willie_901
Veteran
Recently I started shooting real estate photography with the D300. Prior to this I used the D200.
Interior photography is plagued by dynamic range problems. Either the bright light from outdoors blows out the windows, or the dark areas of the room(s) are lost. Off-camera strobes are then used to light the indoors to match the outdoors. Of course strobes cast shadows and often show up in mirrors and windows, so setting up the shot properly (or repairing problems later) can be time consuming.
The D300's increased dynamic range and low luminance noise makes my life very easy these days. With the D300 (at ISO 200) it is practical to shoot RAW, slightly overexpose the light from outdoors, and then bring up the dark areas post-processing using the Fill slider (and other development tools) in Lightroom. With the D200, this method only worked 25% to 50% of the time. With the D300 it works ~ 90% of the time. This is a huge time saver.
Now keep in mind that 99% of all real estate photos are either viewed on a web site as a small, viciously compressed jpegs, in newsprint, or in low-quality weekly magazines, etc. So, the noise increase in the darker areas as well as the usual digital sensor artifacts that accompany over exposure are not problematic. That said, I'm surprised at the number of cases where this method gives very nice results even when I pixel peep (100% or greater crops).
Of course some rooms simply require off-camera strobes. But these are much less common with the D300.
I sure there are DSLRs with similar or better dynamic range than the D300. However, for me, it was not economically feasible to invest in such an expensive camera given the rates realtors are prepared to pay in my market.
This link graphs the dynamic range of several Nikon DSLRs: http://tinyurl.com/69f2d9
willie
Interior photography is plagued by dynamic range problems. Either the bright light from outdoors blows out the windows, or the dark areas of the room(s) are lost. Off-camera strobes are then used to light the indoors to match the outdoors. Of course strobes cast shadows and often show up in mirrors and windows, so setting up the shot properly (or repairing problems later) can be time consuming.
The D300's increased dynamic range and low luminance noise makes my life very easy these days. With the D300 (at ISO 200) it is practical to shoot RAW, slightly overexpose the light from outdoors, and then bring up the dark areas post-processing using the Fill slider (and other development tools) in Lightroom. With the D200, this method only worked 25% to 50% of the time. With the D300 it works ~ 90% of the time. This is a huge time saver.
Now keep in mind that 99% of all real estate photos are either viewed on a web site as a small, viciously compressed jpegs, in newsprint, or in low-quality weekly magazines, etc. So, the noise increase in the darker areas as well as the usual digital sensor artifacts that accompany over exposure are not problematic. That said, I'm surprised at the number of cases where this method gives very nice results even when I pixel peep (100% or greater crops).
Of course some rooms simply require off-camera strobes. But these are much less common with the D300.
I sure there are DSLRs with similar or better dynamic range than the D300. However, for me, it was not economically feasible to invest in such an expensive camera given the rates realtors are prepared to pay in my market.
This link graphs the dynamic range of several Nikon DSLRs: http://tinyurl.com/69f2d9
willie