Interior Real Estate Lens Option

Kaigler wrote in post #13523123
The purpose of the pictures is not to sell the property but to get the potential buyers into the property to view it. They're not going to buy something if they think it is too small. Its up to the agent to sell it once they're on property. So if you can get them in the door with photos the photographer has done their job.

Put yourself in these shoes...you are relocating for a new job, moving half way across the country. You have paid for two round trip airline tickets and a rental car and a hotel room, and have three days over a weekend (adding an additional day) to review properties and hopefully find a place. You have narrowed down your search choices based upon photos. In reviewing them all in person during your weekend with your real estate agent you discover that none of them are suitable, all the selling brokers have used photos which make the rooms look bigger than what suits your family.

gabebalazs wrote in post #13480042
I don't use software for verticals. And unfortunately I don't have a TSE lens either
I just do the correct verticals "manually" when I shoot

This. As long as the camera is perfectly level, it isn't that hard to get good verticals. You may have to kneel down (or use shorter leg extension on your tripod), but it's not that hard to do. I would be inclined to use my 10-22 for any such photos (I probably will when we put the house on the market next spring), as it covers me all the way out to a 35mm equivalent.

What gets me is the number of realtors I've seen taking snapshots with a P&S for listing. They don't even bother with finding a real photographer - might have to spend some extra money.

Preeb wrote in post #13523260
This. As long as the camera is perfectly level, it isn't that hard to get good verticals. You may have to kneel down (or use shorter leg extension on your tripod), but it's not that hard to do. I would be inclined to use my 10-22 for any such photos (I probably will when we put the house on the market next spring), as it covers me all the way out to a 35mm equivalent.

What gets me is the number of realtors I've seen taking snapshots with a P&S for listing. They don't even bother with finding a real photographer - might have to spend some extra money.

Exactly. Most of them are totally out of touch. One of my clients regularly puts 300-600K homes on the market. When I tell him that for the 600k, 4500 sqf home I charge about $180 (which is low by the way for the quality of work I do) he starts whining that he can only pay me $140 because times are bad, etc and, to quote him, "afterall, these are only pictures"... Well, he wants good photos but doesn't feel like paying for them.

I am a real estate broker in Los Angeles. I have recently upgraded to full frame 5D MKII coupled with Sigma 12-24mm lens. I think it's a fantastic combination for photographing my listings. As an example, I had a listing on the market for six month until it expired. I took new set of photos with my new setup and listed it again. Within few days I received 3 offers and the home is now in escrow $25,000 over the asking price. Coincidence? Maybe. Here are couple of before and after photos. First shot with 50D at 18mm. Second with 5D at 12mm

Some of the previous posts talk about wide angle shots misrepresent the size of the property. I completely disagree with that point of view. I would say 95% of the listing photos are taken with point and shoot camera or sometimes with iPhone. You can really tell a lot about size of the room when all you see is an empty wall . Seller is the one suffering because ugly photos scare potential buyers away. Some of the agents don't even bother to take interior photos - just take a look at some of the foreclosure listings. Human eyes can see as wide as any ultra wide angle lens. So who says I have to post narrow angle photos like the rest of the agents, who don't know any better?

That room looks three times as big with the Sigma 12mm!

I do some Real Estate for an Architect. I am using a 24-70L right now. I can do almost everything with it. But for interior shots I do some pano's. So a 17-40L is still on my wish list. I think a Sigma 12-24 is great too, but I want to stay with L lenses now. I hope the Canon 14-24L would not be extremely expensive. I don't care if it would be a F4 lens in stead of a F2.8 lens.

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/merijn89/787930​1434/

The Sigma is only f4.5, but for interiors I rarely open up wider than f8. Most of the time I shoot at f11 to have proper DOF. So it's perfectly fine to have a slow lens for this application.

Here is another set of before and after pictures from the same house.

Wow.... Fix your verticals if you want to be taken seriously....