Chandeliers and pendant lights
Any hints for shooting rooms with chandeliers and pendant lights? When using on or off camera flashes I chase shadows and spend too much time in post. Thoughts?
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6 Comments
Depending on the location I either make sure light I am adding is well diffused not causing hard shadows, or I use grids or flag to make sure my light does not fall directly on those fixtures.
I agree with Agnieszka, but if you are on time constraints then the easiest way would be to use bracketed exposures and merge them in post
Hi Anson, I utilize off camera speed lights on a heavy duty light stand to extend to get them close to the ceiling (large bounce source). I will use bracketed exposure and edit the highlights in Lightroom, then merge them using LR Enfuse to create my base image.
Thanks everyone. With your commments and a lot of experimenting, I’ve developed a go to work flow that that covers most situations.
Depending on interior and exterior lighting I take 5-7 bracketed shots processed with HDR. I also take a flash shot and blend two copies; First a color blend and then a lighten blend. The first cures HDR’s color wonkishness and the second lightens the room and provides fill lighting for furniture surfaces facing the camera. I adjust the opacity sliders to make it as natural looking as possible.
For lighting, a quickie solution is to aim the Speedlight into a ceiling corner if the surfaces are white. If that isn’t possible I use a 42” soft white reflecting umbrella positioned directly behind the camera.
Do you have something stronger than a speed-light? Point it up at the ceiling and make a flash exposure. Then run your bracket (ambient) but don't do the HDR blend. Instead, blend (by hand in PS) your best ambient frame with the flash shot. You will get much better color and it will still look like natural light. And you will totally lose that HDR look. I rarely never use and when I do need an automated blend (rarely), LR-Enfuse gives me better results.
As for the shadows from lights, you can either remove them in PS or (with clone tools) or blend them out. Usually one method is better than the other for each shot.
It's all about collecting as much good unaltered image data on site and then spending good time in post.
Hope that helps.
hints for shooting rooms with chandeliers and pendant lights? on a canon, it is called D+