Real Estate Photography

[sandollars]

Hire a professional who has the gear and knows what he/she is doing. One lens and one light are not going to cut it for high end real estate photography.

That's a bit rough, don't you think?

 

[tirediron]

Hire a professional who has the gear and knows what he/she is doing. One lens and one light are not going to cut it for high end real estate photography.

That's a bit rough, don't you think?

No.

 

[snowbear]

Hire a professional who has the gear and knows what he/she is doing. One lens and one light are not going to cut it for high end real estate photography.

That's a bit rough, don't you think?

Truth hurts, sometimes.

 

[Parker219]

^Most of the way agree....I use 1 lens ( Nikon 10-24 ) and 1 speed light and I have to turn down fellow Realtors who want to pay me to take their listing photos. So in the residential real estate world where cell phone pics are the norm, my photos look professional.

I do agree with hiring a professional, as most times a Realtor can make far more money and use their time far more wisely by doing income producing things to help their business, rather than sit in lightroom editing photos.

Why would I need any other lens? 99% of my real estate photos are at 10mm. I can crop if I need to.

 

[elementgs]

This is a very subjective field. As Parker stated, in a world where cell phone photos are "good enough" to most people, doing better than that is almost always what's good enough to impress brokers.

Most brokers simply want expediency and 25 photos. They honestly don't really care about the quality despite the fact that they know they should. They just don't want to pay for it. It's amusing because most photographers will do an average listing for $50-150 depending on the area. It's moronic to think brokers won't fork over the cash... I mean, it's really the quality in your marketing (and photos by extension) that differentiates you from your competition. Why wouldn't you want to always look amazing and professional?

Your marketing is always out there, always working, always spreading your name. Good, and bad.

Why would anyone hire you as a broker if you're going to not do your best for them?

To more specifically address your question, there are a lot of things that can be done to improve your photos. A lot of things.

First is to learn to think like a broker. What do brokers want to see? What are they trying to sell? What is important for them to highlight? What sells a home?

Don't think like a photographer, or an interior designer. You're selling the home, not the furniture.

Think like a broker.

Once you understand what you're shooting, and why you're shooting it, learn how to position yourself properly. You need to know where to stand, and why.

When you get down to it, the technical aspects of it are honestly less than 30% of the battle when it comes to real estate photography. Monkey's can take pictures. It's been proven possible. The difference between average photographers and amazing photographers is in the composition and lighting of the scene. You want to create a mood. You want to capture that mood and you want to deliver that mood.

So. As mentioned, yes, tripods are nice, as are good flashes. Post processing will come in handy eventually, though it's honestly not as important early on as you can accomplish a lot with a simple speedlight and knowledge of how to use it and where to stand.

You have a long way to go but don't be discouraged. Just do as I said and start learning what to shoot. Right now very few of the photos on your page show any experience with real estate in any way shape or form. That is tremendously detrimental to your future as a real estate agent so I would start there. That's going to be your focus.

Good luck.

 

[dennybeall]

When I see interior shots with a 10mm lens often you can tell whether they were taken by a real estate agent or a pro RE Photographer. The RE Agents shots often have all the walls leaning out and the pro has straitened them.

 

[Ihatemymoney]

When I see interior shots with a 10mm lens often you can tell whether they were taken by a real estate agent or a pro RE Photographer. The RE Agents shots often have all the walls leaning out and the pro has straitened them.

Ok I will bit, How do you straighten your walls, or is it because of the lens they are using that makes the walls look like they are leaning ?
Or are you directly referring to the Canon EF-S 10-22mm UWA lens that distorts the edges of the frame ?

 

[dennybeall]

To straighten walls, columns, buildings, etc. you can use Photoshop or a similar software. It's the same software used to reduce bulges or increase chest or muscle measurements.
Built in routines handle some specific lenses.

 

[PropilotBW]

If the photographer is on a strict time limit then speed replaces quality.

Agree. It's the owners responsibility for staging and removing unwanted items from the photos. A photographer isn't going to touch your items. Just takes the photos and sends them to MLS.

 

[Ihatemymoney]

To straighten walls, columns, buildings, etc. you can use Photoshop or a similar software. It's the same software used to reduce bulges or increase chest or muscle measurements.
Built in routines handle some specific lenses.

Specific lenses.
Specialty Lenses.
I haven't done allot of real estate photography, and I have allot to learn about photoshop.
But what you said about straightening walls made me wonder how you straightened walls.
I use a TS-E 24mm mkI L and a TSE 17mm f4 L lenses
Only issue is that I need to be on a tripod.

The tilt shift features and being able to rotate the lens without moving the camera body, stitching producing a panoramic photo is fairly simple.
Done right I believe the TSE lenses produce some professional looking real estate photos without the walls looking like they were leaning.

I have never tried to straiten a wall in photoshop.

 

[TCampbell]

Vertical lines (walls, door & window frames, columns, etc.) will "lean" in or out when using a wide-angle lens if the lens barrel was not level to the ground (nose-to-tail -- not side-to-side).

You can fix perspective distortion using the "shift" feature of a tilt-shift lens... but if the lens was level you wouldn't have the vertical perspective distortion problem. That also means that getting the angle of view you want may involve placing the camera higher (or lower) than the height you would normally have used to shoot.

In Photoshop you can use the "Filter" -> "Lens Correction..." and in that panel you'll find adjustments for various lens distortions... but it's the vertical distortion that applies a "keystone" correction that will solve the leaning problem... at the expensive of cropping. This is because once you fix the verticals, the image will no longer be a rectangle... it will be a trapezoid. You will need to "crop" the image back to a rectangular shape again but that means you'll crop out part of your image. If you know you're going to have to apply a lens distortion correction at the time of shooting, leave additional room around your composition for that crop.

Windows appear over-exposed and blown out because the exposure of the shot out the window is much brighter than the exposure in the room. But if the exposure in the room was closer to the outdoor exposure, then they wouldn't appear over-exposed. This means owning good lighting gear. A single flash (no matter how good that single flash is) is not likely going to be adequate in the majority of situations. In any case, you would add supplemental lighting inside to bring the indoor exposure up to something much closer to the outside exposure. It doesn't have to be equal to the outside exposure, but it needs to be close enough that it's all within the dynamic range of the camera and bright enough that the room can look normal without the outside looking overly bright.

An alternative is to use HDR (but be careful here... the image should not "look" like an HDR. You want a natural appearance in the image, not a surrealistic look.)

Another alternative (depending on the window) is that it may be possible to just photoshop a properly exposed window and composite it into the final image.

 

[Ihatemymoney]

Vertical lines (walls, door & window frames, columns, etc.) will "lean" in or out when using a wide-angle lens if the lens barrel was not level to the ground (nose-to-tail -- not side-to-side).

You can fix perspective distortion using the "shift" feature of a tilt-shift lens... but if the lens was level you wouldn't have the vertical perspective distortion problem. That also means that getting the angle of view you want may involve placing the camera higher (or lower) than the height you would normally have used to shoot.
.

 

[theshortwhiteguy]

I am looking for somebody that can help with getting bright white / focused images inside homes.
I have a Canon 5d Mark iii with 16-35mm lens and 600 ex-rt flash. I am beyond a "newbie" however very limited time spent with post production and raw images.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Shoot manual. Shoot RAW. Use Lightroom's lens corrections to correct angles.

The majority of the work I shoot during the week is real estate and 90% of those homes that I do shoot, I don't use a tripod, I don't use a second or third fill light, and I don't utilize HDR. I work within a business model that is "run-n-gun", which means if the client wants Architectural Digest quality, they can feel free to pay me for it (it is an option that I offer). My clients pay me to photograph, which means I don't move $hit and I don't stage! I show up, turn on lights, open blinds, put a toilet seat down, shoot my 25 images (MLS target number), turn off lights, shut blinds and leave, all within 20 minutes average. When I get back to my office I run all RAW images through Lightroom, paying attention to angle correction and color balance.

My camera of choice is a Canon 5D MKII, Tamron 17-35 and 550EX. I either shoot at 1/60 f9 or 1/125 f9, and adjust ISO (shock...I actually shoot higher ISO's) along with flash power. I don't use a flash modifier, which means the flash is pointed straight up or slightly behind if in a corner.

 

[beagle100]

I am looking for somebody that can help with getting bright white / focused images inside homes.
I have a Canon 5d Mark iii with 16-35mm lens and 600 ex-rt flash. I am beyond a "newbie" however very limited time spent with post production and raw images.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Shoot manual. Shoot RAW. Use Lightroom's lens corrections to correct angles.

The majority of the work I shoot during the week is real estate and 90% of those homes that I do shoot, I don't use a tripod, I don't use a second or third fill light, and I don't utilize HDR. I work within a business model that is "run-n-gun", which means if the client wants Architectural Digest quality, they can feel free to pay me for it (it is an option that I offer). My clients pay me to photograph, which means I don't move $hit and I don't stage! I show up, turn on lights, open blinds, put a toilet seat down, shoot my 25 images (MLS target number), turn off lights, shut blinds and leave, all within 20 minutes average. When I get back to my office I run all RAW images through Lightroom, paying attention to angle correction and color balance.

My camera of choice is a Canon 5D MKII, Tamron 17-35 and 550EX. I either shoot at 1/60 f9 or 1/125 f9, and adjust ISO (shock...I actually shoot higher ISO's) along with flash power. I don't use a flash modifier, which means the flash is pointed straight up or slightly behind if in a corner.

20 minutes simple and quick - sounds like a profitable formula