Photography Side Hustle
Photography Side Hustle
Taking Real Estate Photos
Episode 176 - How do you get those perfect real estate photos?
The Transcript page - https://photographysidehustle.com/176
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Hey, how’s it going? I’m Andy Jones, and this is episode 176 of the Photography Side Hustle podcast.
This week, we finished renovating our old house, which will be up for sale next week. Finishing that has freed up a lot of my time and a little more brain power. As soon as I have edited and uploaded this episode, I’ll update the website and get the Photoshop course back up and running. Plus, there is a Lightroom course that is 75% recorded, and I can now work on finishing that.
Oh, and Anna had Covid last week. It wasn’t as bad as the last time; it was more flu-like. But the best thing was I didn’t get it, so bonus points for me.
Okay, the idea for this episode came from Will Beresford, a member of the Facebook group. He asked me a question related to real estate, and I came across something new, well, new to me.
Between 2007 and 2010, I did some real estate photography. My approach to taking the photos was to light the room with flash. I used up to three lights, but some photographers in the Yahoo Real Estate group I was in used as many as seven in large rooms.
The idea was to use a Speedlight wherever there was a dark shaded area of the room. So, if it was a large kitchen, you might put a flash on the floor behind the counter, pointing up at the ceiling. The same thing if there is an internal door in the frame. You would leave the door open and place a flash out of sight beyond the door. So when you took the photo and all the lights flashed, the scene would be fully lit. There are no dark corners anywhere.
If using lights wasn’t your thing back then, your only option would be to use ambient light, which doesn’t give very good results. Ambient lighting is the regular light available in a given room, like natural light through the windows, lamps, and ceiling lights.
So, when Will asked about real estate photography, I took a look at how photographers approach this market today.
In 2024, we have much better editing software. Photoshop and Lightroom can give you anything you can imagine.
How do Real Estate Photographers do it Today?
Well, there are two ways to attack real estate photos. One is Flambient, which is a mixture of flash and ambient images. The second method is HDR, which isn’t what it used to be. The first HDR images years ago were over-saturated and shadowless. They are cool-looking but not very useful if you are trying to sell a home. Today’s HDR images, though, are excellent.
Equipment
Just a heads up regarding equipment. You need a tripod for both of these methods.
A full-frame mirrorless camera body is preferred because they have live view, which makes the job easier. But if you have a DSLR, don’t stress about it; they all give great results.
When choosing a lens, you need a zoom that starts at 16mm minimum for a full-frame body or 10mm for a crop sensor body. On my old crop bodies, I used a Canon 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5.
Now, you might be asking why was I using a variable aperture lens when I tell you all the time to buy f/2.8 lenses or better. Well, when you are shooting real estate, you will be using an aperture of around f/8, and buying a $2000 lens when a $500 one will do the job is a waste of money. Check out Tamron and Tokina brands, they have some really good inexpensive lenses.
For Flash, I would go with Godox. If you are shooting large homes, you will need a bit more power than a regular speedlight can supply. The AD200 would give you plenty of light. But, for regular-size rooms a TT685 or the V860 will do the trick. Plus, with the flambient method you will only need one flash.
Okay, let’s go through the two methods photographers use today. The first one is …
Flambient
As I said, it is a mixture of flash and ambient photos.
Let’s run through an example. The room is a large living room with lots of windows and a patio door. You set up your camera and tripod so you can capture the whole room. All of the photos will be taken from this position, don’t move the tripod between shots.
If you don’t have a remote shutter release, set your camera to a two-second shutter release. This will eliminate camera shake and allow you to press the shutter, walk to a shaded area, and aim the flash, which I’ll explain in a minute.
Your first shot will be with the flash turned off, capturing the room with just the ambient light.
The second shot will be of the view through the windows. You turn up your shutter speed so the room is dark, but the window view is perfect.
For the third shot, you turn on the flash, which you can mount on a stand or hold in your hand. Point the flash into the room, aiming at the ceiling. If the ceiling isn’t white, you can use a reflector and bounce the light into the room.
Okay, you need to check that photo and look for any shadowed areas. If say the ceiling in the corner of the room is slightly shadowed, then take a fourth shot.
For this shot, you need to be close to the area that needs lighting with the flash aimed at it when the photo is taken. If you don’t have a remote trigger and the two-second delay isn’t enough, change it to ten seconds.
Repeat that step if there are more areas with shadows.
The next step is editing.
You can do this in Lightroom and Photoshop or just Photoshop.
I won’t get into the step by step of the editing process right now. I think it’s more suited to a video, so I’ll add that to my to-do list.
You merge the best parts of each photo using Photoshop Layer Masks. The result is a perfectly lit image.
The process is a bit long-winded, but once you get going, it won’t take too long.
There is a faster way to get a well-lit image, and you don’t need a flash. That is …
HDR
This method needs bracketing. When you bracket the camera will take one correctly exposed photo with the light meter in the center, one over-exposed, and one under-exposed. You could make it take two under and two over-exposed for a total of five photos.
You need to decide how much under and over-exposed you want the photos to be. If you are taking three images, I would go two stops under and over-exposed.
For five images, I would just go one stop over and under.
Okay, let’s give an example. You are shooting in the same room as before, and you will take five shots at one stop apart. Once you have pressed the shutter and the camera takes the five differently exposed shots, the next stage is editing.
In Lightroom, highlight the five photos, click Photo in the top menu, then Photo Merge, HDR. Make sure Auto Align is checked, and then click merge.
It’s a pretty simple process, and the result is pleasing. I will say that I would use the flambient method. The lighting is more consistent, and the colors look accurate. I did a couple of tests, and we have a lamp in the living room that gives off a warm light. In the HDR image, the area around the lamp didn’t match the color of the rest of the room.
For most realtors, the HDR images will be more than good enough, but they might not be good enough for the higher-end homes.
Right, I’ll add a Flambient/HDR video to my to-do list.
If you need help with anything, you can find me in the Facebook group, Messenger, Instagram, or Threads.
I’ll be back next week, talk to you soon, bye.