My Recent Real Estate Photography

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Originally Posted by Sean Setters

Yes, I was talking about lens distortion. For the most part, it doesn't bother me--but that means I need to be on guard to find out how many people it does bother. And, to be honest, someone who isn't a photographer may not be bothered with the distortion when a photographer would.

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It is real true, photographers will look at it differently. I had seen photographers use the distortion, or leave it in and use an extremly wide lens when doing real estate. I just didn't know if it was just a photographer that didn't know any better or if they just were going for that feel because some I have seen weren't to bad.


Personally if I were buying a house and looking at the pics I wouldn't mind the distortion, I know the walls don't colapse in like that. Me, I would be looking at how big the rooms are, the views out the windows, what the kitchen looks like. I would wonder as well how many people it would bother......You and I both know that a little time with DXO will fix it right up.


Also, I met a guy a while back in the camera store that was traveling cross country. He lived in California and for about a year he had been doing real estate photo's. He specialized in panorama views inside of houses and was using his 5D to do this work. He told me what he was charging, and on a good day he could make $200-300 dollars doing several houses. He was getting his sensor cleaned at the time, when they come back and told him that it wasn't dust on his sensor it was a bad scratch I felt for the guy. He just lost three weeks worth of wages. Not a big positive story to encourage you to jump in to doing real estate photography, but from what I have seen of your skill set on the boards I think if you aimed more to the higher end sophisticated client you would could do good. I would hate to think I was competing against this guy at 50-100 bucks per house.

as usual... very nice shots SEan.


one question.... how you preserve the warmth of the colors??? I mean flash more often than not cool down pictures but you always seem to get color temperatures spot on... how do you do it??? do you correct color temperatures in post???

I shoot in RAW and always adjust Kelvin values if necessary. However, for this shoot, I used a full cut CTS on the monolights and a full cut CTO on my shoe-mount flashes. The gels allowed me to balance my flashes to the ambient lights within a reasonable margin of error. Because the light was decently balanced, I could have done a global shift in white balance to neutralize the warmth of the predominately tungsten lights (color balancing using a grey card would have caused the tungsten lights to look white-ish), but I felt leaving the pictures warmer made the house look even more inviting.

As one who does a LOT of real estate photography, I've discovered the following:


1. Full frame


2. Time of day


3. Orientation (placement of house/room in line with the sun)


4. Full frame


5. Sigma 12-24mm f/4.5-5.6 @ f/8- widest rectilinear lens with almost no distortion at 12mm - the only thing this lens is good for.


6. HDR - bracketing manually with changes in shutter speeds seems to work the best - also try handheld speedlight aimed at different areas in the HDR exposures.


7. Did I mention full-frame?


Here's a few samples:


[img]/resized-image.ashx/__size/550x0/__key/CommunityServer-Discussions-Components-Files/15/8741.Kitchen2_5F00_horiz_5F00_1000.jpg[/img]


[img]/resized-image.ashx/__size/550x0/__key/CommunityServer-Discussions-Components-Files/15/6457.livingroom1.jpg[/img]


[img]/resized-image.ashx/__size/550x0/__key/CommunityServer-Discussions-Components-Files/15/5684.83HanoverAtrium2.jpg[/img]


[img]/resized-image.ashx/__size/550x0/__key/CommunityServer-Discussions-Components-Files/15/7776.photo_2D00_21.jpg[/img]


[img]/resized-image.ashx/__size/550x0/__key/CommunityServer-Discussions-Components-Files/15/3817.Kitchen1_5F00_crop_5F00_1000.jpg[/img]

Rob--why the emphasis on full frame?


By the way--I went back to the house and shot the bathroom I forgot to shoot the first time. It

I imagine it

Ah, gotcha. The wider, the better.

Sean -


Well, yes and no - the wider the better, of course. BUT...for any given focal distance (especially wide) the full frame sensor seems to give a better

Thanks for the clarification. ;-)

No problem. I