Real Estate Listing Photographs: Using Your Smartphone vs Hiring a Pro

There is no question that smartphones take great photographs these days, but are they the best way to capture the interior of a property for a real estate listing? Read on for some pros and cons of doing it yourself with a smartphone versus hiring a professional photographer.

Capturing the Details

Most of the latest smartphones use in-camera high-dynamic range (HDR) processing to balance out the brighter and darker parts of a photograph. This is especially important for capturing property interiors, where you want to see the view through a window as well as the details in the shadows. Without HDR, the windows will be blown out and the interiors will be too dark. Most professional photographers will also use HDR to balance the exposure in their photographs. Typically, they would take 5 or more different exposures of a room and blend them together on a computer to provide a nice balanced photograph. So is there any difference? Most smartphone users will just use the default settings which may not capture the full detail of the room in a pleasing way. An experienced smartphone user can tweak the HDR settings of each photo and improve this, but it is limited. A professional photographer can optimize the results later during post processing using a wider range of exposures to really make the most of a room. It’s more work, but with better results.

Color

When taking a photograph, the resulting colors will change significantly based on the type of light. This is called color temperature. When you use a smartphone, the default is an automatic color temperature setting (Auto White Balance) which attempts to figure out what type of light is illuminating a room and tries to keep whites looking white. A regular lamp bulb will make white look orange (warm), whereas bright sunlight can make white appear very blue (cool). Some smartphones are better than others at doing this. iPhones for example tend to err on the side of warmer tones. A professional photographer on the other hand has the option of full control over the color temperature in post processing, to ensure the colors are nicely balanced. This is especially important when there is a mix of natural and artificial light in the same room.

Perspective

When using a smartphone it is very easy to walk around a property snapping photos in each room, without observing the perspective. Taken from eye level with a slight downward tilt results in walls and verticals that get narrower towards the bottom of the photograph. This makes the room appear smaller in the listing and does not give the prospective buyer a good sense of the space. A professional photographer would typically use a tripod for most interior shots, adjusting the height of the camera for a balance between floor and ceiling, while keeping the camera horizontal. This ensures that walls and verticals stay vertical without any perspective distortion, giving a much better sense of the space.

Wide Angle

Unless you are focusing on some architectural detail or feature, wide angle lenses are normally used in order to give the best possible feel for a room or space. Many newer smartphones with multiple cameras now incorporate a wide angle lens, which works well for capturing a room. Professional photographers will typically use a wide angle lens as well, switching to a longer lens for details. So, in this area it is pretty much even, with one proviso. Smartphones typically have a lower resolution sensor for the wide angle camera, so picture quality can sometimes be different between the wide angle and the regular cameras.

Composition

How a photo of a room or space is composed is obviously important to maximize appeal to a potential buyer. This is really up to the person taking the photograph, and not a function of the smartphone or camera itself. A pro however will typically have a lot of experience in how to compose a shot to best capture a particular room or space. Smartphone users may also be tempted to shoot certain shots in portrait orientation. This should always be avoided for online listings, as MLS, Zillow, Trulia etc are setup to work with a landscape orientation and display portrait shots poorly.

File Format

Online listings on MLS, Zillow, Redfin, Realtor.com etc all specify a file format that displays best on their platforms. Each platform can have a slightly different optimum format. Experience shows that a good compromise between them all is a 3000 pixel wide by 2000 pixel height photo displays best on most platforms on both smartphone browsers and computer browsers. Any less and the photos can appear pixelated and blurry, any more and you are at the mercy of the platform reformatting the file with unpredictable results. The file size is also important, too big and it can be slow to display in a browser, too small and it can display poorly. A smartphone camera app does not give you much control over the resulting file format of a photograph. Whereas a professional photographer can set the exact same file format and size for all photographs in post processing.

Online real estate listings on all the various platforms are the primary marketing channel these days for a property. With the changing market it is as important as ever to maximize the appeal of those listings. Invest in professional photographs, it will be very obvious to a prospective buyer when you do.