Real Estate with 400ws lights

[Nakean]

I've been using speedlites, umbrellas, and 500iso for most of my Real Estate shots to get some of that lovely ambient glow from light fixtures while keeping walls clean(white). My question is I have recently purchased 400ws strobes and only shot one interior with them. It was a rather large Salon and the problem I was running into was the hot spots on the ceiling I was Bouncing the light off of.
Would I be better bouncing it off the wall behind the camera Instead of directly above on the ceiling?
How do you light with powerful lights? The more powerful the light the hotter those bounce areas are going to be. If I bounce off the wall that creates even more distance between my light and the furthest wall creating a faster fall off of light. How do you handle this situation? Here's a my Real Estate Photography Website

[Doug Sundseth]

First, you don't want to bounce off of any surface in your frame. As you note, you'll get nasty hot spots.

Second, moving lights back (which is essentially what bouncing does) reduces max power but also evens out the light intensity within the subject area. If the light source is 1m away from the subject, surfaces 2m away will receive only 25% as much light as the subject. If the light source is 9m away from the subject, surfaces 10m away from the light will receive 81% as much light as the subject.

Even an 80Ws speedlight has enough power to light fairly large spaces with the correct aperture and low ambient light. You shouldn't have a problem with being short of power with multiple 400Ws lights.

I'd recommend first choosing the direction you want the light to be entering the scene, then bouncing off a surface in that direction. (If necessary, you can set up a bounce panel where you need the light source.)

[Nakean]

Originally Posted by Doug Sundseth

First, you don't want to bounce off of any surface in your frame. As you note, you'll get nasty hot spots.

Second, moving lights back (which is essentially what bouncing does) reduces max power but also evens out the light intensity within the subject area. If the light source is 1m away from the subject, surfaces 2m away will receive only 25% as much light as the subject. If the light source is 9m away from the subject, surfaces 10m away from the light will receive 81% as much light as the subject.

Even an 80Ws speedlight has enough power to light fairly large spaces with the correct aperture and low ambient light. You shouldn't have a problem with being short of power with multiple 400Ws lights.

I'd recommend first choosing the direction you want the light to be entering the scene, then bouncing off a surface in that direction. (If necessary, you can set up a bounce panel where you need the light source.)

Thank you for your comments and help. I do realize that 400ws is plenty of power as I have been doing this with speedlite for about a year now. I guess I wanted to be able to bounce so I could get as close to the wall or corner as possible and show as much real estate as possible. I guess that's the trade off. Moving lens forward so as not to include the hot spot or perhaps bouncing off the wall/ceiling corner almost to bring the hotspot behind the camera. Thanks for the light fall off tip, don't' know why I had that backwards in my head. Do plenty of portrait light and deffinately notice the specular highlights brighter the closer I bring the light into the subject, nose cheeks, temple etc.