Property photography

[Austerby]

What do people find is the right kit to photograph a property?

I need to produce some photos of a holiday home in Mallorca which the owners are renting out this summer for the first time. The photos will be used on holiday villa marketing sites, such as owners direct.

I have a range of kit at my disposal but my main digital kit is an X100s and an M8. I have M-lenses at 15mm, 21mm, 28mm, 35mm, 50mm and 90mm.

I will need to produce photos of the main areas of the villa, plus external shots. I'll make sure the environments are looking good - eg flowers on the table, a bowl of olives etc - selling the lifestyle as much as the property.

Clearly I want to show the property off to its best (and most accurate) - what tips or techniques do you recommend?

My concern is a bit around photographing dark interiors on bright days and balancing the extremes well. I don't know anything about remote flash setups - and apart from the built-in flash on the X100s I might have an old flashgun somewhere else but no idea on master/slave set ups if that would be needed.

 

[Keith]

I'd be shooting only with the Fuji personally. The focal length should be ideal and the camera's great high ISO performance will allow you to shoot for the highlights and lift the shadows in post and not really worry too much about flash. Depending what software you use you should be able to apply perspective correction to keep the verticals in check.

Sounds like fun! 🙂

 

[Sparrow]

... the 15 will be good indoors on a tripod with a level, colour print film would cope better with the bright windows, or careful HDR, you won't hear me say that very often ... but it will make the interior look larger

It would also make the exterior look more isolated from its surroundings, but you may need to sort out the verticals in photoshop

... SNAP

 

[lynnb]

Most real estate photogs use ultra-wides and wides to make interiors appear more spacious, and as Stewart said, to increase separation. Suggest you put the camera on a tripod to ensure crisp sharp images. If necessary you can stitch pictures together in Photoshop (automated process, dead easy).

Try turning on all interior lights, including table lamps - you don't want it to look dark and dingy. A warm colour balance will make interiors look more inviting. If necessary adjust that in software. If DR is a problem you can also consider shooting towards the beginning and end of day to balance outdoor natural light with indoor house lights.

Have a look at other real estate pictures to get more ideas.

Be careful not to make post production changes that might deceive potential customers and cause disputes, such as cloning out the tannery over the road and replacing it with a nature reserve 🙂. But nothing wrong with using wides and shooting from angles that show it at its best.

 

[alistair.o]

I have used a Tokina 11-16 f2.8 for exactly the type of work you have in mind. Of course this was not a Leica M but Ais Nikon.
Tripod and handheld. The point being the wider the better as you always zoom with your feet .

Hope it all goes well for you.

 

[Sparrow]

... if the window light is too strong you can also try at night, or close the curtains, this is the 12mm on film from a few years ago

... or this in daylight

 

[Roger Hicks]

Another recommendation for mild HDR.

Always use the longest lens you can, even if it's 15mm, with the camera carefully levelled on a tripod.

If you can, get hold of a copy of Rotovision Pro Lighting: Interiors, 1995 -- http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1791099.Interior_Shots

Cheers,

R.

 

[Vince Lupo]

That flashgun you have, can you use it? Even if you can bounce it off the ceiling to give you an 'umbrella' of light, it will surely help your interiors.

Failing that, you can shoot interiors by relying on the light that's present - just make sure there aren't any windows in the scene or it will look like a nuclear explosion going on outside. But, one of the things that a viewer will want to obviously see is the view out the window/door from a given room. One of the things you could do is to do one exposure for the interior, and then another for the exterior (make sure you're camera doesn't move!), and then you can take the window view and put it in the interior view afterwards in PhotoShop (it's a bit of work, but it can be done). But really, not having any auxiliary lighting to help you on the interiors is a bit tough. I'm a commercial photographer who specializes in architectural interiors, and I always make sure I have all my lighting with me, even if I don't use it all.

Vary your focal lengths -- yes, you do need to show what a room looks like, but you also want to show what a room 'feels' like. So how about some vignettes here and there using a longer lens (closeup of breakfast on the terrace with the ocean in the background etc). Architectural shoots aren't always about wide wide wide (resist the temptation to go too wide, otherwise you'll have distortion that even PhotoShop can't help). Of course, one alternative is the whole 'virtual tour' thing, but I don't know if you want to go down that road. But, you could do some exterior panoramics to give the viewer the sense of the home's setting. Also, people seem to be big on those 'dusk' exterior shots, where the inside light and the outside light are at about the same level. Gives a nice ambience, but you just have to catch it at the right time.

Here are a few examples that might help:


Frank16 by Vince.Lupo, on Flickr


Frank Panorama3 by Vince.Lupo, on Flickr


Guyton15 by Vince.Lupo, on Flickr


Guyton11 by Vince.Lupo, on Flickr


Guyton Panorama1 SMALL by Vince.Lupo, on Flickr


Good27 by Vince.Lupo, on Flickr


Lexington III-27 by Vince.Lupo, on Flickr


Federalsburg39 by Vince.Lupo, on Flickr


Kelly18 by Vince.Lupo, on Flickr

Most of the interior shots above required some auxiliary lighting (strobe), but not a lot. The last shot I think only needed one strobe head, but it was enough to lift the interior and not blow out the windows (plus it was an overcast day, which helped). And the second-to-last shot required no extra lighting (it helped that the windows on the right were blocked by the curtains and therefore didn't blow out in the shot). If you're talking Mallorca, it's probably brightly sunny there every day, so the light is probably 6-8 f/stops brighter outside than inside (36-64 times brighter!) so you have to make up that difference somehow (the interior light doesn't need to be equal to the exterior light, but it needs to be closer to it than 6-8 f/stops if you want good detail in both interior and exterior). Are there a lot of white walls in the house? Hopefully, then at least you'll get a lot of light reflecting back from the outside light.

Here again, if you can test shoot in your own house with that flash of yours bounced off the ceiling (do not use the in-camera flash), then that will be helpful. It won't be perfect lighting, but it will help. Not sure about the whole HDR thing -- can HDR resolve that wide of a lighting situation? If the interior @ ISO 100 is 1/15th @ f/2.8, and the exterior is 1/250th @ f/11, is HDR going to fix that that kind of a range?

 

[willie_901]

I have a commercial interiors photography business. About 90% of my business is higher-end residential real-estate marketing.

You need the following:

1. two identical (or at least similar) bodies... those with the highest dynamic range (signal to noise ratio) can make life easier... I only use base ISO or ISO 400 because dynamic range is precious... I never record JPEGs

2. two similar zoom lenses... those with primarily first order barrel distortion are desirable... the lenses I use now are supported by excellent optical distortion and artifact correction parameters supplied by the manufacturer... this saves me quite a bit of time.

3. lenses for interiors details and even a portrait lens as occasionally some agents will ask you to shoot a head shot

3. a high-quality tripod with a decent geared head (and a way to quickly level the camera)

4. a 3X soft gradient ND filter (for exterior shots with bright skies) and a polarizing filter to cut glare reflecting off polished floors, etc.

5. insurance... protect yourself against business risks as well as accidents during photo shoots... some homes have rather valuable art work and other furnishings

The next issue is light.

One approach is to supplement the interior light with off-camera flashes. I carry five Yongnuo 560 III flashes. I trigger them with Yongnuo 603 wireless triggers. But any flash that supports wireless and optical triggering will work. I carry a case of light stands and light modifiers. Basically you bounce the light from the flashes off the largest possible surfaces. Occasionally I have to set up my own reflector(s).

A completely different approach is to blend multiple exposures using only existing light during post-production. Excellent results can be obtained if you have well-developed Photoshop skills.

Essentially you can either work hard on-site getting the lighting right or work hard at home blending exposures to get the lighting right. This is commercial photography, so bright crisp, high-contrast photos please clients.

Even with skillful use of multiple off-camera flashes you will need to spend time in post-production. Most of my time is spent on selective color-temperature adjustments, removing unavoidable glare and reflections, making shadows from off-camera light less obvious and selectively pushing shadow regions (another reason to buy your cameras based on signal-to-noise ratio).

The computational resources is an important part of the business. I use two monitors and they have to be well-calibrated. Client's work must be backed up to multiple devices. Most clients expect electronic delivery. You will probably need a web site as well.

About 80-90% of all the interior photos I license for real-estate marketing have the following angles of view - 90 deg diagonal, 62 deg vertical and 82 deg horizontal. This corresponds to a 20 mm lens on a camera with a 24 X 36 mm sensor. Except for enjoying increased dynamic range, there is no reason whatsoever to avoid APS-C sensors.

The camera to subject distance is extremely important. When objects are too close at the frame edges, they appear distorted compared to what the human eye sees. As a general rule, one should use the longest possible focal length. High-end interior photography in magazines and books rarely includes work with these characteristics. At any rate every photograph should be thoughtfully composed to focus the viewers' (buyers') eyes on an attractive aspect of the space. Photographs with very wide angles of view tend to highlight nothing. Obviously there are exceptions.

Nobody in the business (agency marketing directors and clients with larger budgets) will take you seriously if your images have converging verticals. For this reason camera height is also important. Some people like to have the camera at eye-level and use tilt-shift lenses. I usually lower the camera to about waist high. For rooms with counter tops, I place the camera about a foot above the tallest counter. If I must compose with coverging verticals, I use a shorter focal length and correct the verticals in post as a method of last resort.

Completely separate, but equally import as all of the above, is marketing. You have to be determined to find clients. Truthfully, for me the business is about a 1/3 marketing, a 1/3 being organized and operating in a professional manner and and 1/3 photography. Once you build a client base your marketing effort can decrease... unless you want to find clients with higher budget projects.

The photography 1/3 can be subdivided further. About 1/3 to 1/2 of my photography effort involves post-production. If I relied solely on exposure blending then at least 3/4 of the work would be spent in post-production.

 

[willie_901]

Vince,

Thanks for sharing such excellent work.

Minimizing off-camera lighting excellent advice.

I admire your camera location and focal length choices.

 

[charjohncarter]

As Sparrow says keep the camera level for all shots even if you have to crop later.

 

[Austerby]

Thanks for all this help - will look to put it into practice around my own home over Easter before I'm out in Mallorca at the end of April to take the photos.

Looking forward to experimenting with "mild HDR" 🙂

 

[willie_901]

Mild HRD is an oxymoron.

HDR implies tone mapping... which can result in images some find commercially unacceptable. Others don't care. One thing is or sure: tone-mapping is easy to accomplish with just a few mouse clicks.

I recommend experimenting with exposure bracketing with the goal being that most people will have no idea the final image is from blending multiple exposures.

One test would be: do the ceilings in your photographs appear as though there had recently been smoke damage from a fire?