Hi everyone. I'd appreciate if you would look at photos number 38-42 at this website: http://www.500dave.com. What lights (and lighting equipment) would I need to take such shots at night? I don't think these shots are particularly good, but I need to buy a basic lighting setup to get the same or better quality shots. I only have a 580EXII right now. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks very much!
The photos look as if they have no added lights , just the lights from the houses and ambient light, looks like they were taken as the sun was setting.
I agree with redal. If you look at 40 and 42 the sky is blown out, looks like an overcast day. I think they metered off of a medium brightness spot on the house. This house has a lot of exterior lighting, I think they look better because the house looks very nice at night anyway.
They appear to be the result of making multiple exposures taken with a tripod, with the different shots optimized for ambient exposure, color temp and focus for a specific area of the photo. Then the multiple exposures are layered together in Photoshop and masked together.
Its very difficult to get correct exposure of light sources in photos and the space they illuminate in the same exposure and the DOF seems to be beyond what would be possible in a single exposure.
Well, 38 and 39 definitely have flash in them, probably on-camera - you can see the shadows cast by the planters on the table in both, see the tell-tale change in lighting and color balance on the edge of the chairs in 39. 40 and 41 just look like longer exposures at dusk to pick up all the ambient light...and I don't think those were done particularly well. 42 is the only one that looks a little suspicious to me - the two trees in the foreground are casting shadows that would indicate a small point source at relatively low angle, though each is being hit from different sides of the camera. That one could definitely be multiple exposures layered together or could just be a small flash on either side of the camera dialed down pretty low.
Wow, thanks for the great responses everyone. Because these shots aren't great quality, maybe I should ask a different question. If you were going to take these kinds of photos, what MINIMAL (read: inexpensive!) lighting would you bring with you to get the same (or hopefully better) quality shots? I'm going to be taking some photos like this and don't have anything besides my 580EXII. Thanks again for all of the info - it's very much appreciated.
An inexpensive way of lighting similar to this is by light painting. Set you camera to a long exposure , and then run around and fire the flash( hand holding) into the area's that you need the light .
On a 20sec exposure you should be able to fire your flash 6-10 times depending on where you need the light. Wearing black helps hide you while you are moving through the frame.
a good sturdy tripod/cable release, proper timing (just a little after the sun sets), and turning on every light in the house should help you achieve this just fine.
If you want to be sure you nail it, bracket your shots and either create an HDR image, or use multiple images to mask/burn/blend until you've got something useable and believable.
Those photos were done by Victoria and Adam Pergament's SwiftPictures, a firm that specializes in interior and exterior architectural photography for the Los Angeles-area real estate market. They do a lot of dawn and dusk/twilight shoots, and I'm sure they have very sturdy tripods and expensive tilt/shift lenses.
Looking at the shots in the OP's post, I'd agree with Chuck Gardner and cathpath, but they may also have used a little flash (possibly a ring flash?) for some fill.
That's a beautiful property, but $1.8M for 2100 square feet?!? Must be nice if you can afford it.
SEJohnson83 wrote:
to me, 38-39 looks like they may have used a mounted flash w/ diffuser bounced off of the ceiling at a very low power for a little bit of fill...
I could be wrong
Not to be a smart-ass, but what ceiling are you picturing the flash being bounced off of, given that those are outdoors? If you mean the overhang on the patio, wouldn't the overhang then be significantly overexposed compared to the wall behind it or table beneath it, given that it's receiving the lion's share of the light?
Look at the shadows on the table again - they move away from the camera, not downwards from a light above. That, plus the relative exposures of different objects and surfaces and the direction of the light falloff, should help indicate the direction that light is coming from.
I agree that 38 and 39 are probably fill flash with the EC dialed way down. You can see a very faint shadows of light comming from the direction of the camera. ...if it's not on the camera it's probably attached via a hot shoe cord. Otherwise, all pictures were taken with the camera mounted on a tripod.
The paint with light techinique was not used with these pictures, IMO.
A good way to take a cheap golf vacation is to go condo shopping in Florida. You tour a luxury condo, and get a complementary round of golf at the community's course. We did that a few years ago and I snapped these at one of the sites we visited. While not on par with your examples, here are a few to show what can be done with a single 580ex on a bracket with a foam diffuser and a bit of Photoshop work with screen, multiply and perpective correction (about 5 min ea.). They aren't set-up or planned, I was just wandering around with my camera, which as usual was equipped with a 580ex on a bracket with my DIY foam diffuser, taking snap shots. I remembered I had them and just edited them for this thread to show what can be done with minimal gear.
You create a Levels adjustment layer and then fill the mask with black, exiting without making any levels changes. Levels is just a way to create the adjustment layer. Next dupe that adjustment layer 2x so you have three, then go back and change their modes to soft-light, multiply, and screen. I created an action which creates them with a mouse click.
Here's the before and after showing the changes. I had opened the top of my diffuser and bounced most of the light up off the ceiling and used the multiply layer to darken the foreground and back wall and screen to brighten the faces further back, compensating for the fall-off of the flash. Soft-light increases contrast. I used it to bump up the contrast of the faces a bit.
You can find info on the DIY diffusers I use here: LINK
Here's another example where I just used a halogen Torchiere lamp to supplement the tungsten and then made two copies of the RAW file, one balanced for tungsten and the other balanced for daylight and blended them with masks:
Again don't take these as definitive examples, they just happen to be stuff I have on hand which are intended to give you some ideas so you'll be encouraged to experiment with what you have instead of thinking you need something you don't have before trying anything
Just remember the root of AMBIENCE is ambient. So let the natural and artificial ambient light dominate and define the modeling and then just supplement to the extent needed with flash to reveal the shadow details. You can control the mix of indoor and outdoor by shooting early in the morning or at dusk when the outside exposure is close to the inside level.
In a room like a kitchen where the dominant source is fluorescent take two shots with just the fluorescent fixtures on with custom WB: one exposed for the room and a second exposed for detail in the light fixtures. Next then turn off the fluorescents, turn on all the tungsten sources re-do custom WB off them and take two shots: one exposed for the interior and a second for the fixtures. Finally take a flat lit flash shot (bounced off the opposite wall or ceiling behind camera) again custom WB to the flash. You'll have five layers you can blend and bend anyway you like.
Get a ROSCO gel sampler kit next time you order from B&H. They only cost a penny and fit the flash head of a 580ex perfectly. Experiment with the CTO family for matching your flash to tungsten (I usually use 1/2 CT0) to blend the two. Then you can skip the flash only shot and do the tungsten with gelled flash fill together.
