WessoJPEG Loc: Cincinnati, Ohio

Tr

This is a beautiful picture.

juanderfulpics Loc: central jersey

I'd go with the tokina 11-16 2.8, fast lens. I absolutely love mine

juanderfulpics Loc: central jersey

I'd go with the tokina 11-16 2.8, fast lens. I absolutely love mine

DavidPine Loc: Fredericksburg, TX

Thank you.

DavidPine Loc: Fredericksburg, TX

I don't think I have made images wider that f/8-f/11. I'm usually in the range of F/11 to f/22.

:thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:

clinnon

David,
I always appreciate your input and good advice.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

All of the lenses mentioned so far will work. Personally, I'd look for a constant aperture zoom and go for something between 10 and 20 mm at f/2.8. Check reviews at dpreview.com.

The fixed aperture as you zoom is important when you shoot with the lens near wide open and want to balance (non-ETTL) flash with ambient light, as is often done in real estate work. If it varies, you risk flash underexposure when zoomed out.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Funny, when I used to do real estate (architectural, actually) photography, I used a 4x5 and rarely found myself using an aperture larger than F22, and was typically between F32 and F45. With my D800, the image quality drops off so quickly as you go to the smaller apertures, that I find myself only shooting at F11 when I have no other choice, and never at F16 or smaller. Even for the occasional real estate shots that I do. If I need a really wide view of something I will use a longer lens and do a pano/focus stack set, and the images will be really crisp with focus front to back an no hint of the softness I would see at F16.

tomeveritt Loc: Fla. + Ga,NY,Va,Md,SC

Tokina f 2.8, Good Tripod, 3 brackets, exposure fusion :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :D

dsmeltz Loc: Philadelphia

Interesting. Perhaps you could you post some examples showing the "indoor/lowlight" situations the OP asked about.

Love to see them.

dsmeltz Loc: Philadelphia

Sorry, just realized you were addressing something else inthe thread and not the original post.

Architect1776 Loc: In my mind

This lens is very good. It will work just fine for interiors as well. I presume the realestate photography is for web postings. So a stop higher ISO will have no adverse effect. and most others in this range are about the same speed anyway.

brapoza Loc: Dartmouth, MA

Yes the Tokina 11-16 is one of the best

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Around here in the Carolinas, there is little time allowed for real estate photography, unless you're photographing half million dollar properties (and up).

We sold our rather average house in Charlotte last year. The realtor sent her photographer out for about 40 minutes. Danielle did a phenomenal job in that time. The photos were good enough to put our house under contract on the same day it hit the Internet... and we had a second offer in the wings that same day.

She was very young, and just starting out, but she and her husband had worked out a formula for real estate work.

She hand-held her camera, an APS-C Canon (70D) with a Sigma 10-20 mm lens. Indoors, she worked with a mix of all the ambient light I could turn on, and a little bit of bounce flash off the ceiling. She typically gelled her flash with a strip of #85 filter to nearly match the 2700K table lamps, or a strip of .30CC green to match cool white fluorescents. White balance was dialed to 2700 or 4100, depending on the ambient source, although she worked in RAW. The Kelvin dial-up gave her a decent preview, from which her husband tweaked the images in Lightroom.

She didn't worry about depth of field. Focused at ten feet, that lens (at 10mm) is in focus from five feet to 4200 feet or so, at f/4!

Danielle told me she photographed as many as six houses a day. On a typical day, she would photograph four or five houses, with about 50 to 75 exposures at each. They would edit and typically deliver around 30 images of an average house, and the realtor would usually select 12 to 16 for the web. They put 28 on the Zillow page of our house.

My friend, Will Crockett, a Chicago photo educator and commercial photographer, has done much higher end work. He uses mirror-less cameras and makes videos. One of his jobs was to cover a 2.8 million dollar mansion, where he charged several thousand dollars to photograph and video the property. The result, a hybrid blend of stills, video, and narration, was what I would describe as real estate soft core porn... It's on the order of a Victoria's Secret commercial, but for a house.

Oly Guy

This may have been overstated but with my nikon d3200-and a 10 30 lens at 3.5 Ap. will have a shadow from the lens in the shot until i set the lens to about 20mm then it is gone. Use of an off camera flash would of course eliminate that issue. Because of the fisheye effect of the lens it catches the barrel of the lens between 10 and 20mm-a diffuser might help however-or a hand held flash-or a cell phone flash app. held away from the camera some. Turn it on and shoot away-if it has enough power-or use a setting beyond 20mm on the camera lens.