Flash for interior shots ?

Can anyone advise please?

I havent been using my k10 for a while now what with moving home and riding my motorbike during the summer but someone has recently asked me to photograph the interior of their house for a property site.
Im ok with the basics of photography still but was wondering on lighting , a colleague has mentioned using a flashgun pointing away from the subject and into an umbrella to fill the room with even light.

What do you guys recommend? budget is tight right now - damn that stamp duty!!

Dunk.

You will most certainly need a Camera support of some description so that you can use a small aperture which will then necessitate a slow shutterspeed. You can then use the flash hand held Camera and fire it to lighten any shadows. If you have more than one Flash then better still.
For Church interiors i use A Cable release, Infra Red Release or the 2 second timer on the camera, I use around F22 and maybe 20-30 seconds exposure, That way i can fire 2 handheld Flashguns around then have time to fire them again once or twice when they have recharged. All on the one shot. If this is too harsh then you could bounce the flash off walls or ceiling.

Best Regards - Pete.

Do you have a tripod? If so, why not use long exposures and natural light?

It doesn't come much more suited to tight budgets than that

tripod and hdr, high dynamic range....
also, cheap halogen hardware store worklamps will do, esp if you're just using them indirectly, bounced for fill...

I think your colleague's advice is OK, but you don't need a brolly. Just anything white, or even a large piece of polystyrene, or cardboard covered with aluminium foil.

I suspect Chris's suggestion could result in images that are not quite punchy enough, unless it's a b4right day, in which case you might have a contrast problem.

I tend to bounce of a white ceiling, if there is one.

G

one of the most useful things I have is a 110cm white reflector/diffuser with zip on black/silver/gold cover. You can use it as George suggest but also, usefully, can fire a flash through it.

I take internal photos of houses several times a week for a client lettings agency. All I use is a flashgun (cheapo AF280T in my case) pointed at the ceiling. I've done hundreds of these sessions, and I have yet to visit a house that hasn't got a white ceiling. Taking the shots in the daytime is also helpful, but try and avoid aiming your camera at the windows

I think if you look around at the competitor's photos you'll find that's all you need. Most of them (the competitor's shots) are awful, you see a lot of point and shoot photos, and even the DSLR ones are almost always with direct flash, lens shadow, vignetting, blown highlights, you name it they've got it!

You don't need a tripod. What you do need however (presuming it is a fairly normal-sized house with normal-sized rooms) is an ultra wide angle lens.

PS We've also noted a correlation between the number of enquiries and the blueness of the sky in the photos so try and wait for a nice day!

I do that F22 with 20-30 seconds....but i get a red photograph and very pixelated. I don't have external flash and i would like to get a lot of light in the dark without using the camera flash because i get always like "superficial" pictures, without texture and style...

What ISO do you shoot?
If you use iso 100 or 200 it would not get red or pixalated with long exposures or are you pushing things in post processing?

The camera flash is terrible. But a cheap bounce flash pointed at the ceiling would give very different results.

G

I can't speak with much experience of interior shots but a flash that can bounce off a ceiling is a revelation compared to the onboard flash of my K10D. I have the Jessops own one from when they were being sold off and am very very happy with that. It's really nice in an interior shot for example of my kids sitting somewhere that has the sky and scenery outside all nice and clear instead of not being visible at all. The thing I could do with for turning the camera to portrait mode is a bounce card, mind you if I pulled my finger out I could make my own.

Is that the meter suggested exposure? You can try to bracket the exposure and use the best one. But not knowing the time of day or lighting in the house makes it next to impossible to suggest any way to improve your results. Could you give us more info?