Real estate photography

I did a test recently to take interior shots of an apartment (of a colleague at work). The quality of the pictures definitely influences the chances of selling the apartment. A few important things you need to take into account:

• The quality of the light: I recommend to shoot in the evening when there is some outside light, but not too much to avoid harsh contrasts. Use all available light to give a warm impression. Close the curtains if there is nothing interesting to see outside.
• Use a very wide lens to be able to show an interesting perspective. This is important even if there is some distortion.
• Vertical lines should be vertical (more or less) - avoid perspective distortion by shooting horizontally, and possibly from a low point of view.
• Use a tripod because there will not be too much light - or use very high ISO (the D3, for instance allows to shoot ISO6400 pictures without too much noticeable noise
• resolution is not too critical because most real estate pictures are being used on the web or in small format

To avoid shooting on a tripod and bring back the pictures in a very short time (another typical constraint), I used the Nikon D3, high ISO, no tripod and the Tokina 12-24 lens, an excellent wide angle lens, but made for DX sensors. Therefore, I used the D3 in crop mode (DX). This gives lower resolution pictures (a bit more than 5 MP) but the quality is excellent.

See a few examples hereunder, shot with the D3 in DX mode