CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

When you hire your photographer from Craig's List, you get Craig's List results ...

David Asher

Real estate is such a rip off these inflationary days, one would think the real estate photographers would afford a tilt and shift lens.

Stephan G

Re: Sale of Realty has gone crazy again in many regions.

I am reminded of that last crash. And here we go again.

Tighten up your seat belts.

aweisbach Loc: Omaha Nebraska

In defense of Real Estate Photographers, as I am one, in a market that really does not pay much for that service, there is a good explanation as to why there tends to be some distortion and exaggerated room sizes. I personally always keep in mind that with the equipment I (and most RE photographers) use (16-35mm or the equivalent), that tends to happen, and try to minimize that, BUT as someone who has been doing this for many years, and a licensed Realtor, I know that how a home fits together (how rooms are connected, flow, whatever you want to call it) is as critical as anything else in selecting a home.

I cannot show you how the closet and master bath connect to the master (sorry, now we are calling that "Primary") bedroom without the use of a wide angle lens. Or how the living room, kitchen and dining area connect. Etc.

As far as using tilt/shift lenses, view cameras, panoramas, focus stacking, etc, all those fun things that take extra time, both in taking the photos and PP, you just don't get paid for the time that would take, as least in this market (average home price around 300K). I'm not saying really distorted photos should be forgiven - there are a lot of pretty bad Real Estate Photographers out there, and a lot of cheap realtors that take their own bad photos to save a buck, a real disservice to their clients in my opinion.

And as someone already said, anyone who has been looking at purchasing a home has probably seen enough photos to realize that the only way to see what the house really looks like is to go there. The photos should be an indication of what to expect, as far as layout, finishes, light quality, etc., but almost necessarily somewhat exaggerated in terms of room sizes.

k2edm Loc: FN32AD

real estate photography is mostly (I guess) inside, (rooms) therefore a wide angle lens is required, you want to show as much of the room as possible. no surprise.. Ed

Jeffcs Loc: Myrtle Beach South Carolina

The point is to make the rooms appear as big as possible
Another trick they use “little” furniture it’s smaller by about 10%
When I was still working I was using nikkor 14f2.8 lenses

frankraney Loc: Clovis, Ca.

More than likely, to wide and close.

Dannj

Isn’t this similar to the advertising photos of hotels and resorts? The facilities photographed rarely match the actual locations.

fetzler Loc: North West PA

1. If you would post a picture it would help others to understand your problem.
2. It seems that you have a lot to learn about optics.
3. Go outside and make some pictures with lenses of different focal lengths. Photograph a face or a pumpkin or similar object. Leave room for some background and foreground. Make the central subject about the same size in each frame. What do you see?

jimtutwiler50 Loc: Los Angeles

A non zoom fixed 28mm does a great job and it is very simple to stitch two shots together in LR. Zoom lenses are always a compromise.

Architect1776 Loc: In my mind

Why always a compromise?

stan0301 Loc: Colorado

Would you rather know what the place looks like - or that the microwave is 21” wide?

E.L.. Shapiro Loc: Ottawa, Ontario Canada

It must be obvious, seeing all the responses, that painting all "real estate photographers" wit the same bad brush is unfair, uninformed, and silly! Many o the distorted and poorly crafted images that are seen in advertisements are made by truly professional or experienced real estate or architectural photographers. Many are shot by real estate agents or private sellers that know nothing about photography. Many actual real estate shooters who do this work on a routine daily basis on mass production high volume basis, do not have the time or the budget to get into sophisticated techniques or highly specialized equipment but nonetheless come out with acceptable, honest and undistorted images- simply because they know what they doing and how to workaround cramped spaces and difficult shooting environments.

Man folk who have posted in this thread have serious misconceptions about wide-angle lenses. Most modern wide-angle lenses do not have serious degrees of barrel distortion, Some wide range lenses may suffer from chromatic distortion which would affect the colour response at hedges of the field but would not cause linear distortion. Most of this linear distortion and exaggeration of the foreground can be remedied by savvy use of the camera and lens, proper levelling, selecting the best points of view, and a bit of tweaking in post-processing.

There is so much of his "everyone is out to rip off the consumer" attitude that is oftentimes directed ad professional commercial photographers. Well, folks, advertising photograhy is not photojournalism but it should be honest. Whatever is being advertised, real estate, food products, fashions, various services, the advertiser was to show their product to appear in the best light. Of course, there is stag and styling. Think about this y'all, when you shop for stuff, do you not expect store windows to be nicely arranged and that products in the store are attractively and neatly displayed. If you were selling your home and holding an open house or inviting in potential buyers, would you not make sure everything is neat and clean, furniture is attractively arranged, all so that's place seem commensurate with your asking price.

The beginnings of any sale are to attract attention and create a desire. If the pictures do that, without any misrepresentation, the images have done their job.

If the photograph really knows what are doing, the equipment is kinda secondary.

I'll attach 2 images. One is a shot of a fully furnished heritage executive rental. The agency deal in high-end short-term rental for business and government is that in this city for a year or two and needs prestigious accommodations. I had all day to shoot all the rooms. The second shot is funny. My next-door neighbour is going to be out of the city on a foreign assignment for two years and wanted to sub-let his condo. He had a potential qualified renter that wanted some quick pictures online as he too, was on the other side of the country. I was half-asleep, but I ran over with my cellphone camera and an old #2B bare Photoflool bulb I had in my junk drawer and shot his living room. I processed the image right there and on my phone and uploaded it to gis PC. Well, it won't hang in the Louvre, but there is no distortion!

delder Loc: Maryland

This is a KNOWN EFFECT of Wide Angle Lenses.
Due to the tight spaces indoors, Photographer is generally forced to use Wide Angle to include as much as possible.
This is the opposite effect of a Telephoto lense flattening the field of view.

This has been occurring long before digital photography...

As mentioned, look at ALL the Cruise Line Cabin Photos for an EXTREME example!

Shooting with a Prime Lens will avoid this but you will NOT be able to back up enough to include most of the room on an indoor shot.

Architect1776 Loc: In my mind

Generally the microwave, the furniture, photos and paintings are gone when you get the house so who cares about a distorted microwave?