Today we're going to solve a problem
that has plagued 360 photographers forever,
and that is: how do you shoot a mixed lighting interior
when you have bright sunlight coming through windows
and your interior is relatively dark...
How do you shoot it?
How do you edit it to get the perfect exposure
for real estate, for interiors of any kind?
This video will answer that question.
And hey, this is a section from my video course
about virtual tours that I'm giving you completely for free.
So if you got value from it then follow the link
in the description if you want to watch the entire course.
I'm just gonna give you a heads up now,
to do this you're going to need a 360 camera
that has the ability to shoot manually.
You will also need a photo editing software of some kind
that is able to combine several photos
into one merged HDR image.
This video will show my entire workflow
and this is a really valuable skill to have
because when you understand how to combine exposures
into the perfect image you can then do it
with any tricky lighting situation
you come across in the future.
Okay, so you're at your shoot location.
You have your camera in hand and you're ready to shoot.
The first thing you need to do
is assess the lighting situation.
How bad is the overexposure going to be?
Is the sun extremely bright and the interior extremely dark?
Or is the lighting actually pretty good to begin with?
This will effect exactly which method we use
to shoot and edit our image.
So I'm going to show you three different ways to do this
depending on the harshness of the light in your room.
This will also depend on the 360 camera you are using.
Some have more functions than others,
but most should have the abilities
of the camera I'll be using in this video.
So if your lighting is pretty good to begin with,
if you feel like there's a good mixture of light
inside and outside and it's not that tricky,
this is when we're going to use
the inbuilt HDR function of your camera.
Some cameras are better than others
but this is the fastest way to get a decent exposure
both inside and outside within the same image.
Simply set up your camera in HDR mode,
put on a self timer, and go hide.
The best thing about this is
you barely need to do any post production on your image.
Just basic color correction and you are done.
However, you will need to take a test shot.
Look at those highlight areas
and if there are still any blown out detail
then you'll want to try the next method.
And that is shooting in raw.
If the contrast of your lighting is more difficult
and HDI won't fix it raw is the next level up yet again.
This is going to give us more manual ability
to decrease our highlight,
and is especially good for and shadowy areas.
So to shoot raw simply put your camera into raw mode,
set your exposure manually, get it looking nice,
but also make sure those highlights aren't too blown out.
It's better to expose for the highlights
than for the shadows.
The shadows are easier to recover.
However it does also depend on the camera you are using.
So you will wanna get a feel for your specific camera before
you make you a decision on exactly where
you wanna set that exposure.
But, in most situations exposing for the highlights
will give you a better end result.
Now activate the self timer, run and hide and we are done.
The finally advanced method for
super high contrast lighting is shooting in bracketing.
Which means we are going to shoot several shots
at different exposures and then combine them together later.
You can shoot anywhere from three shots
to as many as you'd like and it does also help if
you're shooting in raw.
You need to think of bracketing as exposing
for specific areas in your room.
So the first shot might be for the brightest highlight
you want that to look good on your live preview.
Always try and keep your ISO low.
So I would suggest changing the shutter speed
to achieve these different exposures.
So let's start here with the really fast shutter speed
so those really bright highlights are exposed perfectly.
Next I'm going to take a shot in the middle of the range
meaning I'm exposing for the mid tones,
I'm not exposing for the highlights or the shadows
but the tones and textures in the middle of the range.
This will look the closest to what the exposure
should actually look like.
Finally we're going to take one exposure for the shadows
and look at the darkest areas of your room.
And we want these to be properly exposed.
So in this room it's probably going to be the TV,
the shadow under the desk and a little bit of the bathroom.
I'm going to slow down the shutter speed a bit
meaning everything else is blown out
however those shadows are exposed very nicely.
I know this image looks terrible right now
but the shadow areas look good and that's what important.
Depending on just how tricky your lighting situation is
you might want to increase it from three to either
seven or 10 or more brackets.
Essentially the reason you would do this
is if there are many different shades of light and
dark in your room, you can expose each one of them perfectly
and then combine them together later.
Resulting in an image with 100% perfect exposure.
This is also going to help us with our window areas
because light will leak through and affect the window frame
because you have the really bright exterior
and then you've got the dark window frame there.
It's gonna be light that spills in.
So if we expose both of them individually
we can then get them to work harmoniously with each other.
So there are two methods for bracketing.
A lot of 360 cameras have an in-built bracketing setting.
When you set your multiple exposures in advance
and it then flies them all off one by one.
The other way, if your camera doesn't have this feature
or if you just prefer doing it one by one,
is setting your exposure taking a photo,
setting a different exposure, taking a photo again.
And so on until you've covered the entire dynamic range.
Bracketing is essentially shooting HD on manually
so you wanna make sure every strength of light
is properly exposed.
Take as many images as you have to
until you think you've got all of your bases covered.
Now let's edit.
There are many different programs that will allow you to
combine multiple exposures into one image.
In this example I'm going to be using
Adobe Camera Raw within Photoshop.
However, no matter which software you use
whether it's Lightroom or a dedicated HDR program,
the work flow is exactly the same.
Okay so here we have our first image
which was shot with in-built HDR.
And overall this is looking pretty good inside.
However those highlights are still kind of blown out.
So I can do quick a color correction
to see how much I can fix.
Let's bring those highlights down.
Maybe the shadows up a bit.
I've done a quick color correction here
to try and fix the windows however,
I'm still not happy with this and I wouldn't be happy
giving this image to a client.
This shot is perhaps a seven out of 10
in terms of getting the exposure right.
And I really think we can do better.
Next I'm going to open up our single shot raw file
in Adobe Camera Roll.
And straight away it looks really dark
but I'm going to bring down the highlights
and I'm seeing more detail there.
And this is going to take a bit of tinkering
but after moving a bunch of sliders
I got the same result as before,
if not slightly better in terms of overall dynamic range.
Now you can see slightly more detail outside.
However after stitching this image I can say
it is good, yes,
but it's still not the 10/10 image I need
to give to my client.
Raw is a really cool feature no question, however,
the lighting inside this room is too high contrast for
one single image to give me a perfect exposure.
Which is where bracketing is going to save the day.
All right so here I've opened up my
three bracketed images within Camera Roll.
Here they are, one, two, three.
All very different exposures.
And now we want to blend the three together into one image.
The way we do that is by selecting all three.
Then we're going to right click
and select merge to HDR.
Now it's going to combine all three together
as a fourth image on the left hand side.
So when we click merge, then I'll quickly save it
and here we go, there it is, our merged bracketed HDR shot.
And that dynamic range without touching it yet,
already looks really, really good.
After doing a 60 second color correction
this image is already a nine out of 10.
I love this image, I can't believe how well this turned out.
The shadows look good, the highlights look good,
the windows look good and you can see
everything that's outside.
However, if you're like me then you're probably
not willing to settle for a nine out of 10 image
when you can get a 10/10.
And the way we get a 10 is by using even more images.
So I shot my first brackets sequence with three shots,
and I shot a second one with seven shots.
Which covers an overall wider field of dynamic range.
So what I'm going to do here is repeat
the same process as before, going to select them all,
merge to HDR, do a really quick color correction
and look at that.
How good does that look?
Can you believe those windows look almost like
paintings hanging on the wall.
The exposure was basically perfect.
I love this image and I would be really happy
sending this to my client.
Something that definitely helped in this situation was
shooting my bracketed shots in raw
because it meant I had more flexibility later on
when I was editing to bring up the shadows,
bring down the highlights,
and get the balance of the exposure perfect.
When shooting jpeg it's just more limiting
and you have less flexibility later on.
So there you go, when you're shooting your next interior
you'll have three tools to choose from.
In-built HDR, shooting single shot raw,
and then bracketed raw depending on harshness of the
light coming through the windows.
You've got options to cover all bases.
When shooting 360s professionally,
it's really important you get your exposure right.
If you're shooting virtually tours to paid clients
they won't be too happy if the windows completely bright
when there might be something nice outside
that would be worth seeing.
Which is why the bracketing technique is
definitely going to be worth your time.
Yes it is a little bit more post production work
but it's completely worth it to get you image from a
seven out of 10 to a 10/10.
I'd strongly suggest you practice all three of these
techniques and the workflow behind it.
Once you get really good,
you'll be able to take amazing photos
inside difficult lighting situations like this,
really quickly.
So depending on the camera you own,
the workflow might be slightly different.
So it helps to practice and practice.
Cause when you show up for your client
you'll be able to do it really fast
and give them an awesome result.
Cool, well I hope you enjoyed the lesson.
If you got value from it,
this is nothing compared to what you will learn in my
video course about virtual tours.
It covers everything you need to know
from planning your virtual tour shoot,
to shooting like we've just done here.
We'll cover a lot more shooting techniques in depth
in the course, as well as post production.
I've got a lengthy post production section that
teaches all of my best secrets for getting
amazing results in post production and then
the most important thing.
How do you make money from your work,
how do you sell yourself, get clients and create a
business out of it because look, it's really nice to
be able to take pretty photos but if you're looking to
shoot virtual tours, you're probably wanting to make
money from your work so it becomes a
sustainable thing for you.
Which is why I added a big section about doing business,
getting clients, and making money from your virtual tours.
I've put a link to it down there
so if you want to learn more
then be sure to pick up your copy today.
Cool, well that's all from me.
Leave a like if you like this video
and hit that subscribe button for more
awesome virtual tour content coming really soon.
And with that the sun is out, the birds are chirping,
I'm going to shoot me some 360.
I'll see you in the next video.