What is the best camera for taking pictures in low light? How to shoot at night without a flash or how to take pictures in the dark without a tripod. And also with a tripod, with and without flash

28.09.2014 17428 photography tips 0

Today we will try to consider software shooting modes on an entry-level compact camera or ultrazoom. Let's make a reservation right away that this article is more intended for those who have recently picked up a camera, and do not intend to delve into complex arguments about interchangeable optics for DSLRs, including iso. This information will be useful for those who have a "soap box" with variable settings, turn off the flash and have a desire to photograph an unusual evening view, portrait or still life by candlelight in a dark room.

The goal is to help a beginner with a budget entry-level compact camera learn how to take interesting beautiful photos in the dark (or rather, in low light conditions) without a flash. Candlelight photography is suggested as an example: probably everyone who has held a camera at least once wanted to take pictures in low light, where there is little light, but interesting objects.

Actually, the article is for those who have a beautiful bouquet on the table and who, perhaps for the first time, were dissatisfied with how a photo with a flash turns out. Or maybe you have a beautiful burning candle, the contemplation of which directs your thoughts to the fact that it would be nice to shoot a beautiful still life or even a portrait in soft lighting.

One way or another, you have a "soap box" camera with a set of subject programs. You need to photograph the subject in the dark, or at least in low light, such as a candle-lit subject.

First, let's dwell on a large selection of scene programs designed for evening shooting. In different cameras, they are often called differently, but are based on similar principles.

So what are they called?

night landscape(often a moon and star icon) - on most compact cameras, allows you to turn off the flash.

night portrait(often an icon of a person, asterisks above it). Be careful, night portrait most often involves using a flash along with a slow shutter speed. This mode is designed to shoot a person with a background - landscape, night sky, headlights of cars on the road. Therefore, a flash is used for the foreground - otherwise the person's face will be smeared. And for the background under such shooting conditions, clarity is not so significant.

Portrait by candlelight(candle icon, respectively). Allows you to turn off the flash. Reproduces the color of objects photographed by candlelight. That is, there will be a warm gamma.

Intelligent Mode- recognizes that you are shooting, selects the most suitable one from all the subject programs. Also allows you to turn off the flash.

Auto- works differently in different cameras. For most compact cameras, you can turn off the flash - for this there is a button where a crossed-out lightning flash is drawn, shoot in automatic mode - it will rebuild for shooting in low light conditions. No other settings are provided.

P- program mode close to automatic. You can change the white balance, iso value. Even if it is difficult for you to figure it out now, you can still safely set this setting - it is very simple, it will work no worse than automatic without your participation.

And finally, cheers! - manual setting- the same fully manual mode, which we will try to learn how to use for shooting in the dark. This mode is designated M - manual, here everything is in the power of the photographer, you yourself set the shutter speed and aperture of the camera. But the camera will tell you a lot...

Let's turn off the flash. This time. Let's find something that at first can replace our tripod. If you have a tripod, please use it. Clear pictures in the dark, when there is little light, do not happen without a tripod. However, maybe, but only in one case, we will consider it separately.

Let's put one of the night shooting modes. These are automatic modes. They can be used for photography in the dark, but with only one "but" - you need a tripod. Otherwise, everything will be blurry.

So, choose a dark corner, place a still life there. We will make the shooting conditions difficult, and even by candlelight. It is absolutely impossible to read in such a dark place, but let's try to take pictures. Where are our story programs? We choose in turn:

night landscape

Although we do not have a landscape, but a still life, we will still photograph it in this mode.

Pretty good, but a bit dark. It is almost impossible to see what is around. But there is little noise - the photo is not full of multi-colored spots, even if you enlarge the picture. We look at the values - the shutter speed is 1/2 second, iso 200. All this was supplied to us by the program. Now let's take a picture of the same scene in the same dark room on the mode

Portrait by candlelight

It looks very similar to the previous photo (just as dark), but the values are different: the shutter speed here is 3 seconds, and iso 100. If you shot people, they would most likely turn out to be blurry - 3 seconds is too long. Again, let me remind you that all these settings are set by the camera as part of the subject program. In any scenario, without a tripod, nowhere.

Don't believe? Here you go: the same photo without a tripod

Shooting without a tripod

Let's see what else we have.

Intelligent Mode

Not available in all cameras. It differs in that you can shoot without a tripod in low light. But, unfortunately, not so bad. Without a tripod here, I repeat, you can’t do it, there will be a lot of noise. For example, let's compare two shots in fully automatic mode.

One is made from a tripod and the other is hand made. A "bad" photo has an iso (what is responsible for the noise) of 800, while a "good" photo has only 200. Guess which photo has a longer shutter speed? That's right, "good". This is about shooting in the dark without a tripod or flash, and getting clear shots. Unfortunately, this is only possible due to iso, and you can see for yourself what a rough noisy photo you get. Mode P in this case behaved the same way as the others, there was no visible difference.

M - manual manual mode

Here we have the brightest image. iso 100, shutter speed 2 seconds. Here we set it all ourselves, with our own hands, with the help of prompts on the camera. Take a look at the scale below. This image will have the correct (relatively) exposure when the yellow cursor moves from -2 to 0. To do this, use the buttons on the camera (now we are reading the instructions for your camera!) Change the shutter speed and aperture (they are shown in the picture red)

The letter f is aperture, we have it 2.8. And we have a shutter speed of 1 - that is, one second. Something else needs to be changed - it will not be possible to increase the aperture, this is its final value. But you can increase the exposure. That's how we got 2 seconds of exposure. we set iso 100 in advance, having studied a specific model of the camera.

Results

Let's briefly summarize our lesson on photography in low light and in general in the dark (well, not absolute, of course).

Rule one: if you want a beautiful photo - even in low light conditions, try to shoot without a flash.

Rule two: a tripod is needed. There is no way to take pictures in the dark without it. Neither portraits nor landscapes. If there is not enough light - you need a tripod!

Rule Three: watch the noise, control the iso. Well, if you haven’t dealt with it, then forget it for a while - it will remind you of itself with the effect of sanded photographs, multi-colored stains in the photograph. Don't be afraid, just try to reduce it. Even for dark photos on a compact camera, you can’t set iso more than 400, it will be ugly. However, remember that if you need to shoot in a dark room, or just in bad light, and you don’t have a tripod: a high ISO value is one of two options for getting a photo. The second option is flash.

All photographic to you!

Shooting at night or in the dark. Oh yeah.

This is what people think about the least when buying a camera and what they come to very quickly. Night shooting is so romantic.

Technically, shooting handheld in the dark is not difficult, but there are a number of significant limitations that reduce it to the level of impossibility or unacceptable quality:

Long exposure due to low light
High ISO due to slow shutter speed
Digital noise due to high ISO

How do beginner photographers "correctly" take pictures at night ?!

Undemanding young photographers raise the built-in flash and click the shutter with gusto, blinding everyone around. The more attentive, not necessarily the more experienced, frown in displeasure at the sight of flat faces, red eyes, and unnatural grotesque lighting.

Others, who have read photo blogs with answers on how to take pictures and have already bought a tripod, suddenly discover that apparently stationary people are very mobile when shooting at slow shutter speeds. Say hello to blurry photos and a Manfrotto tripod for a lot of money. :)

Still others joyfully raise ISO, especially if a SLR camera allows you to raise ISO to over 25k +, and then sigh sadly, looking at photos hopelessly spoiled by digital noise.

Fourth are faced with incorrect autofocus. It seems like the camera is aimed, but not in the right direction and not in the same way, in general. Or it refuses to focus at all.

These are the main problems that our photographer will visit when trying to photograph something at night or just in the dark. However, the good news is that these problems are completely solvable, if approached skillfully.

Starting a conversation about night photography, you need to know that there are two main photo accessories that make night photography very easy. This is:

Flash. external or built-in
Tripod

And now we'll talk about how to photograph at night with and without them. And, since you are a beginner photographer, we will start with their absence.

How to take pictures at night without a flash?!

In this type of photography, the novice photographer has the following choices in how to shoot:

Using a tripod
With high ISO(ISO)

The bottom line is to ensure that the shutter speed on the camera is sufficient to exclude a blurry photograph.

What happens if you raise the ISO when shooting at night?!

By raising the ISO, you can reduce the shutter speed to a value that will allow you to get a clear picture, without shaking or blurring.

This method is good for everyone, except for one point:

Raising the ISO leads to more digital noise, and the worse the matrix of your camera, the stronger the digital noise will be in the photo.

By the way, raising the ISO always leads to the appearance and amplification of digital noise. It doesn't matter when and how you photograph: day or night.

How to shoot at night or in the dark with a tripod?!

The smartest thing you can do if you want to photograph something in the dark is to use a tripod.

A tripod can be anything: expensive or cheap, with or without a swivel head. Its task is only to ensure the complete immobility of the camera during night photography. Yes, actually, and not only at night.

Thanks to the tripod, you can use any slow shutter speeds that will allow you to use your digital camera without any fear of blur or movement on the frames. You will not have any need to raise the ISO.

In other words, if you are photographing with a tripod, then ISO can be set to its minimum value.

If there is no tripod, i.e. If you are a completely new photographer, you can use any surface suitable for laying the camera and ensuring its stillness when taking pictures.

How to take pictures at night with a flash?!

To begin with, you must understand that any flash, whether it be mounted or built-in, can only illuminate a few meters and, therefore, it will not work to illuminate the entire Moscow Kremlin with a flash.

Flashes are good for night photography of portraits, small interiors or buildings, and the like. In general, all that is enough lighting from this very flash.

The process of shooting night photography with a flash is simple.

We raised the built-in / turned on and set up the external one and take pictures to your health. As a rule, any Kenon / Nikon / Pentax / Sony / Samsung flash works fine in automatic or semi-automatic mode on its own camera, which makes life a lot easier for a novice photographer.

The details of using the flash are described in the instructions for your camera or the flash itself, and we’ll talk a little further about using the flash when shooting portraits at night.

How to shoot at night without a tripod?!

As already mentioned, trying to work out photography in the dark is fraught with long exposure, and not gopniks, as you might think. Alas and ah, but a novice photographer has only two options for taking pictures at night and without a tripod, i.e. from hand:

Use high ISO
use flash

The problems that give rise to both of these options for night photography have already been discussed a little higher.

How to photograph portraits at night with a digital camera?!

Basically, there are three options for how you can shoot portraits of people or just people themselves at night:

Using built-in or external flash
Using high ISO
Using a tripod and flash

Taking a portrait at night using the flash

When using the built-in head-on flash, you will get fairly flat lighting and correspondingly flat faces of your friends. Red-eye and harsh shadows go hand in hand with a photo taken this way.

In general, the sensations from such photographs are terrible, and therefore, I strongly do not recommend using the built-in flash.

Night portraits are much better when using an external flash with a rotary head, i.e. the flash can be directed in different directions and operate with light reflected from a wall or ceiling, which gives softer and better portrait lighting.

The problem with external flashes is that they are quite expensive. Canon / Nikon flashes with rotary heads are quite expensive. The cost of Pentax flashes generally drives into quiet horror.

The situation with outbreaks is saved by the Chinese manufacturer of flashes of the YongNuo brand.

But there is another problem here: most of the YongNuo flash models require manual adjustment, which imposes higher requirements on the skills of a novice photographer. At a minimum: knowledge of exposure, exposure pairs and shooting in manual mode on the camera.

How to take pictures at night at high ISO !?

When taking a photo, by setting a high ISO, you can get a pretty good shot that will have the right to life and that will retain all the naturalness of the lighting in the photo.

However, be sure that shooting in the dark, through raising the ISO, is not an activity for the faint of heart, because the abundance of digital noise in the picture will be colossal, especially when shooting with a cheap digital camera such as a digital zoom or a soap box.

And so it can be concluded that at night, with a high ISO, only advanced cameras with fast optics shoot well. In principle, one can not assume, because this is exactly what happens.

Remember: if you are using a tripod, then you do not need to set a high ISO for any kind of photography.

How to shoot portraits of people at night using a tripod and flash?!

Now we come to the most important thing: how to take a good portrait at night?!

From the title, you already understood that you need to use a tripod and a flash. The problem with this approach to photography lies in the fact that it is necessary to work out the person being portrayed and everything that surrounds him. Especially the background.

And the kind of night shooting that allows all this is called "slow sync photography" by "front or rear curtain." You mount your camera on a tripod, set the exposure to work out the background, and turn on slow rear-curtain sync.

What happens with this type of photography?!

The camera will expose the background and turn on the flash automatically at the last moment of exposure, which will allow you to get a clear portrait of a person in the foreground, without blurring and stirring.

You can do the same thing, but completely in manual mode on the camera. As a rule, this allows you to get a photo with better developed shadows and lighting.

Photographing a portrait in a fully manual mode with a tripod and flash

This photo is taken as follows:

Mounting the camera on a tripod
We select the manual shooting mode on the camera and select the exposure to work out the background or background.
We select the flash power for sufficient illumination of the person in the foreground.
Enable slow rear-curtain sync
Set the timer on the camera and press the shutter button on the camera.

The flash should not be overly powerful. We only need to highlight the person, not tearing him away from the background visually. You can find a description of how slow synchronization mode is enabled on your camera in its instructions.

This is the most efficient and effective way to take pictures at night, which guarantees a high-quality night portrait of a person without blurring, movement and low digital noise due to the lack of the need to raise the ISO.

Combining high ISO, flash and a tripod is useless, because in their essence they all contradict each other.

According to the tradition of the photoblog, about the photo from the article:

This is one of the first pictures I took at night. Photographing was carried out late at night in a fully manual mode of the camera without a flash and a tripod.

I compensated for the lack of a tripod by laying the camera on some kind of fence. Not as convenient as with a tripod, but the stillness of the camera during shooting was ensured and, therefore, there was no need to turn up the ISO when shooting.

The selection of the exposure made it possible to obtain detailed moonlight on the mountains, in the very background. By the way, this study confuses inexperienced photographers so much that they take this line of mountains for some kind of image processing defect.

Using a slow shutter speed blurred the surface of the water, but I chose it in such a way that I still retain a slight ripple of the waves on the water.

Bonus for those who have read this far. Please note that all the lights in the photo have elongated rays, like stars.

A similar effect can be obtained when using a closed aperture i.e. the aperture value is in the range of 12-16, and the more you close the aperture, the more the rays will be stretched.

In general, it turned out to be quite a good interesting photo taken at night. So romantic.

The goal is to help a beginner with a budget entry-level compact camera learn how to take interesting beautiful photos in the dark (or rather, in low light conditions) without a flash. Candlelight photography is suggested as an example: take pictures in low light, where there is little light, but interesting objects , wanted, probably, by everyone who has ever held a camera.

One way or another, you have a "soap box" camera with a set of subject programs. You need to photograph the subject in the dark, or at least in low light, such as a candle-lit subject.

First, let's dwell on a large selection of scene programs designed for evening shooting. In different cameras, they are often called differently, but are based on similar principles.
So what are they called?

night landscape(often a moon and star icon) - on most compact cameras, allows you to turn off the flash.

night portrait(often a person icon, with stars above it) Be careful, night portraits most often involve using a flash along with a slow shutter speed. This mode is designed to shoot a person with a background - landscape, night sky, headlights of cars on the road. Therefore, a flash is used for the foreground - otherwise the person's face will be smeared. And for the background under such shooting conditions, clarity is not so significant.
Candlelight portrait (candle icon, respectively) Allows you to turn off the flash. Reproduces the color of objects photographed by candlelight. That is, there will be a warm gamma.

Intelligent Mode- recognizes that you are shooting, selects the most suitable one from all the subject programs. Also allows you to turn off the flash.

And finally, cheers! manual setting- the same fully manual mode, which we will try to learn how to use for shooting in the dark.
This mode is designated M - manual, manual mode, here everything is in the power of the photographer, you yourself set the shutter speed and aperture of the camera. But the camera will tell you a lot...

Let's put one of the night shooting modes. These are automatic modes. They can be used for photography in the dark, but with only one "but" - you need a tripod. Otherwise, everything will be blurry.

So, let's pull out a dark corner, place a still life there. We will make the shooting conditions difficult, and even by candlelight. It is absolutely impossible to read in such a dark place, but let's try to take pictures. Where are our story programs? choose in order:

night landscape
Although we do not have a landscape, but a still life, we will still photograph it in this mode.

Pretty good, but a bit dark. It is almost impossible to see what is around.
But there is little noise - the photo is not full of multi-colored spots, even if you enlarge the picture.
We look at the values - the shutter speed is 1/2 second, iso 200. All this was supplied to us by the program.
Now let's take a picture of the same scene in the same dark room on the mode

Portrait by candlelight

It looks very similar to the previous photo (just as dark), but the values are different: the shutter speed here is 3 seconds, and iso 100. If you shot people, they would most likely turn out to be self-made - 3 seconds is too long. Again, let me remind you that all these settings are set by the camera as part of the subject program. In any scenario, without a tripod, nowhere.

Don't believe? Here you go: the same photo without a tripod

Let's see what else we have.

Intelligent Mode not available in all chambers. It differs in that you can shoot without a tripod in low light. But, unfortunately, not so bad. Without a tripod here, I repeat, you can’t do it, there will be a lot of noise. For example, let's compare two shots in fully automatic mode.

One is made from a tripod and the other is hand made. a "bad" photo has an iso (what is responsible for the noise) of 800, while a "good" photo has only 200. Guess which photo has a longer shutter speed? That's right, "good". This is about shooting in the dark without a tripod or flash, and getting clear shots. Unfortunately, this is only possible due to iso, and you can see for yourself what a rough noisy photo you get.

The R-program mode in this case behaved the same way as the others, there was no visible difference.

M - manual manual mode

Here we have the brightest image. iso 100 , shutter speed 2 seconds. Here we set it all ourselves, with our own hands, with the help of prompts on the camera.

Take a look at the scale below. The correct (relatively) exposure for this shot will be when the yellow cursor moves from -2 to 0.
to do this, use the buttons on the camera (now we are reading the instructions for your camera!) to change the shutter speed and aperture values \u200b\u200b(they are shown in red in the picture) Rule one: if you want a beautiful photo, try to shoot without a flash even in low light conditions.

Rule two: you need a tripod. There is no way to take pictures in the dark without it. Neither portraits nor landscapes. If there is not enough light - you need a tripod!

Rule three - watch the noise, control the iso. Well, if you haven’t dealt with it, then forget it for a while - it will remind you of itself with the effect of sanded photographs, multi-colored stains in the photograph. Don't be afraid, just try to reduce it.
Even for dark photos, you can’t set ISO more than 400, it will be ugly. However, remember that if you need to take a picture in a dark room, or just in bad light, and you don’t have a tripod, a high ISO value is one of two options for getting a photo. The second option is flash.

Night shooting requires a lot of camera stability. Low light requires a long shutter speed, and to avoid blurry shots, you need to use a tripod.

A heavy tripod is best for night photography. Also, a cable for lowering the solution will not be superfluous. It will further reduce vibration when shooting. Of course, you can do without expensive equipment. Any plane can act as a support, and a timer can be used to eliminate shaking.

When shooting at night, you need to choose the settings very carefully. It is important to set the appropriate aperture, shutter speed and ISO. Different night scenes will require new settings. The table shows some universal values.

*Plot*	*Excerpt*	*Aperture value*	*Sensitivity (ISO* )
Fireworks
Carousels/Rides
tracks from car headlights

	Bulb Mode
Concert with stage lighting equipment
Rock concert
Building lighting
Full moon
Landscape in the moonlight
dusk, sky
Night sky

Optimal shutter speed for motion blur

During the day, cars most often spoil the scene. At night, at a slow shutter speed, you can capture only the headlights. The cars themselves will not be visible. Red and white ribbons along the roads will create very beautiful effects. There can be no specific shutter speed. It depends on the speed of vehicles, lighting around you and along the road, aperture and ISO. A slow shutter speed will create a beautiful blur of light from the headlights, but the main thing here is not to get overexposure.

Shutter speed 1/8 second.

Exposure 15 seconds.

Exposure 30 seconds.

Typically, cameras limit the maximum exposure time to 30 seconds. Bulb mode will overcome this limitation. Sometimes, when shooting for several minutes, it becomes necessary to reduce the brightness. In this case, you will have to use a neutral (ND) filter.

Sensor light sensitivity at night

Try to set the lowest light sensitivity. Most often it is 100 ISO. You only need to increase the ISO if other options no longer allow you to make the picture brighter.

Cameras with small sensors (most often not expensive or old SLR cameras) create a lot of noise in the form of noise over the entire image plane when increasing the ISO. Modern cameras with full-frame sensors allow you to use higher ISO values without the appearance of visible artifacts, but still you should not rely on a lucky break, since in the dark details are drawn out only with the appearance of noise. It is better to increase the detail of the picture with a slower shutter speed or a fast lens.

When should you increase ISO?

When shooting moving objects or handheld photography, there is a high probability of getting motion and directional blur. This is due to the fact that the shutter speed is too long for this scene. Increasing the light sensitivity of the sensor will reduce shutter speed. Thus, by increasing the noise, we reduce blurring and, as a result, we have a sharp picture, albeit not of perfect quality. Without increasing the ISO, the picture would not have turned out at all. There is often a trade-off between a low quality shot and a terrible quality shot. And as you know, from two evils ...

ISO 100.

ISO100 + flash.

ISO 1600.

Before raising the ISO, it is worth trying to take a picture with a flash. If this is the right fit for your scene. then you can stop there.

The Nature of Digital Noise

All cameras create noise when shooting at high ISO. The degree of noise depends on the quality and physical size of the sensor. Full frame sensors with large pixels are capable of capturing more light naturally without any amplification. This makes it possible to take pictures with low noise levels. If we consider the crop of the matrix, then their resolution is the same as that of full-frame ones, and the size is smaller. This means that the size of each pixel is also smaller. Such sensors are more susceptible to electromagnetic interference and less susceptible to light, which contributes to the appearance of noise.

There are also software noise suppressors, but they only slightly eliminate the consequences of low-quality sensor operation.

ISO 1600.

white balance

Wrong shades

Lighting at night is different from natural. Automation is able to analyze the scene and correctly adjust the white balance, that the more complex the lighting, the greater the likelihood of automation errors. Often, a barely noticeable orange-yellow tint appears in the pictures. It is easy to remove it in a graphics editor if you are photographing in RAW.

If you set the white balance correctly when shooting, you can avoid the tedious work of correcting all the pictures taken the day before when shooting with the wrong white balance setting. During night shooting, the scene may be illuminated by various types of light sources. This will create different tones that look different in the picture than what you see with the naked eye.

it is almost impossible to equalize the white balance for all sources. There is one trick. You can simply convert your image to black and white.

It is best to photograph in color, and when processing, you already have a flexible setting for all the tones in the image.

Manual white balance

All cameras have different manual white balance tools, but the general principle is the same for all.

Find a white or gray object. It should take up most of the frame and be in the same lighting conditions that you plan to shoot in.
Select manual white balance mode and capture the scene. The camera will analyze what is in the frame (our reference object) and adjust the lighting of the image so that our object comes out white or gray. The temperature of the light produced by the lighting fixtures will be compensated.
Also, some cameras allow you to manually select a numerical value for the temperature of the light, which is measured in Kelvin.

Get creative with flash photography

What is flash used for?

A flash at night can only spoil the photo. It exposes objects in the foreground, making the background appear even darker. Shadows are cast in such a way that objects appear flat. The flash can be set to slow sync, where it fires a short burst at a slow shutter speed to illuminate the subject. the picture is obtained with natural colors and with normal brightness. The background may be blurry.

Flash and reflector

It is best to use a flash with a reflector or diffuser. This will make the shadows softer, and the light will fall not directly on the person, but from the side, which will add volume to the subject.

The built-in flash cannot work with reflection from a wall or ceiling, so diffusers or plastic cards are attached to it, which deflect the light flux to the side.

Using slow sync mode

The slow sync mode allows you to calculate the shutter speed for a normal exposure of the background and adjust the flash output so that it properly illuminates the subject in the foreground.

No flash

Flash only

Slow sync flash mode

The flash light made it possible to clearly draw the object that is in the foreground. The background could turn out blurry if the camera moved or there was movement in the background.

Have you or anyone you know ever thought about selling or renting a property? Whether it is a house, apartment, restaurant or hotel; The secret to a successful sale lies in compelling photos with the right composition. Here you will find some tips on how to successfully photograph light, bright interiors with the exterior visible through the window. You will learn how to combine images so that the finished photographs clearly and perfectly balance the external and internal spaces of your rooms.

Difficulties in photography interiors

Here's what it looks like when you expose through the interior of the room.

And this is the result of exposure to the exterior, that is, to the situation outside the window.

It's a big problem, isn't it? On very rare occasions, you can get a well-balanced shot of a room's interior while keeping the windows clear. The trick is to take multiple exposures of the room and then combine them to get a crisp, evenly exposed photo.

This is what the final photo should look like.

Necessary equipment for photography of interiors or real estate

Here's what you'll need for interior photography:

DSLR camera with automatic bracketing function (available in any DSLR);
Tripod - I prefer to use a tripod with a level on the head to keep the horizon level;
Wide Angle Lens - Depending on the camera sensor, use the widest lens you have available;
A remote shutter release is an optional but useful accessory that will prevent camera shake (eventually blurring the image) that occurs when you press the shutter release.

Quick and Easy Steps to Achieve a Perfectly Exposed Shot

First of all, it is recommended to do a little preparation of the rooms you want to photograph. Organized objects and cleanliness will definitely make the photos better. You can bring some flowers or a fruit basket to make the space feel cozier and more inviting. By removing unnecessary things from the floor, you will make the room more spacious.

There is no need for repairs or rearrangements, but definitely a little advance planning will make the photos look more professional. Sometimes it is enough to move a few small items or move them to another room. Turn on all the lights you think will add depth to the room and open the curtains and blinds. I always like to show the view from the window, but if it is not very attractive, then it is better to partially close the window blinds.

A wide-angle lens is best suited for this kind of shooting because you need to fit as much of the room into the frame as possible. I often find that shooting from the corner of a room and framing three walls gives the viewer a greater sense of the size of the room. Sometimes shooting from a doorway also works well if the room is small.

Often you have to shrink to squeeze yourself behind a tripod. I sometimes take very strange poses to get the perfect shot. For this type of photography, you might want to develop some acrobatic skills. Walk around the room in search of the best viewing angle, which will display the advantageous characteristics of the room. Also try not to take pictures right at the window. On the contrary, if possible, try to shoot at an angle.

Settings and shooting

You should mount your camera on a tripod and take pictures at waist level, not at eye level. Verticals should be straight, and lowering the camera and shooting straight ahead will give you the best composition from the best angle. Look at the view from the camera and make sure the vertical lines are straight by looking at cabinets and tall furniture.

Set the auto bracketing (AEB) function to take multiple shots. Depending on the amount of light in each room, you will need to take 3 to 9 bracketed exposures with 1 to 1.5 steps between each. I prefer to use natural light, so it's important to choose daytime for shooting. Generally, the more light you have in a room, the more shots you will need.

The remote shutter release ensures that the camera does not move during bracketing. You need to take pictures quickly, and if you do not use the remote control, then the camera should be as stable as possible.

Stitching pictures taken with different exposures (HDR technology)

There are several techniques for combining your bracketed shots. Personally, I use Photomatix Pro 5. I like the results that I can achieve with minimal settings and still get good quality in a short time.

You can look for other HDR software and choose the one that suits your budget. Usually you get a trial period or a watermarked test version. This will give you the opportunity to try the program on your own pictures and see if you like the result before making a purchase. The latest versions of popular programs such as Photoshop and Lightroom also have a fusion function for HDR processing and tonal transformation.

Your photos are ready when you see that the room is evenly exposed and you can clearly see the exterior from the window.

Conclusion

Enjoy experimenting with photography and show your friends and family what beautiful and professional interior photos you have taken! They may ask you to take pictures of their property when they plan to sell or rent it.