I Thought Real Estate Photography Was Easy...

In this episode of storytime with Arthur, I talk about how Ive invested 10+ hours into photographing one home. As a favor. For my cousin.

If you want a Broken $100 Rokinon, email me!

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Gear That I Use & Recommend:
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AUDIO:

LIGHTING:

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Complete Gear List:

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Professional & Sponsorship Inquiries:

[Archontasil]

My favourite kind of photography. It's hard but when you got it right it's so satisfying.
1. You have to flash the room to combat the overexposure from the windows. It's a must
2. You can get good HDR but you need to do it manually in photoshop not auto HDR. Manually masking the highlight ad shadow part, there are some easy ways to do it.
3. SHOOT RAW! You need all the dynamic range in the world. Jpg doesn't have any dynamic range and wb corrections.
4. Tilt shift helps a ton, you don't need to correct the perspective and you can get "wider" photo by combining photos from shifting
5. For exterior i wait till sunset, beautiful sky and no harsh shadow

[ernstfrohlich]

My experience from 24 years of architecture photography: I photograph interiors with a focal length of 35mm (very large rooms) to 20mm (small rooms). In very rare exceptional cases, I have also photographed special perspectives with an 18mm or 16mm wide-angle lens, but only if this not results unrealistic caused distortions. Better several realistic detail photos than 1 unreal distorted extreme wide angle photo. This also applies to outdoor shots.

[hellopsp]

11:18
So moral of the story for me is. Check your gear before taking on any projects. Or even better regularly conduct maintenance tests on your gear so that you can avoid issues like this. I.e rotate through your whole lens selection and drones to check they still perform well. check for sensor dust on a monthly basis.

Make a checklist of stuff you need before leaving the house. I.e. drone parts and other things

[sarahwagner]

With anything new, there is always a first. I am currently going on my 5th year as a RE photographer and have learned a ton in these past years; and I am still learning!! If you are wanting to continue to do RE photography, I would steer you to two photographers/YouTubers, Nathan Cool Photography and Rich Baum Photography for expert advice. They have loads of how to videos and with practice around your own home, your skill set will improve. My setup is very simple; Sony a73, Tamron 17-28, Flashpoint Evolve 200, Godox pro trigger and an off brand shutter release. The process I use does incorporate flash, however, I do use the in-built HDR on certain properties, but my default method is with blending ambient and flash. With practice I find it is way faster to shoot and edit and produces the best results. Best of luck to you, it is a fun and challenging genre of photography, but I love it!! You can also add in 360 imagery along with your knowledge of video to make yourself a true one stop shop!! Have fun!

[kikeborgard]

Hello from Mexico, you have big technical problems to take the photos, first get a CPL filter to eliminate light glares that bounce off the floor, walls and where the light reflects, you also have to take the photos at F8 with the a6100 or at F11 with a sony a7, finally use an ipad with the cascable app so you don't have to manipulate the camera and you can correct the exposure from the ipad and to edit the photos correct, the color temperature, verticals and with layers you can select well exposed areas of the exterior and interior

[PaulZimmer]

I am not an expert in real estate photography, but in situations where my lens isn't wide enough for the shots I want, I will take 2-4 overlapping shots of the scene and let Lightroom turn them into a panorama with very minimal effort on my part. Combine that with the transform tools in Lightroom to straighten the perspective lines to your liking and you might be able to pull these shots off with slightly tighter lenses.

[andrewsaraceni]

Thanks so much for linking my video, Arthur! Practice shots using your own house are always a great way to test things first-hand. In any case, it's almost always a trial and error process of finding what works best for each shooter as you noted.

[GreenhornPhototaker]

honestly, i am glad to hear some of this lol. makes me feel like i am not alone with self inflicted mistakes i can't avoid, especially the gear related narration.

[hafisharis]

Honestly I find comfort in your videos, even tho I don’t have a camera yet and I’m on a hectic challenging road to become a doctor I still wish I could be a photographer like you

[hawaiirealmedia]

Good stuff:
Excellent video! And it's interesting too.
You're good on camera. A definite bonus!
Now for the bad stuff.
Your pics are blown out. Whites over exposed. Windows blown out.
Shoot with bracketing.
Don't shoot without a tripod. You need it to carefully compose shots and to make sure vertical and horizontal are even.
NEVER shoot In jpg. RAW only. This give far greater flixibilty in editing.
Get a decent flash. Cost is at least $200-$300. It will make a HUGE difference. It will also control color balance and temperatures.
Then you can do brackets and flash all on tripod and then line up layers in Lightroom and Photoshop.
Full frame is by far the best. More pixels to crop. More color density
Two point perspective is more classy when done correctly.
Lens choice. On full frame: 16mm to 24mm to 35mm primes or zooms.
Making rooms look larger than life is dangerous. Then people walk in and think, "this place is smaller than I thought." But the pics make it look huge. Not good!
I used to use Sony A7Rii with Canon 16mm and 24mm Tilt shift lenses. This limits distortion and yields amazing detail.
Thank you and good night!

[anjfoto]

First avoid extreme wide angle lenses. RE is usually shot between 17 and 24 mm on a full frame camera. Interior design photographers stick with a 24 mm to avoid distortion. While some photographers use HDR, I find it easier to use flash. Helps darken the interior lights and gets the correct color balance. In large rooms it may be necessary to light separate walls then blend in PS. It takes practice to produce good images and even after doing RE for 10 years I am still learning new techniques.

[Blackternity]

One thing I learned with HDR and Jpegs in particular:
They are a pain to color match.
You can see that on your images. The light from outside is overexposed -> blown out white. When you add the HDR the camera darkens down the interior and thus lets in blue light. And then you have blue & purple spots.
Not sure if you could fix them with a fixed white balance but this is the reason RAW is so much more forgiving. The color matching is easier. File size is crazy but it helps for these dedicated images.
Thanks for showing us "the other side" of photography - especially a "quick helping hand" and how you HAVE to check everything and never assume everything will be fine.

Cheers,

[bikecommuter]

As a former photojournalist those times I thought a job-gig would be easy they usually ended being the hard ones.

[jhullphoto]

It's great that you took the time and effort to do the best job possible. There's nothing worse than doing a shoot, getting home, and finding out you had a mechanical issue that messed up all your shots. I agree with what another poster said about testing your setup at home before doing a job. I do this myself anytime I make a change to my system or take time off. It's so much easier to figure things out at home when no one is looking over your shoulder, or you are under pressure to get the job done in a certain amount of time.

Here are a few things I wish I had known when I started.

* 18mm at F8 on a full-frame camera or equivalent. This very accurately shows the true size of a room. Most people are not happy when they make the trip to look at a listing to find out the cavernous rooms are actually half as big as they looked in the photos.

* As you mentioned, straight verticals. Gear head tripods make this extremely simple and fast. Anyone doing this for a living will save loads of time on-site and in post-processing.

* Shoot RAW.. If for no other reason, it will give you more latitude to recover over-exposed and under-exposed shoots. After your home processing the pictures on your computer you will likely wish you could recover more than your jpg's have retained.

* Flash.. From day one, pick a system like Godox or Flashpoint that are all battery-powered, and all part of the same ecosystem. Life is so much better when you can control all your flash from a single controller on your camera..

* Remote wireless triggers.. These are very cheap on Amazon. Much faster than using the timer. Gives you the ability to move around the room and add flash, or block light as needed.

* Manuals. I keep manuals for all my flash and flash accessories in my camera bag. I use all this gear the exact same way every shoot. It's pretty easy to accidentally hit a button on the back of the flash controls and change a setting. If you haven't been through the shooting menus in a while, you may find it hard to get the settings back to where you need them.

Ok, I'll stop before I get too far into the weeds. 🙂

[condojoe]

Arthur thanks for the realty reality check from Austin (I'm here too!). I've been a Realtor in Austin for almost 40 years and have seen the practice of real estate photos go from NONE to one to now about 45 shots per MLS listing. I do all my own real estate photography and think I've started to get a good handle on the process. I would suggest that the "flambient" technique is the way to go. HDR works, but the colors and control you have with flash blended with natural light is the key. Also "window pops" come out soooo much better. There are definitely some tricks such as flashing back rooms, getting the angles right on window pops (you don't want to light up the window screen and lose the vibrancy of the exterior pics). I shoot with my Sony APS-C. I used the Laowa 9mm, but didn't have the sharpness I wanted. I use the newer Sony 10-20mm now (and the 10-18mm sits on the shelf). It gets wide, but at the 20mm side it is closer to "normal" for good exterior shots. The longer I do this the more I see the variability in technique to get the right shot. I'm not perfect, but I think get across good accurate representations of the property. Being the Realtor AND the photographer I think gives me some insight to visual marketing that some pros miss. You also want to make it realistic. When prospects come to see the property and the photos are actually better than the reality, that can cause disappointment and no sale. Love to buy you a lunch in Austin and talk about this more.

[georgezhao]

I ve been watching yo video for years, its so fun lol

[jboogie]

I am a complete amateur/hobbyist but I, too, did some real estate shoots as a favor to my realtor friend here in Austin. I watched countless hours of videos about bracketing and editing. It really is much, much, more difficult than it seems. The Rokinon 12mm paired with the a6100 actually did an amazing job and both houses sold within a few days of listing! Cheers to trying new stuff!

[simonfuller]

Nathan Cool's youtube channel is loaded with great advice and techniques for shooting and editing. It is so difficult to aim for a high end result and be time efficient but it all gets better with experience. Still, each property is a new challenge with hopefully only issues you might have dealt with before but often new ones to flex the brain muscles. Gear helps but knowing how to use it is key, also knowing what images look good before you shoot is good so research is also advised as well as testing.

[Thomasmcse]

Thanks for that video. Didn’t know what to expect from the video, but I learned a lot! I will test these things know to get more knowledge. Thanks!

[twowheels]

I’m a fairly new RE photographer with about a year and a half of experience and about 100 or so shoots total (I do this part time during weekends). Your final images are definitely better than my first ones by a lot. One of the best investments you can make is getting a decent tripod and a geared head. Being able to make those micro adjustments so you can get those lines straight will cut your workflow in half. It is not uncommon to make constant line adjustments during a shoot, because floors are rarely level from corner to corner of a home, or you’ll find yourself in situations where one of your tripod legs is on top of a baseboard or a thick area rug. Essential tool number two is a CPL filter. It will minimize harsh reflections off wooden floors and counter tops, and add some contrast as well. As for lens, it’s a common misconception that you should get the widest lens possible. Shooting a tiny bathroom at 12mm will make it look unrealistically big and can actually be a problem because it’s not a realistic image of how the bathroom actually looks. A 16-35mm is all you need about 99% of the time. You also don’t need a fast F2.8 lens, get a cheap prime like a Samyang 18mm F2.8 or a Zeiss 16-35 F4. You’ll be stopping down to f/8-10 so really, a fast lens is absolutely unnecessary. Essential tool number three is a remote trigger. I’ve seen hilarious videos of RE photographers trying to do the three second sprint out of a room and failing miserably.

As for shooting technique, it’s quite clinical. Set that tripod at around light switch high, make sure that ball level is smack center and compose to show 3 walls. HDR settings just use 3 brackets 2ev apart. 5 brackets is overkill for most situations. And then when you’re ready, you’ll move up to flambient technique which is a completely different monster.