Playing with Alienbees lights in real estate
To be honest, I was a bit upset at my last real estate shoot. I didn’t think the pictures came out very well and a number of my coworkers agreed. There were numerous problems with them such as
- Not correcting for verticals
- Blown out areas from the flash
- Shadows
- Some parts of the photos were too dark
I had a number of theories on how to fix these issues, but for the lighting my idea was to purchase an Alienbees light and an extra Pocketwizard MultiMAX and use it as a third light. One of my coworkers offered to stop by the house with a lot of the equipment that I am looking to buy someday so I was able to get a good look at what it can accomplish and whether it will solve some of my problems.
One note before I show these shots. When we took these photos, we were mainly trying to see what the lights and lenses were capable of and what issues we may have. We did not correct for verticals and I did not Photoshop any of these pictures. In this way you can get a good idea what the equipment did without seeing what it looks like after Photoshop.
This shot was taken with the Canon 14mm 2.8 (the first version, not the II) and an Alienbees AB1600 with a 60″ x 30″ softbox behind me. You can actually see the softbox quite well in the window. In the adjoining bathroom, I placed a 580EX II aimed at the ceiling towards the end of the bathroom.
I noticed the following about the Alienbees light and the soft box, both from shooting at the property and from chatting with its owner.
- I definitely need to get one of these
- The 1600 works quite well here. We did tone it down on most shots - around 1/16th at ISO 400. The softbox also diffuses it quite a bit and it comes with a second diffuser that can slow it down another stop.
- I had been debating between a regular light vs their ring light with the moon light. I believe for real estate the soft box works better, as it fits well to many of the doorways. Behind me was a walk in closet and we placed the softbox squarely in the doorway.
- When I do buy it, I plan to pick up a Vagabond II for remote power. We just plugged it in, but I think having a portable power source would be a lot more convenient.
By the way, I found a handy way of getting rid of the reflection of the softbox in the window.
Basically, I placed a 6′5″ gobo in front of the softbox - a bit to the side. We didn’t move the softbox at all from the previous shot. In simpler words, I stood in front of it and blocked the reflection. It darkened that side of the shot a bit, but nothing that isn’t easily fixable in Photoshop.
Here’s a shot we did of the kitchen.
This was also shot with the two lights. I had my 580EX in the part of the kitchen that is not visible. There are a bit of shadows on the right side, but with another strobe that may be fixable.
I did run into some issues with my 580EX II. I suspect that it has problems with its miniport. I replaced it with a 580EX with a hot shoe cord to connect it with the Pocketwizard and that worked fine, so I may wind up triggering the 580EX II the same way I trigger the 580EX.
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Tags: alienbees, lighting, photography, real estate, softbox