[redmenace]

(I am also reading some previous threads on this topic, but figured it couldn't hurt to seek "fresh" info anyway.)

As a favor to a family member (but mainly for my own practice) I am going to try shooting interior/exterior photos of an empty house for a real estate listing. I have no delusions about making this a habit nor making a living at it, at least not yet.

Many of the real estate photos I've seen look like they are shot with superwide or even fisheye lenses, with drastic corrections to restore straight lines. (The market seems to accept/expect this? It's surprisingly common.) I am trying to avoid creating hilariously distorted output on purpose, but I think I'd like to experiment with the extremes as part of the learning process.

I am already schlepping a mess of lights for the interior work, so I would like to minimize the number of lenses involved. Maybe I can get by with one of these? I don't mind bringing a few for best results (or that whole learning thing). And what works for inside might not be best for outside. Here's what I have:
• 50mm F/2.8 macro
• 16-45mm F/4 ED/AL
• 50-200mm F/4-5.6 ED
• 10-17mm WA/fish(?)

Recommendations for post-processing tools/techniques would also be welcome. I was planning to lean heavily on Photoshop's "Lens Correction" tools since they seem to align with my hardware, but this is another area where I don't know what I don't know.

Thanks in advance!

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Last edited by redmenace; 08-23-2018 at 03:59 PM. Reason: a bit more lens info

[boriscleto]

As you say. The 16-45 isn't quite wide enough and the 10-17 is a fisheye...

You could try living with 16mm or try to defish the 10-17...

I bought the Sigma 10-20/3.5 with an eye towards real estate...

[SSGGeezer]

Doesn't Rokinon have a non-fish 10mm Available? It appears to be a good choice. If you have the profile, you can de-fish even the Rokinon 8mm FE also. Or crop and still get 70 degrees in a shot.

[AstroDave]

You can practice at home - bathrooms and other small rooms will be the big challenge. You want to be able to get nearly ALL of a room in a single shot. So, As boriscleto suggests, you are going to want a wider (non-fisheye IMO) lens.

Use a tripod. Since you can then do long exposures, you may not need all your lights. Use high f-stops for depth of field (but not so high that you get killed by diffraction - but see pixel count comment below. F11 or even F16 should be fine with APS-C, and 16 or 22 should be fine with full frame). Do a custom white balance!

MAKE SURE YOUR CAMERA IS LEVEL. This is the best way to get straight vertical lines with no post-processing. Be prepared to throw away the bottom half of most of your frames. You probably have way more pixels than you need, since your pictures will probably be headed on-line, where 1920 by 1080 or less will be the pixel size.

[redmenace]

Home practice is a great idea! I can more easily test everything tentatively to start, against a fixed scene for reference, then isolate what's most useful depending on the results. Photoshop has lens profiles for everything I have, so it will be interesting to see the impact from both hardware and software.

Sadly I don't have a ton of pixels to work with, as the body is that same *ist DS2 that I previously posted with a power problem, but it might be just enough for web work.

[steve_k]

I'm guessing by your lenses that your shooting ASP-C. If your widest option is the 16-45. Then that's that.

If you can afford another lens can I suggest that you look at sigma's 8-16 or one of the 10-20 or 12-24 lenses out there

[Snafu711]

You might want to have a closer look at the Rokinon/Samyang 10mm/2.8. It’s quite affordable, especially for the impressive spec. It‘s a manual lens and focusing takes a little practice, but at f=8 the DoF goes from 4 feet to infinity.

I own this lens for a couple of weeks now and find myself using it more often than expected. Be it for architectural shots or for landscapes with a prominent feature in the foreground.

LR has a lens profile to make up for the inevitable distortion.


However: if you don‘t feel you will have more uses for an ultra-ultra-wideangle lens than this onetime interior shooting I suggest the 10-17 and defishing.

[aaacb]

I'd also suggest defishing the 10-17 if 16mm isn't enough.

Keep in mind how you tilt the camera up/down to avoid converging lines after you correct for distortion, the fisheye will make it harder to check visually that it's horizontal.

[swanlefitte]

This is a great site. Lots of articles going back to 15 years ago even.
Photography For Real Estate
Practice and experimenting with work arounds is needed. Compromises between distortion, misleading perspective, and composition are part for the course barring knocking down walls to give space and clear views. Many times rooms are just not pictures because no photo can work.

[Robot camera]

A few years back I shot houses for Airbnb, and for the interiors I used a 12-24mm Pentax lens on my K20D. You may be able to hire a similar lens. Your 16-45 will probably be just the job for the exterior shots. I don't know what experience you have but this is how I did it:

I shot at 400 ISO, first adjusting the exposure manually so that nothing was blown out to white from sunlight coming in the windows,* then adjusting the fractional power setting of a big old manual flashgun for fill, and bouncing off the (usually white) ceilings above my head. Once in a while I had to use a 45 degree bounce card for the flash because of the building layout. Auto White Balance worked well. I lined up the camera with the verticals by making use of the edge of the viewfinder and the lines on the screen that showed where the AF points were.

I focused manually, having made a depth of field table for various focal lengths and f/5.6 to f/11, plus hyperfocal distances, which certainly aren't very distant at 12mm... Here's a link to the depth of field calculator I used.

The only thing I would have done differently would be to sometimes use a remotely activated second flashgun, where another part of the room away from the camera or round the corner could do with more light. I used to take most few photos from a bending or kneeling position, concentrating on what's in the lower part of the room rather than the ceiling, and of course keeping the camera level. I didn't use the tripod once, because you can't get into the corners with it.

Keeping the camera square and level to the buildings is the way to go indoors, but outside the smallest bit of upwards tilt looks more natural. If the side of the house you want in your photo doesn't get the sun on it at all during the day, take the photo when an adjacent side is in the sun; only thing you can do. Any interesting details you find, take a close up. I don't know how big bathrooms are in your part of the world, but they are pretty small over here. You might have to take your shoes off, because you'll be taking a photo from the shower tray or the bath.

*Actually Airbnb required things to be rather overexposed; they liked a very "bright" and airy view. All very well, but I believe that blowing out the highlights is a step too far.

[redmenace]

There are great gaping bathrooms elsewhere in this town, but at this property I will have to make myself quite small.

Looking forward to trying out all these techniques, and hoping I can do them justice in order to bring back decent results.

Thanks again!

[K-Three]

Consider HDR for the extreme lighting between inside and outside. Or with a tripod, separate exposures for inside (with or without a flash) and outside, then blended in your favorite processing software.

[Drinkkeri]

I would avoid fish eye and stick to the 16mm. If you can't have all you want in the frame just do a panorama.

[Wasp]

FWIW, a family member who is in the real estate business rocks a low end Nikon DSLR with a fish eye lens, but I have never seen the work that it produces. It is mostly video, I think. I really must ask about that next time we get together.

[redmenace]

I would avoid fish eye and stick to the 16mm. If you can't have all you want in the frame just do a panorama.

I wouldn't have thought of that, but it's an interesting idea; should only need 2-3 shots per image, it's just a question of how much post is involved (vs removing lens distortion).