svo242

Hi all,

I was wondering if you had tips on shooting interior spaces, particularly hotel rooms? I like to take photos of the room for trip reports, but I typically find it challenging with dim lighting, and of course the lighting difference btw the interior of the room and the window or balcony. Any tips would be greatly appreciated; thanks!

abmj-jr

For that situation, you need a flash or a tripod for best results. With flash, you can handhold but the view out the window will not be very good. At night it will go dark. I suggest bouncing the flash off the ceiling or a wall. Without flash, set up your tripod, meter the exposure on an interior wall away from the window and set the self timer for 2 seconds to eliminate camera shake when you trip the shutter. This works best if you are in manual mode or can lock the exposure and then re-compose the image.

If you are trying this with a pocket type camera that doesn't have those options, the best you can do is turn on all the lights you can and brace the camera against a wall or door, something solid to give as much steadiness as you can get. I'd still meter an interior wall, press the shutter down halfway and recompose before firing the shutter. This is much more difficult to get good results than using a full-featured camera.

kiarajohnson

You should use DSLR Camera with best lenses. Or you can use external light for better quality of image.

deniah

Brace the camera against something solid. Use a 2-second self timer to ward off shake induced from pressing the shutter. Use the translucent curtain to soften some of that light and balance with the interior lights. Some cameras may have a built in (JPEG) "HDR" mode that will also help.

CPRich

Ideally you have a DSLR, wide-angle lenses, and a tripod, with the ability to stitch shots together in a panorama in post processing. Short of that, you're going to be challenged.

You need a stable platform and light collecting ability, and can only capture what your lens allows.

Find an object, or move an object (dresser, ironing board) to where you want to take the shot, put the camera on a timer, set for a low ISO, and allow for a long exposure. High ISO will make a grainy photo, and a flash just looks, well, flash-y. If you have a stable platform, the exposure duration won't matter.

If you can contol metering, meter for the average/darker components of the room. Blowing out a window doesn't matter - there's nothing there. You don't want a perfectly exposed window and a dark/black room.

Most important of all - as with any photography - is thinking about what is in the frame and what you are trying to capture. A technically perfect picture of a wall isn't very informative. Compare these to see which gives a better sense of this hotel:

Need

I think all you need is a newer camera or smartphone. I have a LG G4 and I never use the flash for indoor picture. The pictures it took has more light my eyes could see. And it has manual shutter speed and with that, I have taken pic in almost complete darkness. I use a selfie stick as a tripod if shutter speed is longer than a second or 2.

svo242

Thanks for the tips. In the past, I have used in camera HDR on my Sony RX100 with some post processing in lightroom (see some example results below). I'll also be bringing a Canon 70D this year, probably with the 18-135mm kit lens as that's the widest I have at the moment. I'm still not extremely advanced with it, but hopefully I can utilize its features to help with exposure issues.

glennaa11

wide angle lens

shoot in daylight if possible

use HDR as mentioned to equalize the interior and exterior lighting differences

but those examples you posted are not bad. You just need a wider angle lens or shoot multiple shots and stitch them in software

CPRich

If you need more than 18mm, take 2 or 3 overlapping shots in portrait format - stitching them into a single landscape-ish photo is relatively easy in Lightroom. You can replicate a 10mm lens fairly easily.

TOMFORD

Wide angle lens, but not too wide. Shoot around sunset if possible with the lights on. Camera goes on the tripod, and tripod goes in a corner.

WilcoRoger

Just a quick example of what you might expect from 11mm lens (f2.8, 1/15s, ISO400) With such a wide lens 1/15s is managable without a tripod Shot in the Grand Hyatt Kuala Lumpur

Lion88

Good))