4

CHAPTER
NIGHT AND LOW-LIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY / People and Places Indoors

If you are going to just try taking some interior

photos, then there are other less-expensive

options. The good news is that because the interi-

ors of a building don’t move while you are taking

photos of them and you no doubt want a deeper

depth of field to get as much in focus as possible,

you don’t need to have a lens that has a very wide

aperture. This means that the lens that came with

your camera will work just fine — at least until

you want to invest in a specialized lens later on.

For full-frame-sensor cameras, look at lenses that

start at the 24mm focal length, which give you a

view wider than the 50mm normal view, and

which give the room a feeling of space, as you can

see in Figure 4-14. For the cropped-sensor cam-

era, you want to use the 18mm focal length, and

the good news is that it is usually the widest angle

on the kit lens that comes with a lot of cameras,

so chances are you already have it. You can use a

super-wide or fisheye lens, but you either have to

live with the lens distortion or use software to

correct for the distortion. In Figure 4-14 I really

wanted the room to look bright, so I purposely

exposed the scene so that the lights were ren-

dered pure white by using a high ISO and slower

shutter speed.

times be more of a hindrance than a help. When
the existing light just doesn’t cut it, you can use a
flash to add light as and where you need it.

Choosing the best lens for the space

When you look at any of the top architectural
magazines and see those amazing layouts, chances
are they used a specialized wide-angle lens called
a perspective control or tilt-shift lens. These
lenses correct for the distortion that happens
when you point a lens at an upward angle as you
try to get the whole room in the frame and can’t
go any farther back. This specific distortion
appears when the vertical lines in the image tend
to curve towards each other as they near the
edges of the frame. It is really noticeable when
using fisheye lenses, but all wide-angle lenses can
have this problem, especially if you tilt the cam-
era up or down. The perspective control lenses fix
this, but at a pretty hefty price tag.

It is possible to rent perspective con-

trol and tilt-shift lenses, allowing you

to try before you buy, which is something I suggest you

do as purchasing one is a substantial investment.

tip

CROPPED VERSUS FULL-FRAME SENSORS There are two sizes of sensors used in

dSLR cameras: a full-frame sensor, which matches the size of a 35mm frame of film, and a

cropped sensor, which is smaller. The size of the camera’s sensor impacts the effective focal

length of the lens. The smaller sensor in the cropped sensor cameras doesn’t record the

same amount of the scene as a full-frame sensor, it records less. The easiest way to deter-

mine what the equivalent focal length is between a lens on a cropped sensor and a full-frame

sensor camera is to multiply the focal length by 1.5 or 1.6 depending on the sensor in the

camera. Your camera manual will have this information. In practical terms, a wide-angle lens

isn’t as wide on a cropped sensor, but a telephoto lens will seem to reach further.