Justin Adams

After receiving tons of photography questions from ActiveRain members and Home2Market customers, I decided to finally put together some Real Estate Photography Tips to help get everyone started on the right foot. Once you master these techniques, and you'll be ready to go on to more advanced things like shooting panoramic photos for Virtual Tours, HDR photography, and Twilight Photography. I've condensed these tips for fast reading on ActiveRain, so if you want to see the full version with all the juicy details I have posted a copy on the Home2Market website.

Tip #1: Use a Wide-angle Camera

Wide-angle cameras help open up small spaces, which is key for interior photography. SLR cameras are great, however a professional SLR camera setup will run easily over $4000, however it's a complete waste of money if you're not using the right shooting techniques. In my opinion, the best camera to start with is the Panasonic LX-5. More Info

Tip #2: Use a Tripod for Stability

It may seem like overkill, but it's definitely not - having a tripod is 100% necessary if you want to consistantly get good results. A large part of photography is about image composition, and having your camera on a tripod will allow you to compose your images properly. To get the best shot, you'll often need to use longer exposure times - this cannot be done right without a tripod. See suggested tripods

Tip #3: Spend Extra Time on the Front Shot

Generally the front of the home is the photo that will be used the most in your marketing materials, virtual tours, flyers, etc. When buyers are looking for homes online, the front shot can mean the difference between your listing getting clicked on or passed over - it's critical to make it stand out! For this reason, you should spend some extra effort on getting this shot right.

- The best way to do this is to shoot the front of the home at a time of day when the sun is behind you. Here's a basic breakdown of the best times to shoot the front:

East-facing homes: Morning

West-facing homes: Afternoon

South-facing homes: Almost any time of day will work fine.

North-facing home: These are always tough, since the sun rarely touches the front. Try shooting early morning or late in the day.

Tip #4: Shoot the Room, Not the Furniture.

Prospective buyers want to see the layout of the home, not close-ups of furniture. Try to stand back to get shots that show off the living space and connecting rooms if possible.

Tip #5: Control Depth of Field Using Aperture Priority Mode

Changing the aperture setting on your camera will increase or decrease your depth of field - this is the area of the photo that is in focus. When you shoot with your camera in auto mode, it will often select a wide open aperture, resulting in a shallow depth of field. This means that only a small portion of your photos will be in focus. This is great for portraits, etc., but generally for real estate we want to have a large portioni of the image in focus. Do this by using an aperture value to f8 or higher. This will result in longer exposure times, which is where the tripod will really come in handy.

Tip #6: Try Shooting Without Flash

Minimize the amount of flash you use, or use no flash at all. Over-use of flash results in harsh shadows and can create an unnatural look to the picture. If you feel you must use it, then do so sparingly by selecting the +/- flash setting on your camera and lowering the value to a negative number.

Warning: Shooting interiors without flash will often result in orange colored images - this is because your camera is reading the color temperature of the lights in the room. See the next tip to find out how to compensate for this. Additionally shooting without flash will require longer exposure times, so once again, please make sure to use a tripod!

Tip #7: Choose the right white balance...

White balance is a complex topic to cover in great depth, so I'll try to keep it simple here. If you're shooting without flash, then use the "AWB" (Auto White Balance) setting for all exterior shots of the home taken in regular daylight. Additionally you can use the white balance setting that has the image of a sun. For interior shots you can try using the "AWB" mode, however if your photos appear orange (they probably will), try using the the setting that has the picture of a light bulb. This becomes increasingly necessary for homes that are lit more by incandescent light bulbs than by natural light from the outside.

I hope this post has helped you get a better understanding on some key aspects of real estate photography. You can always see further details and updates by visiting the Home2Market Photography for Real Estate page. I'll be adding more tutorials and some training videos there in the upcoming weeks, so stay tuned!

Best of luck and happy shooting!

Our mission at Home2Market is to raise the industry bar for quality in real estate photography. We hope to achieve this both by educating Realtors on the fundamentals of photography, and by providing exceptional photography ourselves, through our photographer-assisted virtual tours.

Having shot several thousand homes here in Silicon Valley over the last four years, I'm often asked the same question by real estate agents and photographers alike: "What kind of camera do you use?" The answer: I've used many cameras, all with their own distinct advantages and disadvantages. From the Canon 5D to my Olympus C7070, I've experimented with tons of camera/lens combinations in the search of an affordable solution that I can confidently recommend to fellow photographers and real estate agents alike.

The bottom line is that your choice will boil down to two types of digital cameras: "SLR" cameras are great and offer wide angle options, but the're expensive and require additional lenses to be purchased. "Prosumer" cameras are quite affordable, however most lack wide angle lenses or manual shooting options necessary for shooting real estate. There are a few key things I look for when purchasing a digital camera:

• Wide angle lens (needs be somewhere between 18mm and 26mm in order to show interiors well)
• Manual shooting features (needs to be able to control exposure time, f-stop setting and ISO).
• Auto bracketing feature (this will allow you to shoot HDR photos quickly and easily).
• External Flash shoe (nice to have but not necessary if you'll be shooting in HDR format, using natural lighting - I highly recommend learning to shoot this way)

Now, there are tons of SLR cameras that easily meet these criteria, however most agents I know don't want to shell out $2000 or more for such a camera and its accompanying wide angle lens. Based on this, I'm recommending the following camera:

The Panasonic Lumix LX-3. This is a great (and affordable: $399 on amazon.com, last I checked) little camera, packed with all the necessary features I listed above, and most importantly: it has a nice wide angle 24mm lens. In case you're wondering, no, I don't get any kick-backs or payment from Panasonic for this, although if they offered... ;-)

07/29/11 UPDATE: CHECK OUT THE Panasonic LX-5

I hope you've found this information useful. If so, please respond to this post and let me know. If there is a strong demand for it, I will be adding more posts, including:

• "Basic Equipment for Photographing Real Estate" (this will cover items like: tripods, tripod heads, panoramic heads and photo editing software).
• "Real Estate Photography 101" (this will explain the basic do's and don't of real estate photography and will be targeted to the amateur photographer).
• "Advanced Real Estate Photography" (this will cover more advanced techniques such as shooting in HDR format and camera settings like shutter speed, ISO setting, exposure time and white balance, and possibly night photography).
• "Virtual Tour Photography" (this will cover panoramic shooting techniques including setup, shooting and photo stitching basics).

The goal of these tutorials will be to set a photographic standard for our photographers to follow, and also to show real estate agents how they can shoot their own virtual tours. Eventually, I'll most likely post these instructionals on the home2market website. Please let me know if there are additional related subjects you'd like to see covered, and I'll consider writing about it.

Thanks for reading, and happy shooting!

Justin Adams

While poking around in some news articles on virtual tours today, I came across an article on a new iphone app called "VideoPano". Since I specialize in shooting panoramic photography, I was curious to see what this little $1.99 app could do for me. The results were mixed.

It was extremely easy to create the panos. All I had to do was hit record, then rotate in a semi-cicle, then let it automatically stitch the images for me, and voila! A panoramic image in under 2 minutes! The downside is that the images were of fairly low quality.

Obviously there is a huge difference betweeen the two in quality, however I think that for some the iphone app may still be a viable option.

Update (7/24/2011): Check out PhotoSynth for iPhone - works very nice and allows for exposure lock..

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/photosynth/id430065256?mt=8