- You need a dynamic range beast, like a Nikon D850 or a Sony A7R III,
- You expose to not clip highlights (both have an highlight-weighted metering mode), using base ISO of the camera and a tripod for steadiness,
- You brighten as much as needed in post (using exposure module)
- You use filmic for the tone and gamut mapping to bring highlights back
- You might better try to mask exposure modules to selectively bring back windows and such (using parametric masks + feathering makes it quite easy, even when leaves occlude the windows),
- You rarely need to stack exposures in practice.
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You might want yo check HDR Merge as well, which will merge your bracketed shots into a single file you can then edit in darktable.
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It seems to produce believable HDRs, which is good. The last time I checked the sky, it had about the same amount of edges and gamut escapes as their banner pic:
Local tonemapping for the win \o/.
I was actually referring to capturing the images, not processing here. If you’ve got a single shot that looks this way refer to @anon41087856’s advice for processing the single shot.
If you’re shooting I would take two images in a sunlight room - one with the room properly exposed, and another with window exposed properly. (I would just adjust the shutter speed, but I suppose you could do it with EV controls in modern cameras too - you don’t want an aperture change to modify the view).
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HDR issues (expose for bright window as well indoors) are one issue already discussed. Another is the inherently bland look of an opposing wall.
Focus stacking for indoor shots helps a lot, where a wide angle lens is placed perhaps on table so objects close the camera (a flower pot or a frying pan or a book) are in focus as well as the wall on the opposite side of the room. Focus stacking can make such compositions striking and eye-catching. Marketing real estate is all about hooking the customer’s attention.
Landscapers know the importance of composing for close up as well as far away. Tall far away mountains always look better if there is a tree or a fence line close to the camera, framing the imposing snow-capped peaks in the background. That scenario works well for indoors too.
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Actually, given the dire state of HDR merging, I would burst a sequence at same exposure on tripod and simply average the raws (only for noise dilution), then process a single picture, and stay away from anything that calls itself HDR-something and clutters the workflow with poorly color-managed layers.
That or OP’s professional career might be short-lived.
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Is Darktable’s pipe ready for such a workflow, i.e. processing multiple exposures (bracketed or not) in the darkroom view? Relying on external tooling always feels a bit … brittle.
Yes. That thing here averages and normalizes the white point to 1.0 for all selected images:
The only thing it doesn’t do is correcting pixel shifting if any (so, use a tripod in “mirror up” mode). But it’s stupid simple, and as such, entirely color safe.
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Probably the easiest way to handle interior shots with exterior views is to illuminate the inside at daylight temp, so then you’re both raising the interior light level toward the exterior as well as making color temperature the same. If that’s impractical, two shots, one exposed/temped for inside, one exposed/temped for outside, and combine the two with masking.
Having a camera that’ll do HDR would be a help; my Z6 does decent two-exposure HDR to a JPEG, and will leave the two raw files if you tell it to.
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This is the biggest challenge with indoor/outdoor balance - it is not exposure, but that there will be a color temperature imbalance between outdoor lighting and typical indoor lighting. So even if you do manage to handle the dynamic range challenges, without manual editing, handling the difference in color temperature between indoor and outdoor lighting is going to be a challenge.
One solution some real estate photographers use is not to process a scene captured in non-optimal conditions, but instead to improve the lighting of the scene. Instead of relying on existing indoor light, bring a flash. Flashes are color balanced much closer to outdoor daylight than almost any indoor lighting. Strobist: Working Around the House gives some examples of handling the challenges of real estate photography lighting by improving the lighting scenario at the moment of capture.
It’s a lot easier to bring a flash and some light modifiers than to replace every bulb in the house with a daylight-balanced one.
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Thanks for all the replies, but I’m still confuse.
Is it better to take a HDR image or not?
Canon 90D with a Canon EF-S 10-18mm f/4,5-5.6 IS STM
Is it better to make this process and them edit the JPEG?
Thanks
Different white balances over the picture can be fixed piece-wise using color balance and, again, masks. Using the rasterized masks, you can share masks between modules, so if you already defined exposure masks to bring back windows, just reuse them in color balance and adjust the slope to match in and out lightings.
Even with daylight balanced flashes, you can’t escape it, since daylight varies between 4000 K and 7000 K depending on time and weather, while flashes are hard set to 5000-6000 K. Unless you are lucky (or use flash gels — which will be worse if ill-chosen), you will always have a white balance difference.
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Google Nathan Cool. Use a layered workflow. He uses photoshop but you could GIMP instead and maybe DT if you need to edit the raw files. He also provides info on how to take the shot… usually some flash and lighting is required for best results…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Xmwr92n3GA
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Works like a charm, thanks Aurelien! I was always under the impression I had to bracket but yes, thinking about it that is exactly what phones are doing nowadays as well if I remember correctly.
His results are bad, since he doesn’t respect the balance between in and out. His outdoors sky is darker than the indoors mid-tones. Bringing back highlights is fine, but inverting contrast and completely forgetting how indoors lighting connects to outdoors is unacceptable. Unless you are stuck in a dramatic storm, the sky is always brighter than anything else.
Marco Bucci has a very good set of videos about shading and values in painting, better start with that as a safety net before planning to be creative about lighting:
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Ha not that I would disagree at all but this is where the purist in you kicks in (not a bad thing)…I don’t think many of his clients give a rats ass about much of that …a punchy dynamic image is what he is after to draw the eye…I would image if you analysed magazine covers for all of these features they would fail miserably but they catch the eye…
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Well, when a painter manages to get more realistic lighting than an actual photographer, it’s rather bad news, whether the clients care or not.
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ReaL Estate is a game of smoke and mirrors so why not the photography…
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Hi,
You might want to take another look at hdrmerge – maybe you will find out that it does the right thing™ (i.e merge in linear, by normalizing the exposures and taking the max signal that is not clipped)
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