whether you're a photography enthusiast
or in a bind and unable to get your
photographer over to your new listing in
time these basic techniques will help
you take better real estate photos first
things first
you're going to have to stop taking
pictures at one of these and start
taking pictures with one of these buyers
are being bombarded with thousands of
the scene photos every day you need to
make sure that yours are appealing stand
out and properly represent your listing
after all you owe that level of quality
marketing to your client once you have
your camera there's only two more things
that you're going to need first is a
tripod the second is to be comfortable
shooting with your camera if you're
shooting an automatic or program mode of
your DSLR it's time to graduate to full
manual shooting and manual gives you
complete control of the exposure of your
photo there are three settings that
control exposure shutter speed aperture
and ISO changing one of the settings
means you have to change the other two
in order to compensate and create a
properly exposed photo don't worry we're
going to keep this very simple and
essentially lockdown to those settings
which means there's only one left for
you to play with let's start with ISO
the ISO controls your camera sensitivity
to light a lower ISO will decrease its
sensitivity while a higher ISO will
increase its sensitivity when shooting
in the dark environment such as indoors
you would generally use a higher ISO
however higher ISO s do tend to
introduce noise into your image a real
estate photographs we want the image to
be as clean as possible and for that
reason I'll generally set my ISO between
100 and 400 the next setting we want to
worry about is aperture the aperture
controls a depth of field or focus range
at a particular focus length and focus
distance a larger aperture allows more
light into the camera and creates a very
shallow depth of field while a smaller
aperture allows less light in and
creates a larger depth of field
generally for real estate photographs
you want the entire image in focus you
want everything to be sharp so for that
reason you want to set your aperture
between 7.1 to 11 which would for most
rooms get the entire image in focus now
that we've essentially locked down two
of
three settings we've locked down the ISO
to around 100 400 in your app church
around 7.1 to 11 that gives us one
setting to play around with the shutter
speed the shutter speed controls the
amount of time the shutter is open in
order to capture light a faster shutter
speed lets less light in but can freeze
motion while a longer shutter speed
allows more light in but can also cause
blur
however since nothing we're
photographing inside of a room is
typically moving that will allow us to
set a very long shutter speed which will
most likely be necessary since we've
closed down our aperture and also
lowered our sensitivity to light with
the ISO so shutter speeds of one second
or more won't be uncommon in poorly lit
rooms
thus the tripod trying to hand hold your
camera where the slow shutter speed can
introduce camera shake into your image
which would cause blurring when setting
my shutter speed I tend to allow a
slight amount of overexposure also known
as exposing to the right or ett our
now that we have the camera ready to go
let's talk about setting up your shot
the first thing you want to do is
capture the room at a slight angle
especially if there's large furniture in
the room if you shoot the furniture head
on it puts the emphasis and focus on the
furniture which is great for those
furniture catalogs but in terms of real
estate photography you want to capture
the room and not capture the furniture
second make sure that all the lights are
on and all the ceiling fans are off and
that your back is to any windows or
sliding doors in some cases you don't
have a choice or you want to shoot out
looking at the view which is completely
fine but just keep in mind it'll take a
few additional tricks in order to get
that correct exposed picture finally
shoot the room level in order to
maintain vertical lines that means
setting your tripod at about 4 to 4 and
a half feet depending on your lens and
also depending on the height of the
ceilings shooting with your camera
tilted down or tilted up will cause
vertical lines to appear skewed and
distorted these basic techniques should
start you on your way to capturing
better real estate photos that's it for
today and I'll see you next time