If an amateur this is not as much of a deal as you can still adjust perspective in Photoshop.

I was wondering how to price architectural photography. I want do this for realtors but have no idea what to charge. Is it per view? 1/2 day rate? Can you help? Thanks

Frank Donnino
frank@donnino.com

1. Sometimes I use a diffuser domes on the slaves, but not on the hand held. I find that firing the slaves into the walls or ceiling in adjacent rooms gives nice even lighting without needing a diffuser. You can get great results from either method.
2. I operate my speedlights in remote mode (manual), I keep the angle as wide as possible to provide the widest spread.
3. I only rely on the camera meter setting to get the exposure close enough to fine tune with test shots. I use center weighted matrix metering, with the maximum measuring area (13mm i think).
4. To keep from blowing out windows I find the exposure combo that has the windows exposed the way I want them, then add the speedlights to fill the scene. Using a high ISO with this technique will allow you get the most from your aperture and flash units. Generally, a bright scene (maybe direct sunlight coming into a room through a window) will get a setting combo something like this: ISO 1000, shutter speed 1/320(or whatever the max sync speed is for your flash units), an aperture between 7.1 and 9, and a flash power of 1/4. This is enough to keep from blowing out the windows while keeping a bright, natural interior lighting. The photo of the bedroom above is a good example of this.
5. I no longer concern myself with white balance while shooting. I use Lightroom 3 for processing and the white balance tool combined with multi-image editing convenience means no more on location hassles. As a back up, I keep a gray card with me that I will hide in a scene if necessary. I can then use the eyedropper in Lightroom to pick that gray card as my neutral point.
6. Get the widest lens you can afford. I LOVE my Sigma 12mm. If you go with the 24mm, you can still get great shots, but you will definitely be limited.

And to be clear, I definitely use a tighter aperture since I first wrote the piece. My skills have evolved away from the wide aperture technique.

Good luck and happy shooting!

I have a Nikon D700 with an 18-35 mm f3.5-4.5. That should give me a similar picture angle to your 12 mm on a D300. I also picked up another SB-600 today to give me three flashes for fill.

Do you use difuser domes on all your speedlights? Unfortunately, the SB-600 doesn’t have one.

Do you generally use a wide angle of flash, i.e. setting of 24 mm, as opposed to 50 or 70 mm?

Are you letting the matrix metering/CLS handle all the exposures. Do you use balanced lighting mode to ensure the windows are not blasted out?

Do you do a colour callibration for every room, and every angle? I have a reflector style callibration tool, as opposed to an exposedisk.

If this works out for me, I was seriously considering the 24 mm PC-E lens. However, it is not as wide as my 18-35. Is the ability to do perspective control worth the loss of addtional wide angle?

I, too, thought you would want f11 if at all possible, as opposed to f3.5 or f2.8.

Thanks in advance.

EXIF: ISO1000, 1/320 @ 7.1. Nikon D300 with Sigma 12mm.

This will let you your your wide angle with a lot more flexibility, I think you will like this technique a lot.

Rudy

ce

do you mean small apertures and long shutter times, or wide apertures and fast shutter times??