Streetfighter Real Estate Photography - The Under $1000 Gear I Am Using
October 29th, 2007 Photography, Portfolio, Rules of Good Photos, Staging and Clutter
I got a “what camera should I buy” question a day or so ago on the blog.
I have no clue.
Let me tell you how I got my current camera though…
New to real estate and having held a camera in my hands for about 4 hours total over my entire life, I went to my wife’s camera shop. In theory Jen is the family photographer, she has a fancy pants film camera that dwarfs mine.
Anyway, so I go into the shop, and wow what a collection of weird looking old guys with crazy hair. But its a camera shop, so this somehow relaxes me. So I walk up to old guy with Santa Claus beard and say;
“I’m going to be shooting real estate photos, what sort of camera should I buy?”
And he says…
“How much money do you have?”
…
I think it’s fair to mention that at this point, with the money still in my pocket before I brought the camera, is the point of having the most money I reach in this story.
…
Spending Money Phase One
Anyways I end up buying a Canon PowerShot SD800 IS 7.1MP Digital Elph Camera with 3.8x Wide Angle Image-Stabilized Optical Zoom
Currently it’s on Amazon for $275. I also would recommend a Battery and Carry Case for it. Another $40 off Amazon. Also you’ll need a Memory Card another $40 or so.
That pretty much got me some straight out of the box point and shoot goodness. The Wide Angle lens is in laymans terms “moderately wide”. (28mm) So just fine for all purpose real estate shooting. I have discovered over time that perspective distortion is fairly predictable, and the camera packs fisheye distortion into every single shot.
Generally it’s pretty light, easily handled, can take about 340 shots on the memory card and the battery recharge time seems to be about an hour from completely flat. There is like a 2 photos left to go low battery warning and that is it. Be warned!
I can’t really comment on other cameras. Never used anything else seriously as yet. Been pretty pleased with it though.
Spending Money Phase Two
I do a lot of post shooting tweaking. My software of choice is Paint Shop Pro X2. Currently $80 on Amazon.
Here’s my earlier post on X2. Paint Shop Pro X2 - Oh My God “Graduated Blue”
My best advice is to take lots and lots of photos – of your own house if need be – and just play with the software over and over. If you’re using the Canon SD800 the fisheye correction is 30 in X2.
X2 is pretty close to Photoshop in what it can do, but takes a little longer to process images and start up. Also from what I’ve heard it’s simpler to use than Photoshop. The price is extremely appealing.
The free filters that come with it are positively godlike. I was unimpressed with “Sunlight” – then we headed into fall and it is simply off the hook for New England fall leaves. “Sunlight” simply rocks for exterior shots, “Brillance and Warmth” for Interior shots, “Graduated Blue” just astounding for editing blown out skies. All free with X2. Seriously good additions.
This version of Paint Shop also comes with a CD of video tutorials for how to use most of the features. Nice.
Oh and get good with the clone brush. Great for smoothing out dust particles. The sellers never clean their houses as good as they think they do.
Spending Money Phase Three
Tripod. Seriously, you just have to get a tripod. It saves a huge amount of fluffing about time setting up and lost time with “opps I moved” shots. I use Bogen / Manfrotto 785SHB Modo Mini Photo-Video Grip Head Tripod and I know you won’t believe it when I say it’s available on Amazon! It’s $80. 
Nice and light, the legs are metal and everything else is a hard plastic. It collapses down to about two feet fast and easy. I gave up on pole shooting attempts after discovering that 90% of the time holding the tripod above my head was almost as good. (Three second delay is about right)
HDR shooting (I do this rarely) is all but impossible without a tripod.
The time saver is that you can set the camera and do a “what have we got?” shot, then move objects and lighting getting the shot just right. Also you can use a time delay and go point a light somewhere, or on occasion use my heaving bulk to block out a light source casting an odd glare or something.
Spending Money Phase Four
Lighting. It’s all about lighting. I went very cheap and dirty for this phase. See my Professional Quality Lighting post. I will add that Daniel Rothamel was 100% correct about the yellow tint to the halogen bulbs. It really bugged me once I noticed it. I corrected this by buying replacement “bright, white” bulbs at Wal-Mart @ $6 a pair.
These lights are to be honest cumbersome, and do of course require plugging in, which can result in leads snaking all over the place in the house. For some reason I’m unable to see bright freaking orange leads on the camera viewscreen. Thankfully I can fix that in editing.
That being said, the two rigs net 1000 watts of light that can just HAW-HAW-HAW-HAW your problems away. All for about $80.
Spending Money Phase Five
By this point I’d managed to produce some nice photos. So headed over to Shutterfly and printed up some little portfolios of my photos. I did a 5×7 booklet of 40 pages and they print and ship for around $25 each. You can do as few as 20 pages for about $15. Just great for “hey look, I can shoot good photos”. I tailored it towards bored agents sitting on the floor desk, and I’m getting good business from it already.
Either your photos are good, or they aren’t. If they are good, you don’t need to say much. If they are bad, nothing you say matters anyway. The 5×7 booklet page on Shutterfly. I am really really pleased with how well these came out.
Having these little booklets of my photos (only did this a week ago) has just released a huge amount of energy in me. I’m starting to generate real interest in other agents using me for photos from it.
Spending Money Phase Six
Get New Business Cards. Tripod + time delay + butterfly lighting + DIY = a much better agent headshot. Get funky with it. Anything other than the vanilla corporate sadist headshot. My “agent headshot” is the photo of me up on the top of the sidebar. Write a slogan on the front somewhere that sums up your business. Mine says;
Good Photos Sell Homes
Online buyers only look for two seconds.
Price and photos are 99% of marketing.
And I have a photo of a house printed on the back of the card. I’ll be the cats half brother – people actually like getting these cards.
I get them off Xpressdocs through Prudential for $45 for 500. I also snuck a variant of that photo under the radar as my official agent headshot and my “official Prudential” agent page went from about 1 hit a day to around 25. From nothing but a photo.
Spending Money Phase Seven
Wanting a little more lighting oomph on occasion, plus wanting it to be smaller and portable. The next step is getting a Canon HF-DC1 High Power Flash for Canon Powershot Digital Cameras. It’s wireless, so you can place it somewhere, or hold it, and the flash will fire automatically when it senses another flash. $89 currently.
I just added this, so not much advice on usage as yet. If you get a Canon camera, this is essentially your basic option. Canon cameras use a little light sensing pre-flash that triggers every other brand of slave flashes to fire a microsecond too early. (I learned this the hard way… bastards!)
My main worry is combating that blown out window look, so being able to really brighten a room to balance the light balance is the idea here.
Holy Mother of Expense Budgets! What’s The Damage?
$275 Canon Powershot SD800
$40 Battery and Case
$40 Memory Card
$80 Paint Shop Pro X2
$80 Tripod
$80 Home Depot Lighting Set
$120 Shutterfly Booklets (I did a bunch)
$45 Business Cards
$89 HF-DC1 Flash
= $849 Total
+ ~10% shipping
= $934 Grand Total.
So thats the story of what I’m using. There is no question that better gear exists, but for the money spent I think I’m pretty well set up. What I’m shooting is better than 99.7% of what I’m seeing on my MLS. Here’s some shots from todays shoot.
At some point I’ll double back and get an SLR as a “proper camera”. I do wonder in my private moments if Photoshop or Lightroom is really worth the wheel barrow of money. It all really started for me by writing a silly daily photo post about real estate photos that were bad. I really didn’t expect to start turning into a professional photographer – abet one in a specialized area and still working as much as a realtor on my shoots as a photographer.
Anyone can run out and get the gear, and to be honest, having a better set of gear now really helps. What really counts though, what anyone really gets paid for, is the effort in setting up the shot and then finishing it off in editing.
The Money Shot is you.
October 30th, 2007 at 12:06 pm
Thanks, Athol! You rock! It’s not as expensive as I had aniticipated. I can’t wait to get my blog off the ground and really have some fun.
October 30th, 2007 at 4:04 pm
Hi Jeanie, glad you liked it.
It’s not wildly expensive, but like I’ve tried to show, each item is functional and not much else.
There is definately a whole tier of gear better than this, but the cost certainly starts to scale up.
October 30th, 2007 at 6:11 pm
Probably the most important feature, in my opinion, would be the wide angle lens. Even with the small amount of distortion, it is a must.
I’m still using my little nikon coolpix 5600 (widest setting is 35mm) and I have to take pictures of small rooms bent down in a corner with the camera on my head. A tripod would help, but the wide angle lens would solve the problem much better.
I also use printshop for all of my photos. I even use the tips you post here.
Kodak recently released a compact dual lens camera (one standard zoom and on wide angle (27mm). I know an appraiser who uses one because he likes the compact size along with the wide angle.
October 30th, 2007 at 6:51 pm
Yes the wide angle is basically required for interior shooting, end of story. Yes they do create some distortion, but you can generally correct it easily enough in editing.
October 31st, 2007 at 6:31 pm
Athol-
I think I’d be scared to add up my camera costs, but I’ll give away my list of gear: Canon 20D SLR w/ grip and remote trigger, 17-35L USM lens, 540 EX and 550 EX flashes, Bogen tripod/mount, and Photoshop CS2. And with all of it, I still need to improve my real estate photos. You’ve definitely encouraged me and/or directly helped me in that regard.
For blogging and snapshots I use a Canon SD870IS. This handy little point-and-shoot is great for slipping into your pocket so you always have a camera with you.
My photo setup is very good, but often I still want a wider shot, due to the focal length multiplier of 1.6 that’s inherent in this and most amateur SLR’s. I’ve been eying the Canon 5D for a long time, because it has a focal length multiplier of 1, but that body has been out since 2005, so I’ve resigned to waiting for Canon to release its next revision before upgrading. When I do upgrade, if you’re still in the market for an SLR, maybe we can work out a deal.
By the way, a remote trigger for HDR shots is a near must, as there cannot be any camera shake, even from pressing the trigger.
October 31st, 2007 at 10:47 pm
My HDR attempts are fairly limited Steve. Generally I use a techinque of two second shooting delay and holding my breath.
I can get the images lined up perfectly, but I’m not overly impressed with X2’s HDR results, and looking around for better for that.
A camera that auto brackets would be nice though.
(Auto bracket = takes multiple shots at different light settings at high speed to more easily be turned into a HDR shot. I explain this because I had to Google the information myself not so long ago.)
Thanks for the offer Steve, but I’ll no doubt be too greedy for the latest thing myself!
November 1st, 2007 at 8:20 pm
Yea, when I’ve gone for an HDR shot, I’ve found a -2, 0, +2 auto bracket works out well. But an auto bracket still needs a shutter click for each shot, and I found I was getting enough camera shake, even tripod mounted, to warrant wanting my remote trigger.
And I definitely hear you about wanting the latest and greatest. Focal length multiplier is what my number 1 goal to address will be when it comes to an upgrade. My 17mm lens turns into a 28mm lens, thanks to the focal length multiplier.