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Wow, my photography questions are all coming at once!!
I just got this question from one of our friends. They run a cabin business and are wanting some high-quality HDR images of their new porches for some print advertising. My camera is a Canon EOS 5D Mark iii and I really don’t know hardly anything about HDR at all. I kind of know what it is, but that’s about it (:D) so any information about IF I can do this or HOW I can do this would be really appreciated! Also, if you have any answers to the questions he asks in this email, also appreciated!
Also, if I am unable to do this, does anyone live around the Hocking Hills Ohio area who is confident they could do a good job for Mr. Flournoy and I could recommend to him? They’re a really great family. 😀
Hey Kina, I have a photography question for you. Now that the new enclosed porch additions at our cabins are completed, we are planning to re-vamp some of our traditional print advertising we do so that we can promote the new additions, and I’m not sure I’m totally happy doing that with the photographs I have from my camera. I have some nice looking shots that I pulled as screen captures off a 3d video that was done at our cabins, but unfortunately the resolution isn’t high enough to transfer to print advertising well. Looks fine on our web site, but wouldn’t look so fine on our print advertising.
My question for you is if your camera has HDR capabilities, or if you have software/apps that you can run your photos through to make them HDR? One of my biggest frustrations over the years with photos inside our cabins is with the lighting. If I adjust the camera shot/angle so that everything inside the cabin is well lit, then the window openings to the outside look very overexposed and washed out. If I adjust the camera shot/angle so that you can see leaves/trees, etc. outside of the window openings, then everything inside the cabin looks underexposed and dark! I want the inside of the cabin to look light and the outside of the windows to look normal as well, and I think that just about requires HDR technology where you can basically weld several shots together to get one really good shot that exposes the light well for everything you’re wanting to be exposed. I’m attaching an example of what I’m talking about. This photo was shot from the iPhone 11 of the guy who was doing the 3d photo shoot. Notice how the inside of our new addition is well lit and yet you can see everything well outside the windows as well? That’s because he took several photos and then ran them through an HDR app on his phone and it turned out that finished product, which overall I like very well. Is that something you think you’d be capable of producing with your camera, either by itself or with some HDR editing? If so, I might like to hire you to come over sometime soon to take some new shots of both the original cabin interiors and the new additions as well. We’re needing to start working very soon on the changes to our print advertising and so I need to get some really good photos to justify the cost of the larger ad.
Let me know what you think.
Thanks!
~ Mr. Flournoy
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Your 5D Mk III can certainly shoot HDR, in fact it even has built-in HDR processing! Here is a short article and a video explaining how to set your settings for taking HDR shots.
I’m pretty sure @jamesstaddon has a 5D Mk III now, so he can probably help you with any specific suggestions with regards to camera settings. I have a couple of thoughts too. 🙂
- You’ll want a good high-quality wide-angle lens for this job! I’m not sure what gear you have now, but the lens will be one of the most important considerations for tight indoor shots. Again, James may have some tips here.
- I would recommend enabling the in-camera HDR processing so you can get some real-time feedback of what the end result will look like. It will save a JPG file, which is only useful for making sure you’re properly capturing the highlights. (Just make sure to set the camera to “save source imgs” so that you can process the RAW files manually.)
- If you have the latest version of Lightroom, you can process the HDR files completely in LR. I have an older version of LR, so I can’t test that feature, but I’ve heard that it works pretty well!
- I’m sure you probably know this, but definitely use a tripod for best results! It will help with composition and post-processing.
- Pay careful attention to lighting. (Especially indoors; you can’t really control outdoor lighting). Watch out for big color differences: i.e. warm light indoors and bluish light outdoors. Notice the color issues in the sample photo you attached… My advice would be to try to shoot at a “warmer” time of day, (golden hour?) or potentially use LED lighting panels or some sort of constant light source (not speedlights) to balance the coloring and lighting indoors/outdoors as much as possible. You’ll appreciate that work once you get into post-processing! 🙂 Of course, as a last resort, with selective editing you can also balance it in post-processing.
I hope that’s helpful, and I’m sure James will have some good tips for you as well.
Hey @kina! I did a quick search on Lenspiration in the forms and found a couple past threads that might be helpful! 😀
https://www.lenspiration.com/forums/topic/hdr-in-camera-vs-post-processing/
https://www.lenspiration.com/forums/topic/editing-hdrs/
On the Editing HDRs thread, James Staddon mentioned:
For starters, I would learn what you can from Jimmy McIntyre’s free videos (I can’t remember seeing anything inappropriate on his website or YouTube channel) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnUOWBfHNpdQjhTPSd3-0cw, and of course, there are his structured courses, https://www.shutterevolve.com/hdr-photomatix-tutorial/ (which I have never personally reviewed, but have reason to believe are very, very good!)
There is a lot of information on this thread, too!
https://www.lenspiration.com/forums/topic/real-estate-photography-2/
@buddingphotographer @esther Thank you very much for the links and info! I think I am understanding it pretty well now. I’m going to practice it to make sure I know how to do it and tell him yes!
Much appreciated! 😀 😀
I’ve actually not used the HDR setting on the 5Diii yet! You’ll have to let me know how it goes with your experiments @kina. 🙂 I imagine fish eye lenses would look odd for the purpose he’s using them for. I have the 16-35 so that’s what I’d use (at 16mm), so just use the widest you have without it looking too warped. The attached photos are at 17mm, and they feel natural enough to me. And make sure to point straight on, the camera perfectly level, not pointed up or down. I use f/16, manual focus, and in the past have done manual HDR merging in PS. Lighting I usually do all natural, though my brother who does real estate photography professionally has a special method for photographing and merging bounce flash photos. I don’t do real estate enough to have his method memorized. 🙂
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@jamesstaddon It went wonderful!! I used a 24-70, constantly on 24. We used one of our video lights a couple of times which really helped but it was mostly natural lighting. Yep, we definitely used a tripod. 😀 Couldn’t have done it without it. The HDR was definitely very very helpful in this case as there were a lot of windows and the outside scenery was gorgeous!
Here are some random photos:
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