Design me a lighting system

Situation: I am an avid landscape and wildlife photographer. Lots of glass, decent camera bodies. After a recent home fire, I have had numerous general contractors, architects, kitchen designers, etc. come through my house. In seeing my images on the wall, several have voiced interest in my shooting interiors (remodeling, kitchens, etc) for their ads, brochures and web sites. I have no current experience in off camera lighting.

I'm willing to invest in lighting as I can see various occasions where having the equipment will give me latitude/options in future work. While the current potential 'projects' have power available, but of course, battery operated systems will allow me to go in the field in the future.

So what do I need? how many lights? I assume radio controlled - what equipment is needed? Do I want 'constant on' lights or flash (I assume this effects my secondary desire to later shoot with equip. in the field)? What is a reasonable budget for hardware? Is there a book or on-line source I should consult (Joe McNalley comes to mind)?

This forum has always been a great help. Guys, I'm depending on you one more time.

Sorry to hear about the fire. I hope you and your family are safe and doing well.

I'm not an interior or real estate photographer, so take my advice with a grain of salt. Here's how I would approach this:

1. Flashes: If you are only shooting interiors, then smaller battery operated flashes (easier to hide and don't produce that much heat). You can either get canon's speedlites or go strobist style and get cheaper Vivitar or older Nikon flashes.

2. Triggers: Radio (more expensive) or optical (less expensive) - you don't want flashes to be in the line of sight and you probably will be using manual triggering anyway, so no need to support TTL.

3. Quantity: Depends on what you will shoot. For smaller spaces 2-4 flashes would be more than enough. Large and tall halls, or rooms with complicated layouts might need more to illuminate everything evenly.

4. Other stuff: Some mounting gear like clamp and bunjee cords and maybe couple of small and medium light stands. Most of the time you probably will be bouncing the light off the surfaces. Since not sufaces are white you probably will need some colored gels to tint some of the lights to achieve even white balance.

I'm sure you can get way more complicated than this, but that's where I would have started. I suggest renting some flashes and experimenting a bit during first several shoots. I think on camera flashes are pretty cheap to rent. So are the radio triggers.

I hope this helps.

To be truly shooting indoor architecture, strobes will be much better because the extra power will allow you more light needed to stop down your aperture giving you the ample DOF needed to keep the whole image in focus.

The other thing that's essential in architectural photography would be a tilt-shift lens which will help you control both the plane of focus and correct keystoning depending on your perspective. Thats of course the ideal equipment for the job, and people will probably tell you that you don't need this and that, but if you're looking to do the job once and do it right, those are some of the equipment purchases you might find helpful.

Good luck!

Architectural photography is a specialized field that requires a great deal of experience and creativity.

If you are serious about getting into architectural photography invest time into deconstructing the lighting in some good books and magazines that are architecturally focused.

As mentioned, lenses are as big a component as lighting. Lighting is about enhancing the natural environment. Often that means a lot of lights. And hours getting them just right for the shot.

The answer you want is not going to come from a forum post, its going to come from a lot of research, practice and trial and error.

When doing architectural work with film it was important to consider interior as well as exterior light levels and quality.
Now photoshop and layering offers a post production alternative. Its still a lot of work, just at a different time, with different tools.