Question: I sometimes find I want to photograph a room showing the view outside the window. This is tricky — either you adjust the shutter speed so that the the window is so bright you can see no detail, or the room looks very dark and gloomy. 

Are there any techniques I can use to get the best photo showing as much as possible of both room and view? 

My camera is a Sony Nex3, and for this sort of thing I usually use it with an elderly Pentax-M 1:2.8 / 28mm manual focus lens with an adaptor, although I would be prepared to buy another (cheap manual!) lens.

Answer: 
You've basically got three choices in such a situation: 

* Use artificial light to bring the interior brightness up enough that the entire scene is within your camera's dynamic range. Anything from on-camera flash to multiple strobes.
* Take multiple images and combine them using one of several methods for compressing dynamic range. This could range from HDR with or without heavy tone mapping, to Exposure Fusion, to combining elements of multiple exposures by hand in Photoshop.
* Use a combination of both.

There has been some debate about which approach yields the best results. Which you choose will depend on what you want your final image to look like.

[This video](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5ea1Kw0_pg), this [article](http://fstoppers.com/how-real-estate-architectural-photography-mike-kelley), and [this Flickr discussion](http://www.flickr.com/groups/photographyforrealestate/discuss/72157615088733712/#comment72157615015541905) examine in detail what the different methods will wind up looking like.
A very easy one: Wait until dusk or dawn to take the photo.