Real Estate Photography - Virtual Tours

[RowmyF]

Hey everyone...

So I've been thinking about getting into Real Estate photography and spoke to some real estate agent friends about it.

What they suggested is a great selling point would be offering a turn key solution where I shoot the photos and then create them into a Virtual Tour for the client.

Does anyone have any information on how to do this? Or how all that works??

Thanks very much!

 

[annegeren]

Hello! I am a Realtor in California and did my own virtual tours. I bought my own lens and a camera that was compatible. It was a great investment but now I am no longer listing property and selling the lens a few hundred off what the manufacturer sells it for. I only used it 2 times so it is in great condition in the original packaging. I am actually selling it currently on eBay. Here is the link to the eBay page:

0-360 One Shot Virtual Tour Camera Lens - eBay (item 110383025882 end time May-04-09 21:45:17 PDT)

It is an amazing tool and your virtual tour shoot will take less than 30 minutes. I guarantee you will be amazed at the ease of use and quality it returns. You can also see the lens picture samples on the website for the lens which is: One-Shot Virtual Tours, 360 degree panoramas! Amazing Virtual Tour lens and software.

I would be happy to discuss further if you want.

Anne

 

[WhineAndDine]

hey can you post what the actual picture taken looks like before the software converts it to 360?

 

[droyz2000]

As someone who tried to get into this business and still kind of am, do not get a one image device that sits above the camera. Instead get something like a Nodal Ninja. Even though it is a bit more work at your end, the images are far cleaner and can be posted much larger. I own a Kaidan 360 One and hate it. It works, the software works, but the images are very small and cannot be posted very large, which is what realtors want.

The other thing that you will need to look into is a place to host your virtual tours. A good place to start and where I did a lot of research before doing much is www.photographyforrealestate.com. It is a great community of people doing what you are looking to do. They give great help and are quite friendly.

 

[Garbz]

Ouch, what is wrong with taking 8-10 pictures and letting panorama tools or some similar software deal with creating the final VR image. Results would be much better.

 

[CraniumDesigns]

i would also be interested in this. i've seen these 360 tours inside houses. how do they get shots all the way to the floor and ceiling? im guessing an extremely wide angle lens like a 10-20?

 

[Garbz]

The best solution would be to use a panoramic tripod head which rotates the camera around the nodal point of the lens rather than around the sensor. This reduces what's called parallax error and means that stitching multiple images together is trivial.

 

[droyz2000]

Garbz, that is what I am suggesting. A panoramic tripod head is going to be a better bet then the device that sits on top of the camera to take the image in one shot. A panoramic tripod head is going to allow for floor to ceiling coverage much better then the "one shot" device, and is going to give you a much cleaner and versatile file.