Best Lighting Equipment for Real Estate Photography
The quality of real estate images, meeting the standard of the public eye are reliant on photography’s ability to capture the best angles and highest visibilities. Angles can easily be achieved by the latter might require making an effort to achieve. Do not fret as real estate photography’s best lighting equipment can aid even in the most difficult situations. If it’s a sunny day, then you might consider yourself lucky. Otherwise, real estate camera lighting equipment is required.
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There are a lot of real estate camera lighting equipment out there, enough to confuse those who are not away what each does or functions for. It is important to understand that flashes have varying outcomes depending on how you use it so even if you have purchased real estate photography’s best lighting equipment, then you might not get the envisioned images you have been playing in your mind.
With this, the basic definition and functions are critical to fathom and in some cases, understand where natural light becomes better over real estate camera lighting equipment. A good photographer will know how to utilize everything around him and in situations where it might be better than real estate camera lighting equipment, he will be able to sense it.
How Do I Get Good Lighting for Real Estate Photos?
There are many ways to go about finding a good source of illumination to get a good eye on visibility. Sometimes we even think of using different techniques such as HDR or bracketed images just to take a crack at it later on in post-processing. While these aren’t bad decisions, there are ways in utilizing real estate photography’s best lighting equipment and sources to your advantage.
Pick the Right Time of the Day
The sun at its peak is the best time to grab the lighting you want. You won’t need much of the real estate camera lighting equipment you have in your pack, and you can save them for the interior shots. For some professionals, it is also about the impact you want the photos to have. This includes twilight effects and so the time of the day might drastically change with the aid of a few real estate photography’s best lighting equipment.
Know Where to Aim Your Light
Even the best lighting equipment for real estate photography won’t transform your images if you don’t use it properly. For instance, you might need to bounce off the light from your flash onto some dark clouds when shooting on an overcast day for an exterior, this helps dissipate some light and distribute it onto the frame. You might also want to avoid aiming straight for glass or windows to avoid flash hotspots which don’t even contribute to any advantages in your photo.
Different Types of Lights
It won’t hurt to build your arsenal with real estate photography’s best lighting equipment, but before you do, make sure you know why you need them, and in which use cases they will apply to. Doing a shotgun approach can only waste money and get you stuck with a piece of hardware that might just collect some dust.
Off-Cam Flash
Otherwise known as a wireless flash, this handheld version of a real estate camera lighting equipment can be strategically places in areas where there needs to be more light that others. They can be hooked up to your camera and with the power of Bluetooth and connectivity, can be controlled through your clicks and snaps. Be wary though, that this may cause you to spend more time setting up and testing the image that comes out as you have more variables in the equation. Yu might also need to rearrange the position of these wireless flashes to be able to capture several bracketed images with different lighting conditions to later stack together in editing.
Strobe Flash
Unlike the strobe light we all know and well at parties, strobe flashes are quite similar in nature. They come out as more intense yet shorter in terms of duration allowing the photographer to get more distance and thus, capture a bigger area as the intensity of the light is higher. It’s faster time to recharge is also an advantage should you be pressed for time, therefore getting more done.
Hot Shoe Flash
These are what you normally find mounted on top of cameras. Being a common real estate camera lighting equipment, this allows you to connect the flash with the camera and synchronize it to trigger the moment you take a photo. It works the same way as other flashes, but more convenient as you can just take it from point A to point B in a jiffy.
Should You Turn on Lights for Real Estate Photos?
There are 2 ways to look at this. You can turn on the lights inside if you lack a source of good natural light and your flash is your only ray of hope (pun intended). In another situation, taking twilight shots at the golden hour really requires you to do so because you will be shooting all exterior shots with a dark background but with a vibrant home. The lights then create a contrast with the dark purple sky that gleams of streaks of gold.
How Do Professionals Shoot Real Estate Photos?
Again, a professional knows how to use their tools and more importantly, knows when to use their tools. It won’t always be the case that real estate camera lighting equipment will take center stage, though they would normally be used more often than you’d think. Professionals take a look at the situation, assess whether an accessory is required, and executes from there. There is no room for being trigger happy and making all the necessary steps to understand the anatomy of the property is taking a step ahead in the game.
Final Thoughts
Real estate photography’s best lighting equipment exists out there and buying them all won’t make you the best photographer. What you need to do is understand how you can turn a situation into a favorable one with the lighting equipment as an aid to achieving it rather than fully depending on it. It might be difficult to consider at the start, but the proper approach as most professionals do it can give you the results you need and the photos to boast. Nothing will stop you from doing so and you just simply need to try it out.