Shooting a kitchen without a lot of lighting equipment

[sheryl_bury_michals]

I was just asked to shoot a renovated kitchen for a person's design portfolio. I've shot rooms in the past (I did some

work for the apartment building my brother manages, which was a vintage building), and what I used was a Canon

30D (I have a 40D currently), a 580EX flash, a tripod, and a 17-40 L lens.

 

I normally don't shoot rooms, so this would be only the second time I've done this. Would I need a wider lens (like a

10-22). I don't own strobes and the like. Would that be necessary? The apartment I did in the past we used natural

light from the windows if we could. I'm not sure if this kitchen has a window, but I don't think so.

 

can you get away with shooting a room such as a kitchen if all the available lighting was switched on? and what

settings would you use?

 

I figured it may be a good thing to have for my own portfolio as well, to balance out all the sports photography I

normally do.

 

Any suggestions would be great.

 

Thanks

Sheryl

[ken_yee]

Depends how big it is...smaller = wide lens.

Consider using a tripod and HDR.

[ronald_moravec1]

How wide a lens depends on where you have to stand and how big the room is. A panoramic is a useful option if a wide

lens is not available. Join two or more photos together. Put the joints in corners and overlap frames by 1/3.

 

Nice piece in the current issue of Photo Techniques on how to do panoramas.

 

Existing lighting is nice if you have a tripod. Change WB to accomodate. You can also bounce your strobe off the

ceiling with daylight WB alone using a fast shutter or do the same with a slow shutter+ strobe. Go slow enough to pick

up the interior existing lighting. About 1/15 sec on a tripod. Tungsten will appear warm and a bit yellow which is nice,

but the strobe will overpower most of it. When you do this, the f stop controls the strobe exposure and shutter controls

the intensity of installed lighting.

 

Practice in your home first. Use the strobe and camera on full manual.

[bob_osullivan]

1) need a wider lens? I'm 90% sure the answer is yes. I often use the Sigma 10-20 for this.

 

 

2) Panoramic? I don't know if that's needed. If this is for a Virtual Tour as a real estate agent might need then yes, for a designers portfolio, I think No.

 

 

3) Stobes needed? Maybe. You could probably get by with the 580 but it's so much easier to work with strobes once you know how and to have all the light modifyer options.

 

 

4) Switching all the lights on to avoid flash? Bad Idea. Put the lights on as the kitchen would normally be used but let flash/stobe be your key light. You may need to balance your flash by applying an amber or greenish gel to it to match tungsten or flourescent lighting. Determine which lighting is dominant when you get there. And match to that. Also shoot in Raw + Jpeg. Set WB to AWB you may get lucky with the jpegs, but if you don't having the raw files gives you more editing control.

 

 

5) what settings? Sorry but I always get a kick out of this question. This is always impossible to answer without being there and/or taking local meter readings. But you want to balance between the outside light if there is a window and the inside ambient light as well as the flash. Make sure you don't burn out the windows so you can see the scene outside if it's appealing. Don't let the tungsten and flourescent lights dominate. This can be a fairly advanced subject. But if you read up on lighting before this shoot and leave yourself enough time to experiment a bit in the room I"m sure you can get a good result.

[tony_clark]

I find that interiors are all about balancing ambient light with the fixtures that are installed. After you find a good exposure

you will need to fill in the darker areas. I don't imagine a dedicated flash is of much use in this situation. You can rent a

lighting kit for a reasonable rate and bill it to the Client.

[sheryl_bury_michals]

Thanks for all the advice. Here's what I found out...

 

The kitchen is small - approx. 100 Sq. feet - and there is one wall that is all windows, so sounds there is a lot of natural light coming in. The person wants some shots in daylight as well as night time.

 

I don't own light boxes, strobes, etc., as this is not normally what I do. So if I can get away with a wide angle lens, my 40D and my 580EX (I also have a stofen Omnibounce, a bounce card) and a Stroboframe camera Flip camera attachment for my flash, that would be great.

 

any thoughts?

 

sheryl

[sheryl_bury_michals]

Here are examples of the kitchen I'm trying to shoot - see my comments above. Just so you know, I did not take these, and the shots here are at night.<div></div>

[sheryl_bury_michals]

here is another shot of the kitchen<div></div>