canon Lee

To those that have experience in real estate photography only..... I am a seasoned photographer but have not done real estate.. I have been asked to shoot a million dollar home.. I am looking for any suggestions from those that are expert at this type of shoot.
I am thinking about shooting HDR for the interior... Especially to avoid window blow out. I have 17mm~ 55mm F2.8 wide angle, & 24mm~105mm F4 lenses, & 580EX II flash / Fong defuser/ tripod ...
What time of day is best? HDR or bracketing? best lens to use? Important rooms and angles...????
Any suggestions or things to avoid would be most appreciated....

Linda From Maine Loc: Yakima, Washington

One quick point re "important rooms" - unless the house is being sold furnished, don't make the beds and couches and tables the primary subject of the pics The photos should be about the design and architecture and space.

There are many websites of million-dollar homes for sale to help with some ideas on composition and documentation.

bkyser Loc: Fly over country in Indiana

I'm not a real estate photographer, but have been asked to do it from time to time. I avoid using wide angle lenses (even though some say that's what you should use), because it makes the rooms look deceptively large. I prefer to use a 50mm lens (closer to what the eye is used to seeing), take vertical shots, and stitch them if I need a wider angle to show more of the room. It doesn't seem to distort as much. (but it still distorts)

I tried HDR, but was never thrilled with the results. I prefer to use off camera flash, and adjust exposure so you can see what's outside, then balance with the OCF.

Of course, this isn't something I do every day. I did last Saturday, but my experience is limited to a few times a year, so hopefully someone that does it more often will give you better advice. Mine is just what works for me, and keeps people from getting upset when they go to a home, expecting the rooms to be gigantic.
bk

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

You might want to look at some really good interior photography

http://ronnachtwey.com/

I tutored him with many of the same points you are looking for guidance on. His before and after are quite good illustrations. Avoid HDR - all it does is balance the brightness of the outside light coming through the windows. It still has a different color. And interior lighting will make or break your shoot, as will attention to detail. In the fashion industry you have the prop people, wardrobe and makeup artists to make the subjects look their best. In real estate you need to rely on a good "stager" - which may very well be the RE agent, if he/she has a clue how to make the house look it's best. Pick the right time of day to shoot if at all possible, and don't be averse to blocking light through a window with an external "shade" then exposing for just the window. Use a ColorChecker Passport to resolve dual light color/temps, etc etc etc.

If you end up doing this more often, you'll look back on this shoot and wonder - how did I ever convince the people to pay me? You are going to make mistakes but use your knowledge of light and shadow to make this as successful as possible. Use compositing as opposed to HDR - the results will be more natural and controllable, especially when it comes to balancing color.

BTW, I am in the process of selling my own home, and the RE agent we've selected was going on and on about a professional photographer coming in to do the house. When she was done with her presentation, I told her that I'd rather shoot the house myself. She looked at all of my landscapes hanging on my walls, and said that my pictures were beautiful, but they had a "Pro" and showed me some of his work. YUCK!!!!

I then brought her to my computer room, and displayed a few of my RE shots on a 42" display, and she was speechless. I asked how much she typically paid the pro - when she said a lot, sometimes as much as $200, but usually a little less. I simply said "I got this!"

canon Lee

Thanks Linda

canon Lee

Hello Gene... so nice to share our ideas again... What time of day would you suggest.. Im thinking NOON where the light will be directly above & won't be directly hitting the window... what do you think? I will only be using a Fong diffuser.. Not bringing lights and umbrellas.... What do you think of me using my Canon EF17/55mm 2.8 for the small tight rooms? I am concerned about lens distortion with the wide angles ( although I have experience in photoshop to correct lens distortion), shooting in Manual and bracketing rather than HDR>? Have you ever shot open aperture long time exposure and no flash? would that correct the window blow out? I think having so many techniques is confusing me..
Again so nice to chat with you .... Lee

DMGill Loc: Colorado

Depending on where you are, a $1 Million house may be a mansion or a bungalow. If it is a house with large rooms you may want to consider multiple flashes with a radio trigger to allow you to have accent lights. I like having my main light bounced off of the juncture of the ceiling and wall behind where I'm standing. If you have enough power from your strobe(s) get as close to f/8 as you can because you are going to want substantial depth of field. Try slower shutter speeds as needed to take advantage of the ambient light. It's much harder to get a pleasing result if you are depending completely on strobes. Watch our for reflections of your strobe on windows and mirrors. Personally, I shoot mostly between 24mm and 17mm with a full frame camera for most interior shots. Interior staging is important. Flowers on the table, table set for dinner, a fruit bowl in the kitchen, a plate of cookies, a bottle of wine and a block of cheese on a cutting board, etc. Rooms should be neat and picked up without clutter. Remember you are photographing the room, not something in the room, and are trying to create an inviting atmosphere that will make people feel comfortable. Color balance is something that you need to pay attention to...too cold a color balance can be a serious problem.

My go to lens for exterior shots was a 35mm PC lens in the film days, but with Lightroom's ability to correct perspective this isn't so important today. If the house has an attractive view that you want to show, set your exposure so that the the outside is one stop over exposed so detail is visible but it doesn't look like a photograph hanging on the wall.

Most importantly, practice before you shoot a job. There are a lot of tricks to get the proper result and you are going to have to figure out what works for you. Be grateful that you are shooting digital rather than film, we now have the ability to correct and improve on the original image that we didn't have when shooting color negative film.

jcboy3

I usually spend a full day shooting expensive property, sometimes two if I can get a sunny and cloudy day. Interiors are best on cloudy days, because it tones down the outside light. And I shoot against the sun; shoot rooms when the sun is not shining in the windows. I bring 5 flashes, two umbrellas, radio triggers, reflectors and shoot through reflectors. Expose for the exterior, light up the interior to balance. Not always necessary, but if the contrast between window and room is too high, you get lens flare. Bounce a lot; otherwise you can get ugly shadows.

I don't shoot wider than 18mm. It's not necesary to get everything in the image, and ultra wide distortion is more of a problem.

For exterior shots, use a tilt lens for really deep DOF. Good property usually has good lights, so get some shots at dusk. You don't want the sky to be totally dark, so there's a narrow time window where the exposure will be right. Plan ahead for this.

If you are going to use flash, be sure to have gels to help match white balance with the exterior. I use a color meter to measure temperature and match the lighting. An inexpensive alternative is a Luxi and smart phone; accurate enough for all my needs.

Keep your camera level to minimize wide angle distortion.

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

Thanks!

You may want to take a look at Scott Hargis' work - he shoots a different style than Nachtwey, and I have no connection to him other than being an admirer of his work.

https://fstoppers.com/strobe-light/fs-reviews-scott-hargis-lighting-real-estate-photography-video-series-4414

The key is to use a combination of off camera lighting (gelled with a color correction filter if necessary to balance the color), to simulate and enhance the natural and ambient lighting in a space.

Under no circumstances should you bring the fong thing. You will tear you hair out trying to control it. The lighting will be contrasty and the shadows harsh, unless you are in a small room.

You can't fix wide angle distortion easily in post processing. I am not talking about keystoning, but rather the nasty extension distortion that makes things closer to the camera really BIG, and everything else tiny. It can make a bathtub look like a lap pool, if you catch my drift. I suspect you are looking for something that will provide some semblance of truth in advertising. I don't think that a 17mm lens on a crop sensor is necessarily so bad.

Watch for shadows on the ceiling from ceiling fans. Watch for glare and flare. Watch for reflections.

I don't know the house you are shooting, but my normal gear pack would be a 24 PC-E, 45 PC-E (tilt/shift), and a 14-24 - and a pair of D810s, a tripod, a dozen speedlights (cheap manual things I get off ebay for $5-$20 each), radio triggers, flags, diffusers, snoots, grids, etc. to control and shape the light.

Or I may do it with a single light, and rely on compositing the final image. Each approach has it's merits, and it completely depends on the budget. Many RE people want a
$200 job, others will go for the $3000 (or more) on the $8M house with all of those rooms and the amazing views.

Here is a single light approach:

https://lefeverphoto.com/methods/speedlite-interior/

http://strobist.blogspot.com/2008/08/one-light-real-estate-photography.html

Note the time of day and the quality of the light coming through the windows.

Getsmarts

I would recommend going to Lynda.com and viewing some of Scott Hargis' videos, starting with Learning Real Estate Photography (about 3.5 hrs) and some of the individual room and specific topic videos, like kitchen, basic bedroom, master bedroom or exterior at twilight, each are about 1 to 1.5 hours. If you don't have a subscription I believe you can get a month free trial.

suntouched Loc: Sierra Vista AZ

There is a site called Photography for Real Estate that is dedicated totally to real estate. There you will find practically all the information you need. The best time to shoot real estate is early morning or late afternoon when the light outside is more equalized to the light inside. You will still need to use flash though but less. The is also a technique where you photograph the windows at a different exposure than the rest of the inside and then blend. But the site goes over everything including video and tours which many sellers want. Doing real estate has morphed into a genre of its own and isn't just a walk in the park to get it right. The more expensive the house the pickier the sellers. And do you have a drone or a really tall ladder or cherry picker to do aerials :) You might consider contracting that part out. And the outside grounds can be as important as the inside. Many sellers want some images outside after dark or at dusk to highlight the house all lit up. So if you really want to do this you have your work cut out for you! But it's not impossible as long as you know the expectations.

CPR Loc: Nature Coast of Florida

Some folks get the wrong idea about HDR. When shooting interiors you can use it as a poor replacement for setting up a bunch of lights. You can get the room and then the windows and then the dark corners and stack them together. If you don't get carried away everything won't look like a plastic model.

CaptainEd

I recently shot a staged home for "practice", and not having some of the equipment mentioned (i.e. multiple remote strobes), I took another approach, which took more time, but I came up with some good images (not an original approach, one I found from a real estate photographer). I setup over-kill bracketing (5 shots - he used 3) and used only natural light coming in through windows, and in some rooms, installed light fixtures. I tried to expose for the "middle" of the available light, but did not use a light meter.

I used LR to merge them and apply lens correction, and then tweaked the verticals and horizontals to get the perspective right and add adjustments. The resulting images came out very nice, including picking up the landscaping visible through windows and patio doors and making the home feel warm and welcoming. One more step I would take in the future is to tweak the white balance to get the finals a bit more consistent. I'll try to dig up some examples later.

My gear was an 80D on a tri-pod at chest height and leveled, which did not change going from room to room and one speedlight which I used for a couple of walk-in closets for bounced light. Lens was an ES 10-18, mostly left at 10. I played with both f9 and f11, both worked, f9 would probably be my go-to if I do it again.

If I were to start doing this for pay, I would add remote fired strobes and diffusers to my equipment list, at least two, but I could have made use of three for a couple of rooms.

I would also try to do a better job of setting initial exposures and drop to 3 bracketed shots, setup a few presets in LR to speed up post-processing and try to find more ways to automate post and exporting.

billgdyoung Loc: Big Bear City, CA

I've not read through all of the comments herein, but here are a couple of notes... and I am a seasoned photog and an RE agent.
1) you'll probably use a wide/very wide angle lens. Make sure in post that you straighten all of the features in the photo... no leaning walls/furniture/windows.
2) use slow sync on the flash when taking pictures in a room with windows... expose for the scene outside the window, then let the flash fill the room.
3) don't go crazy with the wide angle shots... Many times when I take a client to walk through a home they've found on the internet, they comment "wow, the kitchen is much smaller than the picture implies"... "I thought the picture showed enough room for my sectional couch."... etc. So, when I show a home where the pictures are ultra-wide angle shots, I'll warn the client about the difference between that which is implied by the images and the real thing.

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

Lee, I'm not sure I'm of the opinion that HDR would be a good idea. For my house, building interior photos, the idea is to represent honestly what is there. HDR can easily drift into the big wow factor but not truly represent how the interior appears. With me, careful spot metering and knowing my equipment presented a truthful version without blowing out highlights,

I've found the afternoons to be psychologically better times. Which was an interesting study I did some years ago with a close friend who was a psych major.

Be careful of "things in the way". The backs of chairs, parts of tables, shelves, etc. Look at the area to be photographed and walk around looking carefully until the view you get strikes an emotional chord with you. When you see that 'Wow' view. That's a photograph. Sure, architects don't always design in those magic spots and you may have to create your own. In order to do so, you might bring a small two-step ladder. This will allow you to photograph from a higher than eye level view. Those can be very stunning and different than people are accustomed to seeing. Also closer to the floor works in some cases.

Keep in mind, if you've been asked to photograph this house, you're in charge. You can ask for things to be moved, re-arranged, etc. You're the artist and they need to appreciate that.
--Bob