Lighting kit for interiors

charlottemarie_15

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Hello, my first shoot of hotel interiors (a freebie to build up a portfolio) didnt go that well but to be honest I've never done interiors before so I don;t know what else I expected! Turns out I have a lot more to learn than what my degree showed me :(

So I'm sure theres loads of posts on this already, feel free to point me in the right direction, but what do people use to light interiors? I know natural light is a fave, and its my fave too, but I literally don't have anything else. Light meters, reflectors anything. And I have no idea what the pro's use for artificial lighting, its something I'll have to save for but any suggestions?

Thank you.
 
Natural light, turn all the room lights on as you walk into the room.

Locking the camera down and manually light painting with a couple of speedlights can be quite useful, as can putting speedlights on triggers to just highlight or bring out certain darker areas of the room.

So yeah, a tripod, cable release, and couple of speedlights and a set of rf602 radio triggers off ebay, and go from there :) An assistant is useful as you can tell them where to hide in the room and pop away at the test button of a speedlight to 'paint' with the light.

Other than that, you need a wide angle lens for obvious reasons.
 
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Natural light, turn all the room lights on as you walk into the room.

Locking the camera down and manually light painting with a couple of speedlights can be quite useful, as can putting speedlights on triggers to just highlight or bring out certain darker areas of the room.

So yeah, a tripod, cable release, and couple of speedlights and a set of rf602 radio triggers off ebay, and go from there :) An assistant is useful as you can tell them where to hide in the room and pop away at the test button of a speedlight to 'paint' with the light.

Other than that, you need a wide angle lens for obvious reasons.

Thats really helpful thanks, I have the tripod and cable release, I have a decent DSLR and two wide angle lenses so I'm pretty set apart from lighting. Going to look into the rf602 triggers, do they basically sit on the hot shoe and fire off the flash?

What speedlights do you recommend for a Nikon D90?

I must have had a bad experience with flash as I just don't understand how to use it right, I love my macro flash but using flash to light a room I can;t work out how it won't look awful lol. It obviously doesn't because it works for pro's, but have you got any tips? I presume maybe I bounce it off something and get a softbox or something? Artificial light is such a new thing to me lol...
 
Thats really helpful thanks, I have the tripod and cable release, I have a decent DSLR and two wide angle lenses so I'm pretty set apart from lighting. Going to look into the rf602 triggers, do they basically sit on the hot shoe and fire off the flash?

What speedlights do you recommend for a Nikon D90?

I must have had a bad experience with flash as I just don't understand how to use it right, I love my macro flash but using flash to light a room I can;t work out how it won't look awful lol. It obviously doesn't because it works for pro's, but have you got any tips? I presume maybe I bounce it off something and get a softbox or something? Artificial light is such a new thing to me lol...

A couple of the cheap fleabay flashes (Yongnuo ones), which have manual output adjustment, combined with a set of triggers, will give you infinitely more options than you currently have. You don't need anything fancy unless you're lighting the Albert hall - just bounce them off walls and ceiling (making sure the flashes are out of shot) and you'll see a marked difference.

Have a butchers at this, it might help you get a firmer grip on lighting rooms with a mixture of flash and ambient..
 
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