Need help taking photos of buildings.

[Designer]

I am a real estate agent.

.. looking for the cheapest way possible to accomplish my goal.

I shall assume your goal is to sell property. Forget about taking pictures yourself. Hire a photographer. Done.

If you think that is not the cheapest, consider this:

You have already purchased a camera and lenses. How much did you spend?

You have invested some time already. What is your time worth?

In order to be as good as a professional photographer, you're going to have to spend a couple more years learning, several thousand dollars in additional equipment, editing software, file management, etc.

How many listings could you have gotten in that time if you hadn't been spending time learning how to be a photographer?

See how expensive it is trying to do it yourself?

Now start interviewing photographers.

 

[USCRugbyNo1]

I am a real estate agent.

.. looking for the cheapest way possible to accomplish my goal.

I shall assume your goal is to sell property. Forget about taking pictures yourself. Hire a photographer. Done.

If you think that is not the cheapest, consider this:

You have already purchased a camera and lenses. How much did you spend?

You have invested some time already. What is your time worth?

In order to be as good as a professional photographer, you're going to have to spend a couple more years learning, several thousand dollars in additional equipment, editing software, file management, etc.

How many listings could you have gotten in that time if you hadn't been spending time learning how to be a photographer?

See how expensive it is trying to do it yourself?

Now start interviewing photographers.

Do you honestly think I'm going to lose one potential client via the web if my photos of buildings are not as nice as a professional? Esp, when the photos I uploaded will be reduced down into a web easy format? Sorry, that isn't going to happen. This is for my website and other social media outlets. I'm not selling a unit or a building if that makes sense. So, no it doesn't make any sense to hire a professional.

Let's keep on task from my original post. I have no problem walking for three hours and taking photos. =]

 

[table1349]

I am a real estate agent.

.. looking for the cheapest way possible to accomplish my goal.

I shall assume your goal is to sell property. Forget about taking pictures yourself. Hire a photographer. Done.

If you think that is not the cheapest, consider this:

You have already purchased a camera and lenses. How much did you spend?

You have invested some time already. What is your time worth?

In order to be as good as a professional photographer, you're going to have to spend a couple more years learning, several thousand dollars in additional equipment, editing software, file management, etc.

How many listings could you have gotten in that time if you hadn't been spending time learning how to be a photographer?

See how expensive it is trying to do it yourself?

Now start interviewing photographers.

Do you honestly think I'm going to lose one potential client via the web if my photos of buildings are not as nice as a professional?
=]

Yes you would. I closed on my mothers house just today as the seller. The realtor brought in a professional photographer and the photos showed it. Had over 30 viewings in the first 2 days and a contract on the third day. Several of the potential buyer comments were on how nice a house it was and looked JUST LIKE THE PHOTOS. Got full asking price as well. So if you were in the real estate business you would be wise to hire a professional.

 

[Designer]

I'm not selling a unit or a building if that makes sense.

Oh, I apologize. I misunderstood your reason for taking photos. Carry on.

And what do you mean by "I have no problem walking for three hours and taking photos" ? What does that have to with anything? Maybe it's like "I am a real estate agent." Doesn't have anything to do with anything, you just threw that in there.

 

[USCRugbyNo1]

THIS IS NOT FOR LISTINGS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Goodness guys. Please stay on TOPIC.

 

[TCampbell]

THIS IS NOT FOR LISTINGS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Goodness guys. Please stay on TOPIC.

Regardless of "why" you want the photos... I looked at the images and other than some lighting issues, the images are "focused". "Sharp" gets abused from time to time. There is nothing strictly called "sharpness" in photography. There is focus, there is contrast, the chromatic aberration, there is meridonal or saggital distortions, there is field flatness, there is acutance... there is even "noise" (and the list goes on). And you when you pile all of these factors together people will make a value judgement about the combination of factors and decide that they do like or do not like an image and say "it's not sharp."

So based on your sample images, what I'm noticing is parallax distortion. That's the #1 distraction that I see.

Parallax distortions classically show up in images of buildings because the camera was not "level" when the shot was taken (the lens was usually looking upward) and Parallax is exaggerated even more when you use a short focal length lens (wide-angle lens) which tends to be very common for architecture. This causes buildings to appear to "lean" away.

Here's a comparison:


Riverhouse (uncorrected) by Tim Campbell, on Flickr

vs.


Riverhouse by Tim Campbell, on Flickr

These were both shot with the same lens, same camera, both on a tripod, and in the same location... nothing moved. The "change" between the first and second image is that these were shot with a tilt-shift lens. The first image is shot with no adjustments in the lens (no shift, no tilt... as if it was a normal lens). The second image has a "shift" adjustment dialed in.

To take the second image, the camera is "leveled" so that the lens is no longer pointed upward. But this cuts off the top of the building. So I dial in some "shift" adjustment (the lens physically slides upward on the camera body even though it is still pointing straight ahead) and this causes the lens to capture the top of the building so I get the framing that I want (compositionally) but I eliminate the parallax distortion.

These lenses are typically considered very expensive (usually a couple thousand dollars). Also there is a bit of a learning curve (all adjustments are manually performed and it can be confusing to learn. Also, all tilt-shift lenses are manual-focus only... there (currently) no such thing as an auto-focusing tilt-shift lens and there are many reasons why it would generally just be a bad idea to have an auto-focusing tilt-shift lens.)

The cheaper way to get the images is to do the parallax distortion correction in image editing software such as Photoshop (I think even Lightroom supports it). The image can be "keystoned" (pinch in the bottom and stretch out the top) to make the vertical "lines" of the building parallel again. There is one tip... the human brain typically expects the buildings to get slightly narrower as they get tall. So you can adjust the image to "perfect" (lines are exactly parallel) and then back off the adjustment just fractionally. The image will seem parallel and correct to your eye even though if you used a grid overlay you'd see they are fractionally non-parallel. If they are perfectly parallel it can create the optical illusion that the building is really wider at the top (which looks very strange and unnatural) even though technically it's not wider... it's just how the brain perceives it because the image failed to pinch inward the way the brain expects.)

When you make the adjustments in software the resulting image will now be a trapezoid (keystone) so you need to crop it back to a rectangle. This means you'll lose data on the sides. For this reason if you plan to use software to correct for parallax distortion you need to leave a lot of extra space in your image for the crop (shoot wider than you think you'll need.)

There are other issues such as exposure, lighting, reflections, etc. Usually a polarizing filter will work well to improve the look but these can backfire on wide-angle lenses. Polarizers usually don't look as good if you use a very wide angle lens.