Basic Real Estate Lighting

I'm looking into doing real estate photography and understand UWA lenses
and maybe a FF will be required but what about lights.Would two hotshoe flashes and some wireless triggers be enough for a basic start?

Are you going to have a/c electric current available for your interiors? If so, I would recommend studio strobes over hotshoe flashes.

Studio strobes have many advantages over the hotshoes but, the most important feature would be the modeling light to give you WYSIWYG (a computer phrase: what you see is what you get) shooting.

The studio strobes also usually have readily available light modifiers. I have found that a set of barndoors can be a great advantage in shooting interiors by being able to feather the light away from certain areas.

Additionally, studio strobes are usually quite a bit more powerful than hotshoe flashes but, can be used at lower power settings.

The prices of mid-range studio strobes are either less expensive or just about equal to the Canon Hotshoe Flashes.

Some studio strobes to consider are:

Calumet Genesis line
http://www.calumetphot​o.com/1/3/genesis-strobes

Adorama Flashpoint line
http://www.adorama.com​/catalog.tpl?op=cattop​_2

Thanks I'll check out those links.

For an alternative, and mouthwatering, view - http://www.scotthargis​photo.com/

Or look up the Flickr Real Estate Photography group.

do you know what the market is in your area for real estate photography and what the going rate is. you may want to consider this before you go to the expense of studio strobes.

you may want to consider a 580 and 430 and some pocket wizards or some other radios for activation.

you also mention a UWA lens but with the real estate you need to watch the parallax(sp) in small rooms. it can give a weird look to the room. a tilt shift lens may be a better way to go.

good luck and good shooting.

Yeah I thought about tilt shift but I will start with a UWA until I go FF some day.I want to get a couple
of hot shoe flashes for outdoor portraiture anyways so I'll try them first and see what I achieve with practice.I can see that studio strobes however will have an advantage.

I'm using 1 or 2 speedlights and PWs with various modifiers when needed for real estate shoots. Keep the lens level, use a wide lens and try to straighten the lines with PS or PTLens. It's good enough to start out with for a few reasons. It will be better than 95% of the point and shoot pics you see in the newspaper of middle income homes, and agents are notoriously cheap. It would take a LOT of jobs to pay for a tilt-shift lens at what the average agent will pay you.

You might want to start here for more info also. Pics w/ commentary and discussion groups.