How to photograph a room

So you are trying to rent out your place, want to show off how you live or just keep memories – usually, the pictures won’t turn out the way you imagined.

Here are some tips:

1. Get/rent a wide-angle lens (alternatively, put your camera on the zoomed out setting you got),
2. clean up anything that is small, laying around or distracting; straighten out your furniture,
3. go in the corner of the room, back to the wall/window/door to get as much as possible in there,
4. do not tilt your camera (focal plane) and keep it parallel to the wall, make sure all lines that go up are straight,
5. move up and down until it looks good and you’ve got a reasonable relation between floor and ceiling. Most of the time, the middle of the room’s height is pretty good.

When there is a bright window, you can try to put down the shades a little. That way you will keep it that from being overly white and darking out the rest of the interior. Also, you will probably have to overexpose a little bit when the room has white walls.

If your photo is distorted, I can recommend PTLens.
In Photoshop, you can adjust your colors and make them warmer or colder.

How to keep up with your photo stacks

Once you have downloaded the folder (DCIM or whatever) or files from your memory card, rename the pics!

Renaming photos can be done as a batch operation with programs like iView or free ones like ExifRenamer:

1. They should go as something like date taken – because these names never reoccur: »yyyymmdd«
2. an underscore for seperation »_«
3. optional: add an event »Easter«, location »Denmark« or name »Sarah«, and another underscore for seperation »_«, when you have a whole stack from the same shoot.
4. your image number, to be inserted automatically »123« (make sure to use zeros up front: start with 001, not 1).

Your file name will then be different from all the other image names you have ever had and look like this: »20090522_Sarah_002.jpg«

More tips:

When you do alterations to the image, say photoshop or resize it, and you want to keep the original and mark that this image has been changed, then you should use suffixes. For example, your photo can be called »20090522_Sarah_002a_1000px.jpg« – and you will never take the file assuming it is in original size.

I also recommend making folders in the same structure: »yyyymmdd_Name«, for example: »20090522_Sarah«

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Why all this? Now you have a definite name for every single file and will be able to search for any photo taken on any date that you can look up via your calendar and what you did that da; or any photos of Sarah, for example. When someone asks you for a certain image, you can easily look it up on your computer by using search.

The earlier you start implementing this into your work flow, the better for you (as with all improvements). You can even go back and auto-rename all of the old images you have on your computer, because the programs can read out the date from your metadata (exif).

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PS.: Always remember that any digital file should have at least one backup.

Better indoor pictures by gelling your pop-up flash – for free!

this post was written up by reader vb:

Do you hate using your camera’s pop-up flash as much as me?  I hate that blue color and shadow that it throws, so I rarely used the flash - until I found a cool trick.  You’ll need some supplies but they’re free.  Here’s how you do it:

1. Obtain a swatch book from Apollo Design. They make stage lighting gels. Go here and fill out the form and check the “Apollo Gel Swatch Book” box.  It’ll end up in your mailbox about a week or two later. It looks like this:
   
2. Next, find at least 1 white film canister. I think it’s Fuji that uses them.  You will likely want more than 1 so you can have a few colors ready to go instead of swapping them out of the same canister. You can usually get these little suckers for free at a place that processes film. Just ask.
   
3. As they say, “cut a hole in the box.” The slot you cut should be just large enough for your popup flash to fit through.  Make sure it’ll accomodate the flash enough to get it all the way in there as you don’t want any light squeaking out the bottom.  My Canon Rebel XT’s flash has a bit of a plastic lip on the lower edge of the flash which makes for a nice spot for the canister to “snap” onto and stay put. I was lucky enough that I didn’t need to cut all the way to the edge where the lid snaps on, keeping the canister’s rigidity.
   
4. Pick out a color from your gel samples. You want something that is close (if not exact) to the color of the lighting you’re taking the picture in.  It’ll likely be some shade of yellow or orange. But, feel free to experiment. You’ll get some neat effects by using an off the wall color. An empty canister is a great diffuser too, I’ve found.
   
5. Slide the gel into the canister so it curls around the inside like a strip of film would. You likely won’t need to trim it at all. These samples are the perfect size.  Next, plop the whole thing on your pop-up flash.
   
6. Give it a go!

Have no doubt that I have as much creativity in my body that will fit into a thimble. But, this is a neat trick a friend of mine told me to try.  He said “gel your flash” and poked around a bit and saw that people had done this.  I wish I thought of doing this earlier!

What is the benefit of shooting in RAW?

When editing in Photoshop, I feel like I’m able to manipulate it the same I would a jpg, no more.

(submitted by iwrite)

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snpsht’s response:

When you shoot in RAW Format, you will be able to get a lot more out of the photo you took than having it already narrowed down to the information a JPG can take.

With JPG, a final (and compressed) format, you cannot save such a large range of contrast/brightness and colors. The raw file is like a negative that you can still influence when it is being interpreted into a JPG. For example, see these two “prints” of the same raw file. The first one might have been your JPG, the one where you messed up the settings and thought you lost quite some information in the brightness and color (too bright and all greenish) to bad exposure – The second one is what you can still make of it!

For example, white balance can be done later and you can pick the area of brightness and contrast which is appropriate for your photo from lots of information stored. It will remember what you told it to do when you save the file your raw converter creates, but it will not overwrite your raw file, ever.

Of course, raw files are much larger and not for everyone. You should not give them out of hand and always convert to a format like PSD, JPG etc., so that the photo can be final.