high dynamic range (HDR) is a set of techniques that allows a greater dynamic range of luminances between light and dark areas of a scene than normal digital imaging techniques. The intention of HDR is to accurately represent the wide range of intensity levels found in real scenes ranging from direct sunlight to shadows. If you haven't tried using HDR for your real estate photography your missing out on a easy fast alternative to setting up strobes. In this next section I will explain how to shoot Real Estate Photography properly using your bracketing and also some good presets for composing HDR's in photomatix.
I always prefer to shoot after the sun goes down, if you can set your own schedule make sure you get there 15 min before sunset and start figuring out your angels and when the sun goes down and the ambient light from outside almost meets the light from the inside that way you don't end up with blown out white windows. Make sure you bring a tripod.
Shoot in Raw and bracketing mode, make sure your bracketing the shutter speed, most shots its ok to bracket 3 shots -2 EV, 0EV, +2 EV. DSLRs will do this with auto-bracket feature. Make sure you check your histogram and make sure you have a good range between your three photos.
After they are all shot and up loaded, I use Photomatix to process them. This is very important, make sure you don't over process them you don't want the estate to look too fake. Here is a list of my saved preset every photo is different but this is the best place to start.
- Strength - 30
- Saturation - 35
- Luminosity - 9
- Light Smoothing - high to very high
- Micro contrasting - 0
- White point and black point .05
- Gamma - 1.5
After that is done put it in Lightroom and add a little bit of clarity and contrast if needed.
Hopefully this helps some one out there!
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Thanks for the post.
ReplyDeleteI will be sending you some traffic shortly.
Have you got any presets for real estate photography?
for photomatix and lightroom?
Thank you, this was very helpful. Great work by the way.
ReplyDeleteMuch appreciated...thanks for taking the time to put this out there!
ReplyDeleteGood basic idea for HDR. You didn't get into lens distortion however. The vertical lines are very important i think, especially for real estate photography. You'll get a more natural look with fluid vertical lines throughout your entire image.
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