Real Estate Photography 5D mkIII

[wickidwombat]

canon 816 that looks really slick! very natural feel I'm gonna have to give that program a try, It looks like colours arent getting out of whack, did you have to do much with its output afterwards to clean up the whites or fix up colour shifts?

[wickidwombat]

not really real estate, but

here are a couple with alot of desaturation to try and overcome the way out colour shifts and some masking to get around halos

[joelerskates]

@Cgdillan

I've never used the standalone application. I usually bracket 5 exposures - never less than 3. Hope that helps!

[canon816]

canon 816 that looks really slick! very natural feel I'm gonna have to give that program a try, It looks like colours arent getting out of whack, did you have to do much with its output afterwards to clean up the whites or fix up colour shifts?

I don't have too much trouble with white balance as I rarely shoot with lights on in a house.  I find that multiple temperature light sources wreak havoc on white balance and it is a huge pain to selectively deal with WB issues that vary throughout a single image. 

What I do spend time on is brightening up dark areas of the image.  I find that the HDR software can do this but at the risk of an un-natural look and more haloing.  So I use Lightroom to bring out details in darker areas.  I also adjust contrast and remove wide angle distortion if applicable.

EasyHDR does a decent job at keeping colors true.  I have shot many houses in many different situations.  (sun, rain, mid day, evening, morning, fog, haze, snow, overcast etc..) and every situation requires a little different type of finesse with LR after HDR processing.

[captainkanji]

My hatred for HDR grows a bit more everyday.  Even so, there's a few really good ones here.  Maybe I shouldn't have used "HDR" as my tag search in flickr.  I guess in the hands of a master, they are ok, but 99% go into the trash.  I'm tempted to get an HDR addon for Lightroom to learn how to do it properly. 

[canon816]

My hatred for HDR grows a bit more everyday.  Even so, there's a few really good ones here.  Maybe I shouldn't have used "HDR" as my tag search in flickr.  I guess in the hands of a master, they are ok, but 99% go into the trash.  I'm tempted to get an HDR addon for Lightroom to learn how to do it properly.

If you hate the "HDR look" effect, then I recommend Enfuse as a lightroon addon. 

It is very natural, easy to use... and cheap.  (Donation only).

Good luck.

[awinphoto]

I use HDR for real estate photography and it certainly is a fine line to walk between an appealing HDR rendering and something that looks too artsy. 

The realtors I work really enjoy the dynamic range that HDR captures while at the same time they prefer more natural looking images. 

I own Photomatix, Enfuse, NIK, PS5, EasyHDR and have demo'd several other programs.   Each program has strengths and weaknesses.  I have found that EasyHDR works the best at producing as natural an image as possible while retaining a nice wide dynamic range with nice color tones.  Enfuse is my second choice although it does not produce DR well when shooting in a room with a very bright exterior through the windows.

No matter what HDR program I use the final image requires a fair amount of polishing with Lightroom to finalize.  No program is perfect. 

Here are a few images I have made with EasyHDR for real estate clients.  I can only post 4 it seems so I limited it to interiors and just grabbed a few off my website. If anyone would like to see exteriors I can post a few with EasyHDR as well:

Nice work... I used to do a lot of real estate work until the market bottomed out a few years ago and most my realtors have stopped using me because they cant afford me, or they have taken up jobs elsewhere...  Do any of your clients gripe about the light and dark halos and shadows, as seen in your 3rd shot next to the windows and doorways...  To me I've dappled with HDR for real estate when I was doing this heavily, but with the turn around time my clients wanted, also given I was doing a lot of pano's and 360's, HDR was really hard line up perfectly when doing 6-10 shot stitching, and frankly for the time it took to produce the shots, I felt it was cutting too much into my bottom line sitting at the computer, and not enough $$ to justify the extra time in processing.  To me, I'd spend an hour or so getting all the photos stitched and looking decent, run another half an hour or so processing HDR's, then spend another few hours going through every image and cleaning up all the friggen halo's, desaturating, etc. 

[@!ex]

not really real estate, but

here are a couple with alot of desaturation to try and overcome the way out colour shifts and some masking to get around halos

If you tonemap right you won't have the color shift problem and the halo's.  The reason for the halo's your getting is due to two things. 1) you have the strength slider way to high, making your foreground brighter than the sky, which not only makes the image look flat and unrealistic (clouds should be the whites brightest part of the picture), but will lead to more halos.  Also the luminosity slider should be much higher to reduce the halo effect. Also, you can account for the color shift by using a cooling or warming filter in photoshop, and going easy on the saturation to start with.  C

[wickidwombat]

not really real estate, but

here are a couple with alot of desaturation to try and overcome the way out colour shifts and some masking to get around halos

If you tonemap right you won't have the color shift problem and the halo's.  The reason for the halo's your getting is due to two things. 1) you have the strength slider way to high, making your foreground brighter than the sky, which not only makes the image look flat and unrealistic (clouds should be the whites brightest part of the picture), but will lead to more halos.  Also the luminosity slider should be much higher to reduce the halo effect. Also, you can account for the color shift by using a cooling or warming filter in photoshop, and going easy on the saturation to start with.  C

thanks for the tips!
these are quite old shot with my old 1Dmk1 only 3 brackets cause thats all it could do
i've sort of given up on HDR in recent times but I think some of the stuff people on this site are pasting up is really moving the concept in the right direction. Its a pity trey ratcliff still overkills his stuff massivley but hey thats what appeals to his audience and he makes money so good on him, I love his philosophy though his blog is often worth reading.

Im definately gonna have a look at that enfuse add on for lightroom being able to do it in light room would be cool if its clean, i noticed that easy HDR was windows only, I might give the trial ago on parallels but unless its unbelievably good i doubt i'd buy it

I think this thread has well and truely been hijacked into the HDR tips and tricks thread now though

[@!ex]

AmbientLight +1..thanks for the kind words.

@lex..spent more time with P 4.2.1 and found the Exposure Fusion a bit more of what I was seeking.  Thought again the presets were limiting as expected.  Strangely, I opened (ready..) the User Manual.PDF  Who would ever think to do that?  Not any of us Pro's. 

I must confess, the creators of Photomatix do claim you get MDR (medium dynamic range with 3-5 exposures) but true HDR with 5-7 or more.  So pardon my statement about bracketed photos being a waste as compared to multi exposures...again, just personal preference and dig working with single RAW's being a bit of a purist coming from the film days (yeah I am freakin old).  There some other cool features for effects in P 4.2.1 ..one called "Unwrap Mirror ball"..have you seen that one?  A bit of a novelty but it offers an extra wide landscape effect with some stretching.  P 4.2.1 also claims to "reduce noise first before HDR processing"..I was unaware of that but usually have that option "On" before HDR'ing.  There's also 3 different RGB modes sRGB, Adobe and Pro Photo RGB.  Was also toying with the deghosting feature and the lasso tool.  A good thread here.

Hey, revue where did you see the different RGB mode options? I thought it just imported whatever colorspace that was embedded. I've had a couple weird color changes lately from the displayed HDR image in photomatix to the one I open in aperture, lightroom or PS.  It seems to be an issue with the working color space in phototmatix, but I could find an option to change it....

[Wideopen]

@!ex u are an inspiration thankyou for sharing

[revup67]

canon816 - I must admit, I think your photos for HDR look very natural.  I am pleased to see that HDR can produce such pleasing quality..excellent work.

@!ex..the sRGB setting (where you can choose adobe RGB or Pro Photo RGB) is (for single RAW) is right at the opening screen and looks like: 

[revup67]

If doing a multi RAW file HDR process then it is here.

PS I might add if you have the Canon GP-E2 (GPS device) then you want to download at least version 4.2.2 of Photomatix otherwise the GPS data is lost when 4.2.1 or earlier converts from RAW to JPG

[canon816]

canon816 - I must admit, I think your photos for HDR look very natural.  I am pleased to see that HDR can produce such pleasing quality..excellent work.

Thanks Revup67.  I have struggled with many programs and settings to find more natural looking HDR effects.  I must admit is a constant battle, but I do like the final product better then non HDR (For real estate) when it comes out with a nice natural look.  Personally, I do not like the "HDR" look when images are over processed and end up looking more like graffiti art then photography.  Although, some folks can even make that look beautiful....   

[canon816]

Do any of your clients gripe about the light and dark halos and shadows, as seen in your 3rd shot next to the windows and doorways...

No.  I try to keep halos and shadows to a minimum, although sometimes they still shine through.  A curse (and blessing at times) with the MLS system is that the images are displayed at a very small size and resolution when potential home buyers are searching.  For my clients to have 25 professional looking images posted for their home or listing it really sets their house apart from the homes with 3 crappy pics snapped with a smart phone. 

If my clients are looking to print anything of any size, I spend a little more time cleaning up images for print.

I will admit, that to keep my pricing fair and my turn-around time short I have set up a semi automatic workflow process that keeps my "hands on" editing to a minimum.  While the HDR artifacts are not completely absent the images do look quite clean for the most part and clients feel like they get good bang for the buck.

I understand where you are coming from when you mention time input with editing compared to income, so I try to provide the best product I can for a reasonable price.  On a typical 2,000 square foot home I spend about an hour shooting, let my computer batch process for an hour, and then about 40 min-60 min in post polishing the final HDR images.  Clients end up with about 35 photos depending on the house and grounds....