I’ve been learning more about real estate photography recently which is a whole other animal from landscape photography.  One common practice is exposure blending (HDR) which I used in this shot of my kitchen.

To get this shot I metered the brightest point and the darkest point and then shot in 2 stop intervals to get a series of images that I could use for exposure blending.  The software I used to blend the images was Photomatix which I think does a better job than Photoshop for this purpose.

To make it easier to figure out the settings for the 2-stop intervals I created a spreadsheet where each column shows shutter times that are 2 stops apart.  This chart assumes that the camera is set to 1/3 stop intervals.  This makes it easy to set your camera to manual, set the desired aperture, then starting at the fastest shutter speed, take exposures 2 stops apart.  You can also count six “clicks” each time you take a shot, but this helps me find where to start and where to stop.

To use this chart, first meter for the brightest point in the shot and then for the darkest taking note of the shutter times for whatever aperture you are shooting at.  Then try to match them up on one of the six columns as best you can and take a shot at each of the exposures within the range.

For example, say I measured 1/100 @ f/8 for the brightest point in the room that I am shooting and 4 seconds @ f/8 for the darkest.  I might pick the third column on the chart and shoot the exposures starting at 1/160 and go down to 6 seconds for a total of 6 shots.  This gives me some extra play on either side of my original metered range.

A few rules of thumb that I’ve picked up:

1. Shoot from midway between the ceiling and the floor which in a normal house is going to be at four feet high.
2. Go wide angle.  It makes the room appear more spacious and inviting and gives a more complete view of the room.
3. Make sure your verticals are straight.  One of the side effects of shooting wide angle is distortion.  You will almost certainly need to correct this in Photoshop.
4. Use exposure blending.  Interiors can have a great deal of range in luminosity between the darkest corner and the lights.  Especially if there are windows.  Your eyes adjust automatically for the variation in lighting, but cameras do not.  Exposure blending can bring it all together to give a more appealing result.