{"id":910,"date":"2007-01-17T17:42:51","date_gmt":"2007-01-18T00:42:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=910"},"modified":"2007-04-20T17:21:31","modified_gmt":"2007-04-21T00:21:31","slug":"digital-real-estate-photography-which-photographer-which-camera","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/910\/digital-real-estate-photography-which-photographer-which-camera\/","title":{"rendered":"Digital real estate photography: Which photographer? Which camera?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The current issue of The Specialist<\/i>, the official magazine of The Council of Residential Specialists<\/a>, insists that “99 percent of home buyers say that photos are the most helpful feature on a Realtor’s web site.” I’m pretty much convinced that 47% of all statistics are made up on the spot, but I suppose that recalcitrant one percent is visually impaired or something.<\/p>\n

In any case, I have two things to say about photography:<\/p>\n

First, Karl Hoelscher is starting a real estate photography business in North Phoenix, and he would love to have some help honing his marketing message. Give him a look at HomeSnapz.com<\/a>. Even if you use your own photos for your web pages, super-hi-resolution professional photography can work wonders for your printed pieces and MLS listings.<\/p>\n

Second, the article I mentioned in The Specialist<\/i> is a wonderful example of really bad<\/u><\/i><\/b> advice. As we talked about in BloodhoundBlog months ago<\/a>, the two most important features in a camera to be used for everyday real estate work are a wide-angle lens and a fairly small image size:<\/p>\n

Except for print reproduction, the best size for a real estate photo is 640 x 480 pixels — which is 0.3 megapixels. Ideally, your everyday camera should be able to produce that size image without post-processing. The photos on your web pages can be bigger than this, but not by much. If you try to load 20 images on a page, with each image weighing in at one megabyte or more, you’ll overtax most web browsers — well after you’ve overtaxed the patience of your audience.<\/p>\n

What you want from a lens is not a long zoom but the widest possible angle. Most digital cameras have their widest angle setting at 45 – 55mm, if the lens were on a 35mm film-camera equivalent. A few cameras get down to 38mm. This is inadequate. What you want is 28mm or less — with reservations.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The features camera-makers advertise, megapixels and zoom lenses, are mostly useless for taking photos of homes.<\/p>\n

So what does The Specialist<\/i> suggest you buy? Cameras with long zoom lenses and massively megapixelated images — just exactly the Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The current issue of The Specialist, the official magazine of The Council of Residential Specialists, insists that “99 percent of home buyers say that photos are the most helpful feature on a Realtor’s web site.” I’m pretty much convinced that 47% of all statistics are made up on the spot, but I suppose that recalcitrant […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,6,9,5,19],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-910","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-enduring-interest","7":"category-marketing","8":"category-photography","9":"category-real-estate","10":"category-technology","12":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2813,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2813\/listing-real-estate-the-bloodhound-way\/","url_meta":{"origin":910,"position":0},"title":"Listing real estate the Bloodhound way: Photography","author":"Greg Swann","date":"March 21, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I read somewhere the other day, I forget where, about a web site for a listing that had 47 pictures. The author of the post clearly thought that was a lot of photos. Cathy organized her first batch of photos for the web site I will be building today. We\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Marketing"","block_context":{"text":"Marketing","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/marketing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1384,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1384\/picture-this-digital-photos-can-sell-your-home\/","url_meta":{"origin":910,"position":1},"title":"Picture this: Digital photos can sell your home","author":"Greg Swann","date":"May 4, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"This is me in today's Arizona Republic (permanent link): \u00a0Picture this: Digital photos can sell your home Here's the brutal truth about the real estate market in the Valley of the Sun: There are nine homes for sale for every motivated, qualified buyer. So what should you do to make\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Marketing"","block_context":{"text":"Marketing","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/marketing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":173,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/173\/real-estate-photography-snapshot-composition-is-salesmanship\/","url_meta":{"origin":910,"position":2},"title":"Real estate photography snapshot: Composition is salesmanship . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"August 4, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Coming back to this, I wanted to spend a few minutes on photo composition techniques. That's almost absurd: Who doesn't know how to take a picture? Almost everybody, it turns out. We're not talking about Ansel Adams levels of perfection, we're talking about taking real estate photos that sell the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Enduring Interest"","block_context":{"text":"Enduring Interest","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/enduring-interest\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":164,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/164\/the-long-tail-in-real-estate-photography\/","url_meta":{"origin":910,"position":3},"title":"The Long Tail in real estate photography . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"August 2, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Chris Anderson at the Long Tail weblog on how switching from film to digital media changes movie acting and directing:\"I think shooting in digital changes acting as much as film changed stage acting, or as sound changed film,\" said Bill. Why? Because film costs a lot and must be used\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1388,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1388\/the-almeria-files-318-photos-in-60-seconds\/","url_meta":{"origin":910,"position":4},"title":"The Almeria Files: 318 photos in 60 seconds","author":"Greg Swann","date":"May 5, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I made another short movie to demonstrate that real estate videos don't have to be small and crappy and void of colorful details. Better than this, it seems to me to illustrate the real life of the wired listing agent. Believe it or not, the film features every photo we\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Marketing"","block_context":{"text":"Marketing","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/marketing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":161,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/161\/real-estate-photography-snapshot-choosing-a-camera\/","url_meta":{"origin":910,"position":5},"title":"Real estate photography snapshot: Choosing a camera . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"August 2, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"I keep meaning to write about real estate photography, and I keep not getting it done. Let's consider this a first cut, to which I may return more than once. Mark Reibman of Rain City Guide has written two great posts on digital photography for real estate, and we can\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Enduring Interest"","block_context":{"text":"Enduring Interest","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/enduring-interest\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}