morning or late afternoon sunlight and is

pleasing to the eye. Either way you will need a LOT of equipment to do the job right, and

an assistant, plus a stylist to set the room.

Thanks everyone for your response. I think I have a pretty good idea of how to proceed. Neil