Decent Lense for indoor photography

06Honda

Senior Member
Lense for Indoor Product Photography

I have been asked by a local store if I could take about 100 or so photos of the various sections they have, so that would be products they have for sale including clothes racks; furniture; electronics; dishes; toys etc to be used for advertising online to potential customers. Normally my main shooting is wildlife outdoors so the updated 80-400vr fits the bill perfectly for that. My body is a D7200 and the only small type lense I have is the Nikkor AF 50mm f/1.8 D. Not a bad lense and sharp but not sure if this would work for this type of indoor shoot. I rarely ever use it. Most likely I would just use the D7200 flash if needed, as I do not currently have an external flash. Would this lense do the trick or is there a preferred option to go with. Images will be uploaded to a web site so that may make a difference. Thanks for any input. I am pretty handy at post editing on my MacBook Pro but prefer when possible to shoot good quality images intially to make that easier afterwards. I have been thinking about getting a wide angle lense for vacations and outdoor landscape photography so this is another option to kill to birds with one stone so to speak. Mind you a wide angle lense may make the products or sections look a little distorted instead of life like. I know the wide angle lenses are often used for indoor real estate shoots when selling a house but even then they sometimes make the rooms look much larger than they are in real life when inside yourself looking. Going forward this type of photo shooting is not something I would do too often, my wife works at the store so that is how this came about.
 
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Fred Kingston

Senior Member
Wide angle is what you want... Although, for a general purpose lens to do all of what you may be called on to do, I'd use the ubiquitous 24-70mm f2.8... That'll give you moderate wide for interior shots and a bit longer than normal (50mm) for close-up... Better wide angle lenses won't give you that distorted wide fish-eye look...unless you get down in the sub-10mm range...
 

hark

Administrator
Staff member
Super Mod
Contributor
As Fred mentioned, something wider would be preferable. That 50mm lens will give a field of view comparable to 75mm on an FX body. So it would still be somewhat of a telephoto lens on your DX body. A 35mm lens typically is considered normal on a DX body (comparable field of view is 50mm on FX).

The thing is with your 50mm, it should be fine for small items, but when you try to shoot clothing racks and furniture, you might not have enough room to fit the entire subject into your frame. That's why a kit lens on DX tends to be either a 16-xx zoom or 18-xx zoom.

And as Fred said, the ultra wide angle zooms are the ones to stay away from because you might encounter distortion. Using your pop up flash most likely will be better than using whatever light is in the store. The problem is there might be a mixture of florescent and tungsten which would introduce some green light as well as brownish. The flash should help with the white balance.

Sorry no specific suggestion for a lens though because I'm not sure how much you will use it other than these store images.
 

Danno

Senior Member
If price is an issue I used a Tamron 28-75 f2.8 on my D7200. It is a good lens at a reasonable price, and it spent a lot of time on my D7200 and D700.
 

Woodyg3

Senior Member
Contributor
Depending on the situation, you might find you want something wider than 24-28mm on a DX camera indoors. I'll suggest the Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8. It's a nice, fast lens for indoors, and it is very sharp, especially for a zoom. I got one used for $200 and it's never going to leave my camera bag.
 

Roscoe Primrose

Senior Member
I'll second Andy's recommendation for the kit lens. You can pick up a good used 18-55mm G VR-II for about $75, and the distortion will be fairly well corrected in-camera, and if there' still more left that needs correcting you can do it in post. The kit lens will also probably be a good range to get started on the family/landscape photography you mentioned. At the price, if you decide it's too long/short for that purpose for YOU, that'll point you in the direction you need to go w/o setting you back too much money, and if you buy it used you can probably sell it if it's not the right thing for you and only be out the shipping costs when all is said and done. The 10-20mm DX & 12-24mm DX are both good choices if you need to go wider. The 35mm 1.8 DX is also a great lens, and everyone should have at least one fast lens.

BTW, on a side note, "lense" is not a word ;)

Roscoe
 
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bluzman

Senior Member
I have a Nikon 10-20mm but for indoor shots, something a bit faster like the Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4 DC Macro OS HSM Contemporary might merit a look.
 
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