What lens do Estate Agents generally use for their interior shots

since you dont want to buy - i will assume that you dont want to rent
of course, if you could borrow - that would be great - but have you thought about stitching?
then the 40 wouldn't suck completely for the job

If you are with a crop factor camera, why not trying Canon 10-22 or Sigma 10-20, give them a shot, they are almost the same FOV of 16-35 on FF cameras, and i assume those lenses are not expensive as new , and you can find many used if you look around at great price.

I am happy to have many lenses now, including both TS, 24II & 17, they are my first choice for interior shots if i got any opportunity.

My parents are both realtors - they can confirm that most real estate agents use either point and shoots or iPhone cameras. 90% of the photos out there are pretty poor quality.

I have found my 16-35 to be the most useful. I mostly shoot for a cabinet builder.

I just bought the 16-35mm 4L. I've shot a few things today, and am pretty impressed with the contrast and sharpness. It's definitely going to be my go to landscape lens! Distortion also doesn't seem to bad for a wide angle. On a 5D, I think 16mm is an optimal UWA focal length (the reviews I've seen of 11mm with the new Canon just seem extreme for most situations)! One thing with wide angle though, is if you're trying to keep straight perspective lines. If you want to maintain vertical and horizontal lines, then you either get a tilt shift or lose some resolution stretching corners of the image in post. From what I'm seeing of the 16-35, it would be pretty easy to change the skewing in post (but leave enough room on the sides of the image for that).

Another thought is that you might not really need ultra wide angle for architecture these days. Photoshop/Lightroom is pretty great for photomerging (good thing Lightroom CC has internal HDR and panos), so you don't have to try to cram as much in one frame. I think wide angle lenses now are for the open possibilities for "creative" use of perspective. One of the more eye opening things I've found with 16mm on FF, is that the scene seems more immersive and covers more area then I'd first imagine.

Rent or use your 40 in a vertical orientation and then stitch 2 or 3 per shot. You'll probably be wide enough. Careful with all those lights unless you know how to use them. If you get lots of crossed shadows you might be better off with blending. The HDR merge in LR6 is really very good.

Submariner wrote in post #17570534
I inherited a house and the agent put it on Right Move.com thus weekend.
I think I could do better. But I Wondered what focal length did he use. My difficulty is its a 3 hour round trip, and more specifically I dont use or have any decent wide lenses.
So I dont want tomdrive over and find my 40mm pancake on the 5D3 is too long to do the place justice.
I do have 3x 600ex rts and 2 other speedlight slave flashes so with 5 speedlights illumination should be no problem - plus 5 x studio lights as well if needed ( which I doubt ).

So is 40 mm wide enough?

Sorry not prepared to buy a lens.

Re the house size its a typical reasonably spacious 5 bedroom house with a decent garden, but its not a massive mansion - guessing the lounge is 7meters by 7 meters as a size guide.

Heya,

Depends on your goal. If you want to make it look more grand than it is, a wide angle does that.

I've noticed most professionals that are shooting high dollar places do not exaggerate the size of rooms with wide angle lenses, and instead, will use more narrow angles and just focus on the composition and lighting.

Also, a 40mm could be fine because you can just use a tripod, take several images, and stitch panoramas from them. They will actually be fairly realistic in terms of representation because it won't be distorting wide angle that makes things look huge when they're not. But not from APS-C, from a full frame it would work out. On full frame, I'd look to use angles from 24mm to 35mm. On APS-C, I'd look at 16mm to 22mm. Or, again, if you want to go "wide" something wider than that, will work of course, but will make things look bigger than they are.

More importantly would be to have lighting, which you have plenty of, that will go a much longer way than whatever lens you choose to take with you.

Good luck!

Very best,

I used a Tokina 11-16 on my crop which won't help you. 40 is tight but if that is what you have then you have no choice. 24 would be better. I avoided my FF and my Canon 24-105 because it was not so good at 24mm.

Multiple flashes? Well you are doing it for yourself so it is not so bad. It does take time to set up and can be tricky. They paid me peanuts so I just used one flash and the basic adjustments in LR became my best friends.

Are you doing 360 degree panos? If so you have to deal with parallax otherwise stitching can become a nightmare or impossible.

johnf3f wrote in post #17570930
+1. It is a superb lens!
Is the OP moving up or down the housing ladder? This may have a bearing on spending out on lenses.
I would say get the 16-35 F4 L IS anyway, but I am biased because I have one

No I am not moving, I just inherited my mothers house. So just selling it
A lot of these posts have made me realise the cost of the house if improved could easily buy me a 24-70 F2.8II

If I had not been so busy clearing out 60 years of emotional clutter, I would have bought the lens without thinking - but the first Open day is today! And apparently the interest in the house is massive being one of the few in a highly desirable area that has not been done up to a fantastic standard ( most there were, or smashed down and put in 2 yuppy houses) .

Oh well guess I will pay the price for being soft, as I didnt even go there for 3 months, as I felt like a grave robber! Know it sounds patheticly wet, but really didnt like the idea of profiting from her death - but then I really like my mum.

Submariner wrote in post #17576805
Know it sounds patheticly wet, but really didnt like the idea of profiting from her death - but then I really like my mum.

Sorry to hear of your loss. There's no doubt you mother wanted you to benefit from your parents work when the last of the two passed away. My mom died a year ago, she said for years that she hoped that my brother and I would have something to inherit when she was gone.


As to FL for interiors, minimum 24mm on FF.

windpig wrote in post #17576918
Sorry to hear of your loss. There's no doubt you mother wanted you to benefit from your parents work when the last of the two passed away. My mom died a year ago, she said for years that she hoped that my brother and I would have something to inherit when she was gone.

As to FL for interiors, minimum 24mm on FF.

This. I will miss my mother horribly when she passes, but at the same time she'd smack me silly (not literally) if I didn't maximize the value of her estate when that time comes. Do your grieving, but separate it from the business of selling her house, and use the money for something that would make her proud (whatever that would be).

And yes, very sorry for your loss. I can't even imagine.

You've just inherited a five-bedroomed house, and yet you don't want to buy a lens?

Based on what i saw when buying my house a couple of years ago, they shot the pictures on cell phones and P&S cameras, most of the homes had horrible pictures.

When my dad died, someone told my mom to not make any major decisions for a year. She was lucky enough to not be forced to make a decision under pressure. It proved to be great advice.

While buying a lens may not be a major financial decision in the light of a recent inheritance, it does have an emotional component. Not that you should wait a year to make any decisions on the impact of your mom's estate, but giving it time isn't going to hurt, if you have the luxury.

Unless you think it would make you feel better, I would shelve the idea of even taking a new set of pictures of the house. Take care of yourself and your family first, the other stuff will happen in due time.

Left Handed Brisket wrote in post #17576999
When my dad died, someone told my mom to not make any major decisions for a year. She was lucky enough to not be forced to make a decision under pressure. It proved to be great advice.

While buying a lens may not be a major financial decision in the light of a recent inheritance, it does have an emotional component. Not that you should wait a year to make any decisions on the impact of your mom's estate, but giving it time isn't going to hurt, if you have the luxury.

Unless you think it would make you feel better, I would shelve the idea of even taking a new set of pictures of the house. Take care of yourself and your family first, the other stuff will happen in due time.

Couldn't agree more. Gear is utterly superfluous at this point.

Sorry about your loss, Submariner.