Advice on lighting interiors with LED lighting

jeniveeev

jeniveeev

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I hope the lighting and interior experts can help me here. I would like to capture the detail of the furnishings together with the LED styled lighting and create some great shots. I usually use natural light and would be happy using my flash but really would like some advice on getting the best of the LED lighting using the most simple set up. Please don't suggest anything complicated. Is there a good time of day to shoot or what would you do? Would love to see some example shots if possible. Many thanks.
 
It's actually very simple...
You control the effect of the flash with your lens aperture, and when you're happy with the result produced by the flash you control the effect of the ambient light (daylight and any continuous artificial light, including the LED lighting, by adjusting the shutter speed.

As for time of day, this has to depend on the effect you want to achieve - if you want sunlight streaming through the window then shoot on a bright sunny day with the sun in the right direction, if you don;t then shoot when it's dull or even dusk.
 
Garry, thanks for the advice and simple set up. I'm not bothered about the time of day but just wondered if evening light might have suited the effect of LED's. Would it be ok to mount my SB600 on board and go from there?
 
jeniveeev said:
Garry, thanks for the advice and simple set up. I'm not bothered about the time of day but just wondered if evening light might have suited the effect of LED's. Would it be ok to mount my SB600 on board and go from there?
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First off, I haven't a clue about LED lighting, but are you talking soft furnishings or wooden furniture? If it's the latter you might want to make sure you're pointing the flash away from it and bouncing it off a wall/ceiling/whatever, or a big modified if you have one, to keep your specular highlights in check.

A circular polariser may be of use too if you have reflections killing the detail in the item(s) you're shooting.
 
jeniveeev said:
Garry, thanks for the advice and simple set up. I'm not bothered about the time of day but just wondered if evening light might have suited the effect of LED's.
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The dimmer the light from outside and the dimmer the light from the flash, the more prominent the effect of the room lighting will be, so yes, evening will probably be best for you.

jeniveeev said:
Would it be ok to mount my SB600 on board and go from there?
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On board is probably the worst possible place
 
Garry Edwards said:
<snip>

On board is probably the worst possible place
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Or more specifically, hard light coming directly from the camera is usually a bad plan, but if you're bouncing it off the ceiling or wall, it doesn't matter where the gun is positioned and it's usually far easier to have it on the camera.
 
On board is probably the worst possible place
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yep. especially for interiors.

For interiors, truth be told.... the easiest way is to have a good assistant 'paint' with the speedlight during a relatively long exposure.

I certainly wouldn't bother with any LED lights for anything other than the smallest detail shots. Simply not got enough power to battle with outside light, or highlight features.
 
itsdavedotnet said:
yep. especially for interiors.

For interiors, truth be told.... the easiest way is to have a good assistant 'paint' with the speedlight during a relatively long exposure.

I certainly wouldn't bother with any LED lights for anything other than the smallest detail shots. Simply not got enough power to battle with outside light, or highlight features.
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Thank you for your reply. The LED lights are built into some of the interiors i.e. stairs & kitchen and the designer would like them in the photos. I'm going to need to think about where to put flashgun. Thanks
 
I have done a few shoots lit with interior LED lighting. It is generally very low power and so best to shoot it at dusk or at night. You will need a long shutter speed and you can use a manually triggered flash to paint in where the there is a lack of LED light. You will probably need some coloured gells to either match your flash colour to the LED light or match it to tungsten.

Here's an example led ceiling lights set to blue to match the sky colour. Long exposure and remote manual flash placed in the adjoining room to light the table, flash gelled to match lighting over cooker.

p946463141-4.jpg
 
jeniveeev said:
Thank you for your reply. The LED lights are built into some of the interiors i.e. stairs & kitchen and the designer would like them in the photos. I'm going to need to think about where to put flashgun. Thanks
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oooohhhhh

my apologies, I misinterpreted your original post.


Same as any interiors shoot really then, walk into the room, turn all the lights on and go from there. Look at the colours of the different light sources - I would certainly personally avoid going as drastic a colour change as the above example - but the same principles as ever apply. Tripod, mirror lockup, shutter release, make it look natural, and paint light in to wherever you need a bit of a lift.

LED fixtures are quite a wide range, so I can't really advise as to colour balance. Some may be daylight balanced or even colder, some may be tungstenish corrected...
 
Hi everyone, just wanted to say thank you again, all your advice and putting it into practice prior to the shoot really helped. I used the SB900 off camera set to remote and it filled in the shadows perfectly. I managed to control the LED lighting which was minimal i.e. under pelmets. I struggled a little with drop pendants that didn't have full shades - very over exposed and lost detail in the wire detail of the globe light but I changed tactic and switched them off and achieved the look I wanted. Amazing shoot and very happy. Thanks again.
 
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