The interior photographers challenge

What you will rapidly discover when photographing interiors is that except on very dull, overcast days you can’t record the brightness of the windows and the darker areas of the interior in the same photograph. Either you get good exposure for the windows and the interior turns black or you get good exposure for the interior and the windows turn pure white (referred to as “burning out the windows”). Many of the tips and techniques that follow are solutions to the interior contrast control problem.

The solutions available to the digital photographer to solve the "burned-out-window" problem are as follows:

• You can lighten the whole photograph so the parts of the interior you want properly exposed will look good. This typically leaves the windows without detail. This is a solution only when you are willing to loose all detail in the windows. Sometimes this may be what you want if the view out the windows does not add to the photograph.
• You can shoot interiors at twilight when the light level outside is very close to the light level inside. This is the best solution if you can control the shooting time… frequently you can’t.
• Use artificial lighting (Flash and/or continuous lighting) to boost the level of the interior to better match the outside light level. You typically can't use this technique without an external flash unit. That is, if you use a compact digital camera with a built-in flash this option won't work because built-in flash units are not powerful enough for this technique.
• Take two photos, one exposed for the interior and a second exposed for the windows and then merge the two photos digitally taking the best parts of each photo. This is an OK solution once you learn to merge photos quickly. You need some photo editing skill to use this technique.

The best all around solution is to use an external flash if your budget and equipment allows.