Interior Photography Lighting Issue

[James Sparham]

Hi all

I recently took a couple of interior pictures of a room which posed a difficult challenge lighting wise. It was relatively low light, so I had to turn on the chandeliers and open the blinds.

The trouble is the top of the images look ultra bright, while the lower sections look kind of dark and dingy.

Do you have any tips so I can balance this please?

Kind regards,

James

 

[TG.]

Did you shoot in RAW

Sent from my SM-J320FN using Tapatalk

 

[Phil V]

If you have Raw images, it’s a fairly easy fix in LR so long asthe highlights aren’t blown.

If the highlights are completely gone, you know for next time not to do that.

 

[PhilH04]

Can be fixed in Lightroom... in addition I might have taken an image with a reasonable exposure for the windows and blended them in post.
Also turn the chandelier off part way through the exposure

 

[droj]

Both the above.

 

[Peter Drought]

Options.

1, Fill in the shadows using multiple flashes positioned round the room allowing use of a faster shutter speed,
2, Depending on what aperture and focal length of lens you are using e.g. 15mm at F11, you may be able to broaden the aperture slightly e.g. F8 while maintaining sufficient depth of field - this allows faster shutter speed which will bring down the ambient exposure slightly (the effectiveness of this method only works provided the difference in contrast is not too great - and it also has other consequences - basically it can deepen the shadows so use judgement and test).
3, Turn off the light part way through the exposure (in fact it is usually about a micron of a second into the exposure usually)
4, Shoot 3 brackets 2 stops apart and blend them later in lightroom/photoshop.

Methods 1 to 3 are sometimes used in combination with each other. Which you use is a matter of personal preference. I personally am not keen on method 4 (slow to do and don't like the look) however there can be occasions where it is useful e.g. very high contrast or where the view out of a window is mission critical.

 

[mike weeks]

Hi all

I recently took a couple of interior pictures of a room which posed a difficult challenge lighting wise. It was relatively low light, so I had to turn on the chandeliers and open the blinds.

The trouble is the top of the images look ultra bright, while the lower sections look kind of dark and dingy.

Do you have any tips so I can balance this please?

Kind regards,

James

You want to know before you take further images or are you looking for processing info?

Mike

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

The fourth wall is in none of the photographs. So could be used as a reflectot to balance the light using flash.
As the blinds are closed, you could chose the time of day so that they are less brightly lit.
Apart from the lighting the room looks incomplete and vacant.
I do not know what the shots are to be used, but converging verticals are generally not acceptable in interior shots..
It would be easy to take multiple shots and use exposure fusion, to improve the situation.