To measure light intensity using a light meter, turn off any lighting in the room you’re about to measure. Turn on the lights and take your measurement from a central area of the space. Note your differential reading and check other areas of a room.
Light meters are the best way to measure light intensity, as they allow us to choose the daylighting profiles organized around six themes: choreographed light, atmospheric light, sculpted light, structured light, material light, and integrated light. Understanding how light will affect an architectural space can be a tricky business, but understanding its significance, typologies, and implications for those engaged in the fields of architecture is essential.
Architects use light to create a desired atmosphere within a space, whether it’s to create a feeling of warmth and comfort or evoke a sense of awe and wonder. To use a reflected light meter, set your camera to manual mode, choose your desired aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. Then, divide the LUX by 4 to get the desired light level.
Incident meters read the light level, not the reflective level. If a room is lit to F5.6, the incident meter will read that light. In this tutorial, we show how to use a light meter to measure lumens, the un-lit area of a room, and how to use it to determine the perfect lighting every time.
📹 How to Use Flash for Interior Design Photography
There’s no one-size-fits-all answer on how to use flash for interior photos, but in this video I go over some common scenarios and …
📹 How to use a Light Meter
… supplemental lights to turn your meter to flash metering so stop being confused by your camera meter use an instant light meter …
awesome tutorial as always man! I wish you went a little more into detail on the last example with how you shut the blinds above the sink to cut out the exterior light while you shot your flash frames. I would have liked to hear how you how you eventually shot with the blinds opened and masked them back in!
A photographer I frequently work with uses flash, but often so subtly that I’m often wondering why we set it up at all. Of course this means post work is pretty intensive in terms of color correcting. Personally, I’ve been wanting to go a little heavier on flash. Right now, all I have are a pair of AD200’s—great lights, but not great for using with bigger modifiers. Would love to see a gear article breaking down which lights and modifiers you use… In this article I think I see you using a 400 and a 600—would I be able to get by with a 400 for most scenarios or do you find yourself using the 600 enough to make hauling the extra weight worthwhile? Thanks!
Thank you for an insightful article. Before your article, when shooting architecture, I had only considered the customer. The customers included the following: Property Owner Property Seller Property Buyer Architect Builder Interior Designer Real estate agent Publisher Now, thanks to your article,, I also consider the photographer as a customer.
Hi Matthew. Thank you for all the content, it is inspiring and has helped me loads. I’m just wondering if you use a remote trigger to release the shutter on your camera or does your Assistant do it for you? Also, how do you review your images. Do you shoot tethered? Onto a screen or a laptop or even an iPad? Thanks again for all of your help with these articles man 📸
Really well done article – THANKS! You must have a TON of patience to put these things together. Is there any chance you could sometime try a “Chinese lantern” style diffuser on the AD600? I’m asking because I recently saw someone use a collapsible Godox D50 of that type (20inch diameter when open – yipes!), and he managed to entirely light a good size room JUST RIGHT (my humble opinion) – virtually a finished product – in ONE FRAME, with window exposed right. He was using a AD400 (I have the 600). I know, crazy, but what a huge time saver that would be. I’ll look for the article. Imagine handing the client your memory card and saying, “Here you go. Have a nice day.” Ha – fantasy world for sure. Thanks so much for your website – so very helpful every time.
Hey Matthew, very helpful description of using flash and stacking. I have a client who wants the flooring and cladding to be in focus, as it is usually reflective using a flash gives a lot of glare and reflections, is there any specific technique you would recommend for getting marble and granite part more in focus in the shot than any other object.
Hi! Random question not regarding lighting but on something else you mentioned briefly. You said one of the sets was for both a designer and general contractor. I was just curious if you or anyone else in the comments does this often and do you just have them split the fee together for the shoot? I do have a flat rate and then charge per image so I wasn’t sure how you or anyone else handles that? I’d love any advice 😊
At the risk of sounding like a delicate flower, maybe take it easy with flambient/window pull/real estate snobbery. I don’t think it looks particularly good, and definitely not realistic, but it is what lot of paying clients want. I’m trying to learn anything that can help make me better. I stumbled across your account and I’ve binged a bunch. I’ve learned a good bit and I appreciate the work you put into the articles. However, the insinuation that there’s only one way to do it is off putting. I know this leaves me open counter criticism but I’m writing this out with the hopes of being constructive. It would be easier to just drop a dislike and look elsewhere but I’m hoping this doesn’t get taken the wrong way.
I’m not sure but maybe you are misunderstanding something.Old days,film cameras only have single TTL sensor which was able to read the average of light value went through the lens into the film,so basically old film camera TTL meters are similar to matrix metering.So back then old photographers were using handheld meters for meansuring the reflection specifically from subject/model.But nowaday you can use spot metering instead to solve the problem.
Took me 5 times to figure out what you were saying at the beginning “all modern dslr’s have a built-in metre”, due to your accent and speed of speech. Finally, I had to use Youtube to slow it down to 0.75 speed to get it. However, the rest of the time your speaking was clear and un-inflected at normal article speed. Overall, it was an excellent article. Just thought you should know.