I keep meaning to write about real estate photography, and I keep not getting it done. Let’s consider this a first cut, to which I may return more than once.
Mark Reibman of Rain City Guide has written two great posts on digital photography for real estate, and we can only pray that he does more. I lack his talent, but the wonderful thing about photography is that quality can be an emergent property of quantity: Any one photo I take might stink, but if I take 500 shots, one of them might accidentally kiss the forehead of greatness. Film and prints were cheap, but digital photos are next door to being free. We can take lots and lots of photos and cull down to those that present the property in the best possible light.
Camera selection is always a problem. The two most-advertised features of digital cameras, mega-pixels and zoom lenses, are the two you need least.
Except for print reproduction, the best size for a real estate photo is 640 x 480 pixels — which is 0.3 megapixels. Ideally, your everyday camera should be able to produce that size image without post-processing. The photos on your web pages can be bigger than this, but not by much. If you try to load 20 images on a page, with each image weighing in at one megabyte or more, you’ll overtax most web browsers — well after you’ve overtaxed the patience of your audience.
What you want from a lens is not a long zoom but the widest possible angle. Most digital cameras have their widest angle setting at 45 – 55mm, if the lens were on a 35mm film-camera equivalent. A few cameras get down to 38mm. This is inadequate. What you want is 28mm or less — with reservations. The Fuji FinePix E500 shown in the sidebar is an excellent everyday real estate camera. It gets down to 28mm, which is very good for most rooms. The flash recycles fairly quickly. It will do 4 megapixels at the high end, which is good enough for lower-quality print work. But it will also work natively at 640 x 480 pixels, so you can move your photos directly from USB to your web site. With a little nylon camera case, this can ride on your belt or purse strap every time you leave the office.
You have no end of camera choices at the higher end of the price scale. We picked the Kodak Easyshare P880 you see in the sidebar because it seemed to deliver the most bang for the buck. The Schneider lens comes all the way down to 24mm, a breathtakingly wide point of view. We get a little bit of distortion, especially at the edges, but the extra room to be seen in photos of rooms makes up for that. The camera is marketed with a companion Kodak zooming flash unit, which is also worth having. This camera captures light and detail very well, so we use it at a mid-range 5 mega-pixel setting, then scale the photos down, either in PhotoShop or with a bulk post-processor.
If you want to spend more, you can, but you should be looking for the same features: A wide angle lens — within limits: 21mm might be too wide, 18mm certainly is — and a workably small image size. Camera manufacturers are finally starting to produce true 35mm equivalent digital SLRs, so lens selection should become an embarrassment of riches — at least if you’re embarrassingly rich.
When I can snag another minute, I’ll offer some thoughts about composition.
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Paul Van Buekenhout says:
As a real estate photographer, my weapon of choice is the Nikon Coolpix 8400, (long out of production) but the key is having the “eye” as my clients say. The key to any photo is composition. It also helps t invest in a proper flash gun and a tripod.
June 6, 2007 — 6:03 pm
Sue says:
I’m getting ready to pickup a new camera. The wide angle lens I definitely need…the “eye”, thank goodness I have as that would be harder to get 😉 I’d like to keep it as simple as possible, something that travels well too. Seems to be new technology time for me right now.
August 23, 2008 — 7:09 pm